Developing the home-school relationship using digital ... - Futurelab

RESEARCH AND POLICY REVIEW2.4 CONNECTING HOME AND SCHOOL CULTURES2Third spaces, then, do not automaticallyarise, and are not always productive for allchildren. There can be a role for a teacher tointentionally create these third spaces, helpingchildren to draw selectively and strategicallyon the funds of knowledge available to them.The Home-School Knowledge Exchange projectaimed to support the transfer of knowledgebetween home and school through explicitactivities including making and taking homevideos of children’s school literacy lessons,and children bringing in to school shoeboxesof meaningful personal possessions andphotos. These activities allowed teachers aninsight into the diversity of children’s homelives, and they were able to integrate aspectsof these into the curriculum. However, becausefunds of knowledge are situated in particularsocial and cultural contexts, the transfer of‘depersonalised’ knowledge is not possible: itis actively interpreted by teachers, parents andchildren in the context of their own agendas,which necessarily raise issues of power andcontrol. While children had some agency in thehome to school knowledge exchange activities,they had very little agency in the school to homedirection, and while bringing children’s homefunds of knowledge into the school curriculumcan be seen on the one hand as personalisingthe curriculum, the flip side to this may be thatthe school discourses take over and colonisethose of the home 52 .Technology connecting cultures of homeand schoolThe pervasive nature of technology may offeropportunities to expand traditional notions ofcurriculum and pedagogy to include the kindsof learning that children are engaged in athome as well as at school, bringing togetherlearning from a range of different sources.Mobile and portable technologies in particularare seen by some as having potential to linklearning across different contexts, and to linkformal and informal kinds of learning 53 .Using weblogs to connect homeand schoolSome schools have used weblogs to connecthome and school cultures, with children writingabout their experiences at home or school andparents and teachers commenting. In an earlyyears project, children took a teddy bear homeand photographed its adventures, then dictatedstories that were written up on the blog.Parents and grandparents commented on thechildren’s posts – enabling even distant familymembers to keep in touch with children’sinterests and learning 54 .Several schools use blogs to allow parentsto keep up to date with school activities, andcommunicate with teachers and children, whichappear to be particularly successful whenchildren are away on residential school trips 55 .Some schools have also begun exploring theuse of Twitter to communicate classroomactivities to parents, although parental uptakeis so far minimal 56 . One primary school usesa digital photo frame in the school receptionarea to share images of children’s activities atschool with parents when they come to pick upchildren from school 57 .However, in a recent review of technologyfacilitatedhome-school communication, themost successful examples were those wherethere was already “cultural harmony betweenhome and school” rather than bridgingthe differences between the two 58 . Usingtechnologies to link home and school withoutconsidering the socio-cultural differences andunequal power relationships between homeand school may potentially reinforce ratherthan overcome inequalities.2652. Hughes, M, and Pollard, A (2006). Home–school knowledge exchange in context. Educational Review, 58,4: 385-395.53. Vavoula, G, Sharples, M, Rudman, P, Lonsdale, P and Meek, J (2007). Learning Bridges: a role for mobile technologies in education.Educational Technology Magazine special issue on ‘Highly mobile computing’, XLVII,3: 33-36; see also Kerawalla et al (2007)54. Marsh, J and Parveen, A (2009). Learning and development: blogging - 21 st century literacy. Article for nursery world provided bythe authors.Available from www.nurseryworld.co.uk/news/login/91042855. See, for example, Green Park School’s collection of blogs at greenparkschool.org.uk56. Twitter is a ‘micro-blogging’ service that enables its users to send and read short messages, see twitter.com, ClassroomTweets57. Personal communication with Ollie Bray, Learning and Teaching Scotland58. Lewin, C, Mavers, D and Somekh, B (2003). Broadening access to the curriculum though using technology to link home andschool: a critical analysis of reforms intended to improve students’ educational attainment. The Curriculum Journal, 14,1: 23-53