The Memory Game: Mediational processes in social inclusion

Main Article Content

Charles Underwood
Dirce M. F. Pranzetti
Maria Cecilia Toloza O. Costa

Abstract

This article examines mediational processes in educational activities at Projeto Clicar, a program designed to promote the social inclusion of young people living on the streets of São Paulo, Brasil. It presents an ethnographic description of how informal digital and hands-on activities at Projeto Clicar provide for an integrative socio-cultural process, re-situating these children in time and place through the mediation of shared tools and artifacts. This interactive "third space" enables these children to transform their participation in the program's activities over time, and to re-conceptualize their experience as agentive partners in a community of learners collectively engaged in mastering the tools of sociality. In particular, this ethnographic narrative offers a case study of one child's interaction with others in learning relatively simple digital games. Using the strategies of participant observation to explore the interactions between children and educators and among the children themselves, this research explores the process of participatory appropriation and suggests alternative modes of relation in the co-construction of inclusionary social and educational activity.

Article Details

Section
Artículos de Investigación
Author Biographies

Charles Underwood, University of California, Berkeley

Charles Underwood

Executive Director

University-Community Links

Graduate School of Education

University of California, Berkeley

 Charles Underwood (underwood@berkeley.edu) - Graduate School of Education,

University of California, Berkeley. Research Interests: learning in socio-cultural
context, 21st Century digital literacies, social inclusion, informal learning. 

Charles Underwood is an anthropologist (Ph.D., UC Berkeley, 1986) who has conducted field research in a variety of educational and occupational settings in Scotland, India, Brazil, and the United States. He has directed several statewide University of California initiatives to promote innovative uses of digital resources for K-16 teaching and learning.  Since 1996, he has directed University-Community Links (UC Links), a UC initiative that engages university faculty and students with K-12 youth in a network of after-school programs throughout California.  From 2005 to 2008, Dr. Underwood was active in collaborative relief efforts providing educational resources for youth displaced by Hurricane Katrina. He has taught anthropology at Golden Gate University, the Universidade de Sao Paulo, and the University of California, Berkeley.  His work continues to focus on the socio-cultural context of learning and the cultural historical process of collaboration, working with university and community colleagues to pursue shared goals across linguistic, cultural, institutional, and geographical boundaries.  

 

 

Dirce M. F. Pranzetti, Universidade de São Paulo

Dirce M.F.Pranzetti (dpranzetti@usp.br) - University of  Sao Paulo, Brazil. Research Interests: popularization of science, learning in socio-cultural context, social inclusion, informal learning. 

Maria Cecilia Toloza O. Costa, Universidade de São Paulo

Maria Cecilia Toloza de O. Costa ( cetoloza@usp.br) - University of  Sao Paulo, Brazil. Research Interests: popularization of science, learning in socio-cultural context, social inclusion, informal learning.