Informal learning and identity formation in online social networks

By Christine Greenhow, Beth Robelia. 2009

483 citations recorded by the source corpus.

All students today are increasingly expected to develop technological fluency, digital citizenship, and other twenty‐first century competencies despite wide variability in the quality of learning opportunities schools provide. Social network sites (SNSs) available via the internet may provide promising contexts for learning to supplement school‐based experiences. This qualitative study examines how high school students from low‐income families in the USA use the SNS, MySpace, for identity formation and informal learning. The analysis revealed that SNSs used outside of school allowed students to formulate and explore various dimensions of their identity and demonstrate twenty‐first century skills; however, students did not perceive a connection between their online activities and learning in classrooms. We discuss how learning with such technologies might be incorporated into the students’ overall learning ecology to reduce educational inequities and how current institutionalized approaches might shift to accommodate such change.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Human Factors and Ergonomics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f425e72cc25d166973871f143c92c243ba42e28c

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In Developmental and Educational Psychology

In Human Factors and Ergonomics

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Social media and education: reconceptualizing the boundaries of formal and informal learning (2016, background): “…may yield new forms of inquiry, communication, collaboration, identity work, or have positive cognitive, social, and emotional impacts (Gao, Luo and Zhang 2012; Greenhow, Burton and Robelia 2011; Greenhow and Robelia 2009a, 2009b; Pimmer, Linxen and Grohbiel 2012; Ranieri, Manca and Fini 2012).”
Environmental learning in online social networks: adopting environmentally responsible behaviors (2011, background): “Preliminary studies that suggest the educational and social potential of students' activities within SNSs have focused on identity work, technological fluency, literacy practices, and negotiation of norms within online communities (Greenhow and Robelia 2009a , 2009b ; Greenhow, Robelia, and Hughes”
Seven Affordances of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning: How to Support Collaborative Learning? How Can Technologies Help? (2016, background): “Increasingly, Social Networking Services such as Facebook provide emotional supports and social learning needed in building and sustaining such communities (Greenhow & Robelia, 2009).”
SOCIAL MEDIA IMPACT ON LANGUAGE LEARNING FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES: A STUDY IN ENGLISH FOR BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (2019, background): “In view of their proliferation and the possibilities they provide, researchers have called for the use of social media in the field of education (Everson et al., 2013; Greenhow & Robelia, 2009; Roblyer et al., 2010).”