Envisioning DIY learning in primary and secondary schools

Abstract

The DIYLab project (Do it yourself in Education: expanding digital competence to foster student agency and collaborative learning. European Commission) seeks to explore the changes (and its educational effects) occurring in the last decade regarding digital competencies, especially in relation to the emergence of a culture of collaboration, that connects youth learning, technology and DIY (Kafai & Peppler, 2011). To achieve the project's objective, we are following a methodology based on the principles of collaborative action research (CAR). This paper focuses on the first step of the CAR process and shows the main challenges identified by teachers, students and parents in order to implement the project’s learning philosophy in the current curricula and schools organisation. We carried out a series of focus groups with teachers, students and parents from primary and secondary schools and the university to discuss what DIY learning looks like in the participants’ educational contexts. Based on these discussions we have begun to analyse how each context imagines DIY learning and how it relates to the notion of virtual space. This paper focuses in the Spanish primary and secondary school participating in the project.