MESTRADO
MULTIMÉDIA - ESPECIALIZAÇÃO EM EDUCAÇÃO
Representations and the Digital
Gap in the Community
of Conceição das Crioulas:
An Action-Research Approach
Maria Ramos Portela
M
2018
FACULDADES PARTICIPANTES:
FACULDADE DE ENGENHARIA FACULDADE DE BELAS ARTES FACULDADE DE CIÊNCIAS FACULDADE DE ECONOMIA FACULDADE DE LETRAS
Representations and the Digital Gap
in the Quilombola Community of
Conceição das Crioulas:
An Action-Research Approach
Maria Portela
Multimedia Master, University of Porto
Orientador: Tiago Assis (Professor Auxiliar) Coorientador: Luciano Moreira (Assistente Convidado)
© Maria Portela, 2018
Representations and the Digital Gap in the Quilombola
Community of Conceição das Crioulas:
An Action-Research Approach
Maria Ramos Portela
Mestrado em Multimédia da Universidade do Porto
Aprovado em provas públicas pelo Júri:
Presidente: Carla Morais (Professora Auxiliar)
Vogal Externo: José Paiva (Professor Auxiliar)
Orientador: Tiago Assis (Professor Auxiliar)
Resumo
As relações que se estabelecem através da utilização dos meios digitais e das TIC provocam alterações na forma como interagimos e nos relacionamos no contexto educativo e pessoal, assim como nos modelos pré-estabelecidos da sociedade. A sociedade tecnológica e de consumo acelerado que integramos requer capacidade de pensamento crítico e de reflexão acerca dos processos de (des)subjetivação que acontecem através da tecnologia.
Esta investigação é referente a uma ação numa comunidade em desenvolvimento e pretende explorar a semiótica e funções das TIC neste caso de estudo, através da teoria das representações sociais. Com esta investigação pretendemos questionar várias teorias de determinismo tecnológico e social, expondo as limitações das TIC para o desenvolvimento (ITC4D), e simultaneamente propor uma linha de ação alternativa. O contacto com a comunidade de Conceição das Crioulas, uma comunidade quilombola e indígena localizada no estado de Pernambuco, no nordeste do Brasil, tornou-se possível através da participação no grupo de estudo e ação-investigação “Identidades”, que é mantido por um grupo de investigadores da Faculdade de Belas Artes da Universidade do Porto, ativo desde 1996.
A integração deste grupo de estudos aconteceu no âmbito da proposta de desenvolvimento de um website com a comunidade, e a simultânea realização de ações educativas que suportassem este website. Este estudo de campo é uma ação-investigação e está organizado em três ciclos de pesquisa. No primeiro ciclo foi realizado um curso intensivo sobre web design, durante uma visita de campo em julho de 2017, focado nas linguagens de programação visual, HTML e CSS, e outros conteúdos relacionados com as TIC. O segundo ciclo decorreu entre dezembro de 2017 e março de 2018 e consistiu na análise dos resultados obtidos durante o primeiro ciclo e numa nova visita de campo num ambiente mais informal. A comunicação com os alunos que integraram o curso foi mantida e, através de entrevistas semiestruturadas e dados qualitativos relacionados com a utilização da tecnologia, foi possível ter uma perceção mais detalhada sobre a relação e semiótica que envolve os dispositivos digitais nesta comunidade. O terceiro e último ciclo consistiu na análise da matéria recolhida neste processo, assim como das diferentes dificuldades relativas à manutenção do website que foram acontecendo durante o processo. Estas dificuldades surgem de limitações relativas à falta de velocidade de banda-larga e infraestruturas, capacidade e motivações para a pesquisa em linha.
O universo consensual que surge da objetificação da era digital em dispositivos e plataformas permite-nos perceber como os processos de identidade social podem ser afetados pela apropriação de ou resistência à tecnologia. Desenvolveram-se perspetivas sobre a popularidade das TIC e a sua integração na sociedade no currículo ocidental e práticas culturais. Pensar sobre as possíveis desigualdades que são perpetuadas pela cultura digital exige questionar os processos de (des)subjetivação que ocorrem através destes dispositivos. Participar numa realidade que nos desafia a questionar (pré)conceitos em relação à utilização das TIC proporciona o questionamento sobre quais são efetivamente as valências necessárias para ensinar, exercer e aprender de forma autónoma, no contexto do séc. XXI, e quais são as limitações desta cultura afinal não tão participativa.
Abstract
This work reports an experience in a developing community and aims to explore the significance and roles of ICT, through the theoretical lenses of social representations theory. The contact with the community of Conceição das Crioulas, a Quilombola indigenous community located in the state of Pernambuco, Brazil, was possible through the integration of the action-research group “Identidades” [“Identities”], constituted by a group of researchers from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Porto, Portugal, ongoing since 1996.
The main purpose of its integration within the research group was the development of a community website, subsequently leading to educational activities about how to maintain and support this website. The action-research field study is organized in three cycles. The first cycle comprised the teaching of a four-day intensive course/workshop of web design focused on programming languages, HTML and CSS, among other ICT contents. The course was taught during a field visit in July, 2017. The second cycle developed between December 2017-March, 2018, consisting of the analysis of the feedback obtained (as the communication with the students was maintained). This allowed us to understand – through field notes, semi-structured interviews and qualitative data regarding the use of these technologies – the scope of meanings being attributed to digital devices. The final cycle consisted of the analysis of the collected data regarding website maintenance and experienced difficulties. Problems arise from limitations concerning a lack of bandwidth speed, infrastructure, research skills and research motivation.
The consensual universe that emerges from the objectification of the digital era into devices and platforms allows us to understand how social identity processes might be affected by the appropriation of (or resistance to) technology, as the boundaries between identity and avatar become more and more blurred. With this analysis we intend to review several predictions or prophecies of technological and social determinism, thus, exposing the limitations of ICT for development (ICT4D) but also urging us to analyse the challenges of ICT from developing an alternative mindset. These problems denounce the myth of digital diversity, considering the access nearly every member of the community has to a digital device, and how its use is currently limited to recreational purposes.
The participation in this research allows a reflection on the spread of ICT in Western society usually perceived as an educational opportunity. Reflecting about the possible inequalities perpetuated by digital culture, demands questioning the (de)subjectivation processes that occur through these devices. Participating in a reality that challenges our biases related to the use of these devices, enables a series of questions about what are indeed the necessary skills to excel, teach and learn in the 21st century, and what are the limitations of this, after all, not so participatory culture.
Acknowledgments
To the supervisors of this work, whom I consider as friends, thank you for the passion that you have for your work, and for the way you challenge me and yourselves to never stop questioning. It is a pleasure to be a part of this.
A special thank you to the researcher, Professor and friend, José Paiva, for his welcoming into the research group Identidades, contributing to our personal and academic growth, facing challenges that demand us to question our biases.
We also want to express our gratitude to the community of Conceição das Crioulas for allowing us to enter their reality in such an intimate way and to wonder how the sense of community is lost in our current individuality paradigm.
To my tribe and closest representation of community, my brother, Afonso, for being an inspiration, the researcher and friend Juliana Polippo, Carr, Hugins, Diogo, Danilo, Raquel, Ingrett, Ana, Xico, and Jaime. Thank You for believing in me, and for making me want to be a better researcher, professional, and human being. You make it all worth it.
To my parents, for the whole world.
Table of Contents
Introduction 2
1. Motivation 3
2. Project 3
3. Problem(s), Hypothese(s) and Objectives of the Research 3
4. Research Methodology 4
5. Dissertation Structure 5
1. Literature Review 7
1.1 Multimedia Education and Participatory Culture 7
1.1.1 Digital Divide 9
1.1.2 Digital Technologies and Education 10
1.2 From ICT4D to ICTFromD 12
1.3 Social Representations Theory 14
1.4 Conceição das Crioulas 17
1.5 Identities, Artistic Movement, and Research Group 22
2. Methods 24
2.1. Action-Research 24
2.2. Participants 25
2.3. Data Collection and Analysis 26
3. Digital Identity 27
3.1. Encontro com as Artes, Lutas, Sabores e Saberes da Comunidade [Meeting with the Arts, Struggles, Tastes, and Knowledges of the Community] 27
3.2. Workshop and Testimonials 28
4. Digital Entrepreneurship 37
4.1. Statically Dynamic Archive 37
4.2. Mapping and Visibility of Conceição das Crioulas 39 4.3. Identity, Representation, and Social Media 40
5. Education 41
5.1. Shifting to a CMS and Future Work 41
6. Discussion 42
7. Conclusions and Future Work 46
xvii
List of Figures
Figure 1: The Treachery of Images, This is Not a Pipe, René Magritte, 1929, Painting, Oil on canvas. On the right, a meme inspired on Magritte’s paiting, This is Not a Gif.
Figure 2: Relativity, 1953, M.C. Escher.
Figure 3: Hand With Reflecting Sphere, 1935, M. C. Escher. Figure 4: Conceição das Crioulas image from Google Earth.
Figure 5: Blackout (2016) – Felipe Peres Calheiros, at https://vimeo.com/166134478
Figure 6: Blackout (2016) – Felipe Peres Calheiros, at https://vimeo.com/166134478
Figure 7: Research theoretical fields.
Figure 8. Conceição das Crioulas Landscape, July 2017.
Figure 9. Associação Quilombola de Conceição das Crioulas, July 2017. Figure 10. Book about the meeting in Conceição das Crioulas, July 2017.
xix
List of Tables
Table 1: Content of the Web Design Workshop divided into 6 Modules Table 2: Semi-structured Interviews relative to the Digital Paradigm
Introduction
1
Abbreviations and Symbols
CSS HTML
Cascading Style Sheets HyperText Markup Language
ICT Information and Communication Technologies ICT4D
PX
Information and Communication Technologies for Development Pixels
2
Introduction
The community of Conceição das Crioulas is recognized by their persistent fight for land rights and their desire to preserve their historical background and identity. A Quilombola/indigenous community, it is located in the state of Pernambuco in the semi-arid North-Eastern Brazil, inhabited by approximately 750 families who identify themselves as descending from slaves, reminiscent of the Quilombo (a community organized by fugitive slaves). The community’s history is told through its oral tradition as the arrival of 6 women in this land, guided by a fugitive slave. They settled there and were eventually able to buy the land, due to their work in the cotton fields. There is a predominance of female leadership both in the historical and contemporary community, as supported by Leite (2010), where the women are actively participating in the political and social organization, managing associations and trade unions in order to fight for the right to citizenship that contemplates the community’s ethnic and cultural context.
Identidades [Identities] is the name of an action-research group, started in 1996 by researchers and students from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Porto. By maintaining a relationship with several institutions and communities in Mozambique, North-eastern Brazil and Cape Verde, several interdisciplinary activities were developed. Currently constituted by approximately 15 students and teachers from Brazilian and Portuguese higher education institutions, the group’s intention to explore the value of cultural relationships (Paiva, 2009, p. 56) is carried out through artistic education, digital literacy and ICT, video, photography and self-representation through both technology and art. The challenge of confronting the comfort of Western individualism through participation in collective activities enables its participants to question their predetermined beliefs. (Paiva, 2009, p. 44).
In March 2017 the challenge to design a dynamic website that would serve the community’s interest in acquiring autonomy to share its news, history and craftsmanship creations was initiated. This attempt led to a subsequent questioning about the Western model of technology education. How is this emancipation through technology being pursued in our own system, what kind of dependence might be latent in our own procedures and how can we try to overcome it?
This research approaches the community’s use of technology through the theoretical lenses of social representations theory (Moscovici, 1961). We are interested in studying the way people in the community perceive technology in order to understand if these devices are enabling the creation and distribution of content aligned with the community’s values. Using an action-research approach, we conducted semi-structured interviews, informal and formal discussions about ICT role and use in educational, technological, and social contexts.
Introduction
3
1. Motivation
This research was developed in an indigenous/Quilombola community in North-Eastern Brazil, during the period of one year. This community presents a very specific problem which is the fight for the right to their land, and is actively seeking to obtain it, through several strategies and lines of action. This research was initiated in the attempt to develop a website and an educational activity to address the community’s will to express its needs and fights through digital media as a possibility to obtain visibility and credibility.
2. Project
The scope of this dissertation is the process of developing a website for (and with) the community of Conceição das Crioulas. During one year this was the focus that led the research regarding teaching methods of HTML, the understanding of limitations to overcome in the use of digital technologies, and the relationships that are established with and through them.
This project is the result of several actions, from the participation in weekly discussions about political matters regarding education in this and our own community, field visits, interviews, and educational actions.
The project is organized in three research cycles in which the previous leads to further questions in the subsequent cycle, permitting that the hypotheses being considered are adjusted and the contours of the problem become more and more defined.
3. Problem(s), Questions and Objectives of the Research
Considering how ICTs are currently available inside the community of Conceição das Crioulas, understanding how they are being used and perceived, as well as what are the use gaps and limitations, is mandatory in the attempt to understand how a user evolves from a basic to a more fluent navigation on internet. Internet use is not the goal, since most of the community’s members already obtained the means to achieve it. The goal is, as in Livingtsone’s research (2007, p. 692, 2), understanding what benefits use might bring, examining how more or less experienced users take upon online opportunities and how the broad engagement in entertaining activities can or cannot facilitate the emancipated use of the internet in order to serve personal and communitarian needs that the users might have.
The problem can be formulated as the ability to obtain an emancipated use of the website designed with and for the community during this research.
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Questions of research can be formulated as the following:
What processes of (self)representation are being developed alongside the creation of digital identities through the integration of ICTs in the education of this and other communities?
What are the affordances of the teaching paradigm and integration of ICT’s that allow the community to use technology as a resource for political and social emancipation?
How can we reflect about the way the Western educational curriculum relates to ICT, through its encounter with a social reality that raises questions about the meaning of digital literacy?
How are technologies determined by society’s structure and how can we discuss technological devices and their conditioning relative to the context where they are being used? How do they condition their users, when we consider the relation between the attributes of the device and the literacy skills of the subject using them?
The objective of this research is to reflect and question assumptions regarding the use of technologies and the belief in the ability ICTs have for development and improvement. By questioning and confronting these assumptions with a field study case, it is possible to identify several limitations contained in our approach to technology, and challenge it with a change in the context.
4. Research Methodology
Through active participation, semi-structured interviews and ethnography, that evolved around the topic of building and sustaining the autonomy of a website that would allow the community to present and define itself digitally, as well as its struggles, interests, news, achievements and other contents, we had the chance to participate in two field visits to the Community held by the research group “Identidades”, which took place in two different contexts. The initial field visit was purely formal and structured, part of a teaching and research meeting with several other formal education institutions that were developing formative activities inside the community. The second one had a more flexible and informal character, and it provided opportunities for closer contact with the daily-routine of the community.
Introduction
5
5. Dissertation Structure
This dissertation is organized into 8 sections. The first section presents an overview of the project by contextualizing its introduction, motivation, hypotheses and objectives, and defining the structure of the remaining sections.
The second section presents the literature review by defining the context in which the research is being carried out, the multimedia education and participatory culture paradigm, evolving to the problem of the dissertation, i.e., approaching ICTs for development. This evolves to the next sub-section of the literature review, as the theoretical framework that reads the data inscribed in the first two sections, multimedia education and participatory culture and ICTs for development, confronting them with the social representations theory (SRT). Further we explore some of the community’s characteristics, and the action-research group that maintains a connection with it.
The third section defines the action-research methods, which are organized in three cycles, gives information about the participants, and defines how the data was collected and analysed.
The next section refers to the first cycle of research, which comprised one field visit, a workshop that resulted in the creation of a website for the community and testimonials about that experience.
The fifth section refers to the website concluded during the prior cycle, and the difficulties in the maintenance of this website that emerged after its creation. It also comprises a second field visit and new exercises developed with the students.
The sixth section discusses ways of overcoming those limitations and addressing problems related to the website maintenance. It also discusses the future work to be developed as a way to keep improving.
The next section presents a discussion that relates the three theoretical paradigms of the work, assessing them against the findings of each cycle, as well as the consideration of hypotheses that try to respond to the possible reasons for failures and improvements to achieve.
The last section attempts to conclude the reflection relative to this research and the findings during the process, and possible next steps for future research.
1. Literature Review
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1. Literature Review
This chapter will outline the scope of research relevant for this investigation, in particular the field of multimedia education in the context of twenty-first century participatory culture. It will extend from the analysis of contemporary authors as Henry Jenkins (2009), who describes participatory culture as the breakdown of barriers between consumers and producers of content, to the reflection about projects that promote the integration of ICT’s and which were implemented in developing communities (ICT4D).
To make sense of the relationships that are being established with and through these technologies, we chose to use the social representations (SR) perspective. The research questions arise from the field of SR, leading the development of this research to be conducted as an intertwine between the theoretical frameworks of multimedia education and ICTs for development, and the findings that emerge from each of them. In this way, we are able to address the same questions from different perspectives, revealing what is common or distinct according to each of them. This chapter is divided into five sub-sections that intend to contextualize the scope of this research from the broadest context where it arises, multimedia education and the participatory culture paradigm, to the specificity of the problem of the community of Conceição das Crioulas. To do so, we will review authors and projects that focus on ICT4D, review the SRT foundations, and describe features of the community of Conceição das Crioulas and of the action-research group that allowed us to have contact with the community.
1.1 Multimedia Education and Participatory Culture
Participatory culture is described as enabling the public (consumers) to contribute and evolve to a producer status, acquiring a central role in the political and civic engagement as a member of the global village, in the production and sharing of content and meaning (Jenkins, 2005). It is supposed that through this involvement, affinity spaces arise. In such spaces, individuals influence each other in a reciprocal relationship of informal mentorship, alternating between roles of actor/spectator, professor/student and producer/consumer. This can happen in multiple ways, in forums, blogs, online fan fiction websites, or e-learning projects in which the members
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participating in that virtual space, are focused in giving and receiving feedback about a common passion or interest (Gee, 2007). This represents a challenge for teachers, parents and learners, all of whom have the chance to participate in a new form of affinity space, which no longer needs to be of physical characteristics, such as a classroom or library (Gee 2005; Ito et al., 2008, p. 3; Jenkins, 2006, 2010, 2013), and which places digital tools as technologies to attribute and interpret meanings (Gee, 2009, p. 19, pp. 1) fundamentally in the same way that language itself works. Thinking about ICT is thinking about media to create and distribute culture (Jenkins, et al., 2005). The devices become artefacts of cultural production, whose semiotics relates to the context where they are being used (Stern, 2008; Goggin, 2009).
Gee (2010) highlights that the importance is no longer focused on how people respond to what is being distributed across media, but how they themselves distribute and participate in the creation of information to be consumed, and how these dynamics affect the established relationships and status in society. These blend between a priori roles that the individuals used to occupy is strongly related to the idea that a generation with different demands was born into the digital networked era. The belief in a change in the intellectual capacities and demands of a “net generation”, “millennials” or “digital natives” (Tapscott, 1997; Howe and Strauss, 2000; Prenksy, 2001) presupposes a need to alter traditional teaching methods and approaches to school. It is considered that the new media of human communication are enabling communities to self-organize and that the new generations of children are all born into this new society paradigm.
These terms that intend to establish differences between generations and alterations in the predisposal and ability to learn (Prensky, 2005; Tapscott, 1997) tend to have their focus on the capacity this new generation possesses to make use of digital devices, and leave aside the necessary capacity to manage the relationships with these tools: critical thinking and perspective (Buckingham, 2008). As Buckingham (2008) states, digital literacy concerns need to evolve from a fairly functional approach, to a broader scenario, in which the subject would be able to evaluate information and its possible transformation into meaningful knowledge. “Critical literacy is not just about making distinctions between “reliable” and “unreliable” sources: it is also about understanding who produces media, and how and why they do so, how these media represent the world, and how they create meanings and pleasures.” (Buckingham, 2008, p. 17).
There is a constant speculation about the necessity to reform education (Greenhow et al., 2009; Ito et al. 2008), and this may fall into a utopian and unwise discourse, since it normally does not even contemplate the functionalities of the apparatuses themselves and how they are integrated, disseminated, and sometimes even forced into the classroom (Selwyn, 2006). Nevertheless, as Livingstone (2012) states, even if ICT is only used inside the classroom to further traditional outcomes, it will still have valuable improvements in students’ motivation. To think about the use of the term we chose to refer to these tools/technologies – apparatus – we will visit the statement by Agamben (2007).
According to Agamben (2007), an apparatus is “a thoroughly heterogeneous set consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative
1. Literature Review
9 measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions, etc. The apparatus itself is the network that can be established between these elements” (p. 2)
It is our intention to think of the object as the power relationship that is established through it between individuals. Agamben (2007) proposes the use of the term apparatus to describe anything that has the ability to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control or secure gestures, behaviours, opinions, or discourses of living beings.
By visiting this author we are able to consider the apparatuses as that through which the individuals are “captured”, and the relationship that is established between them resulting in a new subject. If we consider this process as one in which the subject gets desubjectified, we can understand the pertinence of visiting this definition, by relating it to the way digital devices are integrated in our society. Many times regulated by governments and institutions, limited or prioritized, the internet and the digital fall too often in discriminatory acts that limit information access and literacy as an equal right (Naga & Uzuegbu, 2016).
Thus, we consider relevant to reflect about possible influences that each of the involved parts the relationships established with technology may hold. The frequent discrimination associated with information blockage or misinformation, can, in our opinion, be observed through this perspective. This allows to concretely define what emerges from the relationship established with apparatuses. We cannot think concepts that involve freedom of expression and the promotion of a mass media culture without questioning what forces measure and regulate it.
1.1.1 Digital Divide
Michael Gurstein (2000) led research about the social appropriation of ICT and community informatics, questioning the link between technology use and access. Sonia Livingstone et al. (2018, p. 6) led research that found evidence that internet use depends on a series of challenges associated with electricity, connectivity, cost, digital skills, social acceptability, spatial privacy, etc., supporting the idea that far too often ICTs, which are often perceived as facilitator’s of equity and participation, are unable to fulfil this premise, and instead deepen the social inequalities. Gurstein (2003) presented the term effective use as an alternative to the digital divide. He defines “effective use” as the capacity to successfully integrate ICT’s into the accomplishment of self or collaboratively identified goals. Gurstein’s work drives the questioning related with use and access to technology, and the definition of the relationship between consumer and producer in the paradigm of a participatory culture. Gurstein (2007) questions the need for access that dismisses the need for training, leading us to understand how the divide is not as much about access and demographics, as it is about literacy and the ability to integrate these technologies with a critical approach that refers to mastery of skills needed to use the internet. To consider these matters related to access we must raise several other questions as the ones mentioned by Clement and
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Shade (2000): “access for what”, “access for what purposes”, “access for whom” and “access to what”.
A changing identity that is part of the social process established between individuals and society, admits the influence of political power in the shaping of that identity. Buckingham (2008) highlights several important concepts about personal identity, social identity and group identity, and how identity processes operate both at social and individual levels, since the claims individuals make about themselves will have to be recognized by others, and both be involved in a process of stereotyping or simplification, allowing the subject to separate himself/herself from others. Jenkins (1996) referred to identity as a process, instead of an acquisition. Something that is accomplished through daily interactions and negotiations with others, making it a fluid contingent matter.
Social status appears linked to the term “identity politics”, which refers to the way a specific group is forced to resist to an oppressing account of their identities, constructed by others who hold power over them, and to the way the first group resists that oppression and power shapes its own identity. Thus, it holds not only a sense of identity beyond the difference that exists between “us and them”, but one that exists because of that difference, which implies that the group is transformed collectively rather than individually. These processes of transformation will occur in a more or less democratic way, according to the groups’ internal organization, and will result in a distribution of roles to each member of the group. This is the process by which a specific social identity is constructed, and it may, on one hand, result in a proclamation for a separation of the group from the rest of the society, which may lead to marginalization proclaiming a sense of separatism. On the other hand, it can result in the opposite, an attempt to merge with the rest of society, and a neglect of historical origins which will lead to a dissolution and loss of their distinctive features.
1.1.2 Digital Technologies and Education
It is clear how relationships established across society are impacted by technological development. The teacher’s and school’s role are filled with new expectations evolving from a majoritarian perspective of the teacher as the central figure to retrieve and validate knowledge, to a dynamic where his/her role relies more in exploring the necessary criticism to learn how to acquire valid and sustained information (Buckingham, 2008). Technology may liberate both parts of the learning experience from the hierarchies that characterize them (Livingstone, 2012). So the teacher is seen more as mediator/facilitator between student and knowledge than as its container (Szucs, 2009; Todorescu et al., 2015, Wakefield, 2015; Prensky, 2008, 2011).
Integrating ICT in education means teachers to be innovative in enhancing and engaging the students in active learning processes (Essays, UK. 2013). Learning by doing rather than following direct instructions makes education a matter of collaboration and a social activity (Buckingham,
1. Literature Review
11 2008). Teachers acknowledge the advantages of an education that makes use of ICT, improving both theirs and the students’ experience. These advantages can be the sharing of resources – between teachers and students, teachers and teachers, students and students – as well as better and more effective ways of organizing their time (Donelly, et al., 2011). Resources are available inside and outside the classroom, which allows the teacher to deliver notes to the student more effectively, while students consider education with and for ICT to be more relevant and modern (Donelly, et al., 2011).
Nonetheless, studies also identify several hurdles and constraints (Hew & Brush, 2007) that can function as a barrier to integrate technology in the curriculum. These constraints can vary from institutional barriers, such as leadership, planning, school time-tabling, etc., that can limit teachers’ ability to integrate technology. Wang, Haertel & Walberg (1993) identified classroom management as the most important factor influencing student learning, and integrating technology means to adapt the rules and procedures of managing the classroom to include digital devices, thus requiring knowledge of these devices. The success or failure of ICT’s integration in the classroom might demonstrate is far more related to the obstacles found in teacher training, classroom management, and curriculum design than in the ICT’s potential to serve both teachers and learners in an effective way (Livingstone, 2012).
Thus, we shall not fall into a deterministic perspective, where we rely on technology per se to achieve these advancements and improvements in education. We not only have to focus on the training of teachers and their own ability to relate with ICT, but on proper ways to attempt to overcome the generalized mundane use of these technologies, which proves that young generations are in fact empowered consumers, but not necessarily producers of these globalized world (Buckingham, 2008; Burke and Hammett, 2009; Hagood, 2011; Livingstone, 2012; Greenhow et al. 2009).
The school’s role in this phenomenon should rely on the acknowledgment that critical literacy is more than understanding if sources are reliable or unreliable (Buckingham, 2008), and more about how and who produces content and its meaning. Buckingham (2008) argues that digital literacy should be seen as part of a broader field of media literacy, and that educators and schools should take this into consideration more than the provision of technology, focusing on the new possibilities and challenges of these new forms of literacy originating new forms of social interaction.
Buckingham (2008) calls us to reflect upon the media theory developed by McLuhan (1964) which ascribes a semiotic dimension to each medium and its affordances, which in turn produce specific forms of social consciousness and organization. In the same way that the multimodal communication theories assume differences in the communication spectrum, for example, from a textual tendency to a more visual one, this also interferes in the fabric of social relationships. Both these perspectives are commonly used to support a technological positivism of emancipatory dimension that is based on digital apparatuses, but it tends to neglect the way these media are often subverted and used in a much more complex way than its original intended purpose.
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These positivist perspectives also tend to ignore evidence of a digital divide that may occur between classes, in terms of levels of access to technology and digital literacy itself. The digital divide refers to the inequalities that define social classes and social groups: individuals, institutions, governments, etc., the characteristics of their attributes: income, education, age, motives to use or not these apparatuses, etc., their level of digital literacy, and the type of connection (Watkins, 2012; Livingstone, 2012; Buckingham, 2008). This is described by Hilbert (2011) as who, with which characteristics, connects how, to what. This technological gap should not be seen as a matter of access, but of a combination of multiple factors that act upon the information that may or may not be accessed through these media. The “digestion” of this information, and to start with a simple criterion, is the primary factor affecting the receptiveness and effectiveness of its use.
The utopian discourse promotes the idea of an equity of access that might never be accomplished (Weber, Mitchell, 2008) and rejects the evidence of a constant manipulation of the complex relationships that these media and the dynamics to access them may imply. These dynamics are what might excel at making specific media proliferate among students and communities, and what can make it fail.
The work presented here is part of the process of a learning experience about ICT integration in a developing community in Brazil, Conceição das Crioulas, in which the proliferation of these technologies is currently very high. The community establishes in its own political agenda to make use of ICT to fight and achieve social rights and better life conditions, and seeks to successfully use these technologies to foster its struggles. This research starts from the observation and participation in that desire, and the attempt to understand how can we as researchers, students and educators, improve our practices and question our beliefs to think about ICTs from a social and economic developing perspective. We do not aim to sustain the belief that ICTs are able to provide development and that the ICT4D paradigm is by itself working for any type of improvement, we wish to question how ICTs can develop from understanding the obstacles contained in developing, and using technology to serve the purposes found in that path. Thus, we propose ICTFromD.
1.2 From ICT4D to ICTFromD
ICT4D refers to projects that aim to promote any kind of social development through technology. These projects’ framework have several disciplines with the common ground of a political foundation that seeks justice and equality of opportunities (Heeks, 2009, 2016).
Projects ICT4D intent to bridge the digital divide, a term that refers to the social inequalities that limit the access to technology. There are several factors to be considered to fully understand the gap created by technology access. The main characteristic used to refer to
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13 technology is its possibility to break down barriers of demographics, economics, gender and many other sources of division that exist in the formation of our societies (Gallagher, 2013). Nevertheless, this reveals to be a superficial judgement about ICTs. The divide is not about access and demographics, it is about literacy and the ability to integrate these technologies inside communities, institutions and individuals as something that they themselves appropriate to use as means to express their own needs (Buckingham, 2008; Clemment & Shade, 2000; Ivanović, 2014). It will never be about access and the utopian sudden discovery of necessity that was not there. They key element is necessity and the way that necessity communicates to and through ICT.
Several ICT4D projects have failed in a series of questions that we understand to be essential in the attempt to integrate technology in the educational context of any kind of economical reality. The first of these questions is training the teachers. The work that needs to be done must start by the education of educators and the construction of their own digital literacy.
We intend to explore the integration of ICTs in the educational context through a reflection about the spectator paradox, presented by Rancière (2010), in order to reflect about the participatory culture paradigm.
Rancière (1987) challenges us to question the hierarchical relationships that are established between master and student, in his book The Ignorant School Master: Five Lessons in Intellectual
Emancipation. We are faced with with the fabric that models this relationship and through that
confrontation we are able to challenge the characteristics of the teaching act and the meaning of emancipation.
We consider Rancière (1987, 1991, 2010) and Freire (1968, 2010) mandatory authors to think about critical pedagogy and reflect about conditioning and restriction forces that might be held in the educator’s role. We intend to diverge from a technological determinism discourse and follow Freire (1968) and Rancière (1991) in the belief on the subject’s intellectual ability. Emancipation according to Rancière (1991, p. 35) “is each man becoming conscious of his nature as an intellectual subject”, and this demands questioning the prevalence of theories that project autonomous forces in the media regardless of the subjects who use them.
Positivists points of view are usually used to support a technological euphoria of a emancipatory affordances contained in apparatuses, but tend to neglect the way these means of communication are usually subverted and used in a much more complex way than its original purpose. It also tends to neglect the evidence on a digital divide that is bigger than access rates, and promote an utopian belief in an equality of use.
In order to reflect about the dynamics that subjects establish with these technologies, we must think about how they interpret them, and what does that relationship imply. How is meaning being ascribed and mediated with and through these objects and relationships and how it emerges from it.
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1.3 Social Representations Theory
We consider it necessary to think about the subjectivation processes that occur through apparatuses and the way we produce and share content at a personal and institutional level. The relationships that emerge in-between subjects and apparatuses modify the identity processes that characterizes them because they redefine established paradigms of social relationships and interaction.
To think about the relationship that the individual establishes with society, and consequently, with the educational context, we will analyse the social representations theory of Moscovici (1961).
Through this theoretical lenses we intend to think the social organization and the representation processes that occur in the community of Conceição das Crioulas, and explore the role of ICTs. To do so, we intend to question our own discourse and the relationship we have established with these technologies.
To reflect about the use of ICTs inside the community of Conceição das Crioulas we consider it important to reflect about the semiotic background that envelopes them. Moscovici (1961) postulates the theoretical scope of the social representation theory as the approach to study the social symbolism and the relationships that occur between behaviour, knowledge, meaning and how they are intertwined. In 1984, Moscovici makes a reference to Bower’s statement, that proposes that in modern society the perception of real objects is as important as the perception of their representation, which he explains by making a reference to Magritte’s painting “Ceci n’est
pas un pipe” (1928), known for the meta message about representation.
Figure 1: “The Treachery of Images, This is Not a Pipe”, by René Magritte, 1929, Painting, Oil on canvas. On the right, a meme inspired on Magritte’s painting, “This is Not a Gif”.
This metaphor expresses the way we are persuaded to read an object that we do not know as something that we do know, ascribing it an immediate meaning, and transporting it from an abstract to a concrete dimension. Objectifying and anchoring are the processes that allow us to be in touch with our surroundings, and to interpret and ascribe meaning to what we see and feel.
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15 Through them, we interpret phenomena, objects, experiences, etc., turning the unfamiliar into the familiar. Anchoring can be described as a cognitive bias that, has the etymology of the word indicates, anchors to a specific event, object, etc. – which cannot be immediately interpreted – a suitable similar phenomenon. It can also be seen as the categorization or the naming of something (Moscovici, 2009). Objectification is the process of turning the abstract into concrete. Through objectification, a representation is turned into a reality, and acquires a readable meaning to the individual.
This is the process that allows us to be in touch with our surroundings, and to interpret and ascribe meaning to what we see and feel. Polanyi’s (1966) expresses that knowledge consists in tangible knowledge as processes (know-hows), and in tacit/intangible knowledge (skills), and in the idea that knowledge is the result of an interaction between the biases of an individual and data itself. What we are interested in studying here is the way in which all these exterior forces are acting on this process and how they start acquiring their own semiotic dimension that outstrips the initial subject and object.
Figure 2: “Relativity”, 1953, M.C. Escher.
Figure 3: “Hand With Reflecting Sphere”, 1935, M. C. Escher.
Nobody’s mind is free from the effects of the prior conditioning which is imposed by the subject’s representations, language and culture. We think by means of a language; we organize our thoughts, in accordance with a system which is conditioned, both by our representations and by our culture. We see only that which underlying conventions allow us to see, and we remain unaware of these conventions (Mocovici, 1988, p. 23).
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According to Moscovici, SRT relies on the evidence that in order to study phenomena and its meaning, we have to understand the social and ideological context where the subject is inscribed. He also highlighted the importance of participant observation through which the process of integrating new phenomenon in daily practices could be analysed. Moscovici (1984, p. 40) states that “when studying a representation, we should always try to discover the unfamiliar feature which motivated it and which it has absorbed”. Considering this to be the main characteristic of qualitative research, we underline the necessity to adapt the implementation of these methods during our research in Conceição das Crioulas.
Rega, Vanini et al. (2013) reflected about the representative character that multimedia centres have to the different social groups in ten Mozambican provinces. The authors of this research propose SRT as a valuable framework, able to provide an integrated view of ICT4D projects, capable of simultaneously taking into consideration both the locals perspective and of the entity proposing it. Community multimedia centres intend to provide public access to ICTs, and its goal is to generate equitable access to information and meet the local needs.
Their research explored the way social actors co-construct and negotiate social and cultural phenomena. Through two main processes, anchoring and objectification (Moscovici, 1961), representations are generated, and shaped through social interaction, along a process of familiarization with new elements. By approaching the subject, object and activities through the linking of SR, the authors are able to address the reality-gap, referred in Brunello’s (2010) work.
In order to attempt to better understand the representations being attributed to the community’s multimedia centres, Rega et al. (2013) conducted and analysed semi-structured interviews of six clusters identified as relevant. The authors further compared the results of the interviews by gender and concluded that females had fewer opportunities to access the internet.
With this study, the authors were able to conclude that, in order for the locals to take ownership of the CMCs, a re-invention process needs to take place. That process must be acknowledged by the entities that initiated the process, and those who received it, so that both parties can adjust their expectations. The study supports the ability SRT has to provide a valuable construct for both participating parties in ICT4D interventions.
Vaast (2007) conducted research on the assumption that end-users of information systems (IS), could obtain the same level of awareness about IS as an IS professional, if they were sufficiently informed. To verify this assumption, Vaast introduces SRT to investigate how members of different occupational communities approached IS security.
According to the SRT approach, it is considered that members of the communities know different things about IS security. The relevance of using this approach is to demonstrate the relevance of social representations in the understanding and management of IS security. By exploring the similarities and differences found in seven occupational communities working in
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17 the same healthcare organization, it intends to draw strategic implications for the theory and practice of IS security. By investigating and contrasting how different communities represent the same object, it is possible to explore the specific representations of each community and their relationships. Another key characteristic highlighted by Vaast regarding social representations, is how they influence and are influenced by practices. Other relevant characteristic of this approach, is understanding ideas and concepts from the point of view of the persons involved, which would mean being part of an active participation with the object being observed, in order to attempt to better understand it.
One of the relevant findings of this study, was the anchoring processes taking place in the formation of SR of IS security. Healthcare professionals were (Vaast, 2007)associating the topical issue of IS security with another issue that they were more familiar with: the diffusion of patients’ information from any medium. Thus, they were anchoring representations of their own practices to their representation of IS security.
By analysing the empirical investigation of this research, Vaast (2007) was able to better understand different perceptions of threats to IS security, and the different ways communities react to these threats.
Conducting our own research with an SRT perspective allows us not only to think about how a different culture relates to digital devices – such as mobile phones, computers and the internet itself –, but also to identify the differences/similarities of difficulties that may occur simultaneously in our apparently distinct scenarios. This permits addressing the question of how are we, in the Western educational model, perceiving technology. This action research study was conducted with the aim of proposing a formative exploration of ICTs and web design in the community of Conceição das Crioulas. This objective was prior to the questioning of the current integration of ICT in Western educational system. In fact, only after facing the reality of Conceição das Crioulas, we felt compelled to challenge our own views on Western educational models.
By confronting the problem as the initial step to its resolution, the problem itself became the origin of the theoretical reasoning, allowing us to, through a deeper relationship with the community, perceive the problem from an insider’s perspective as far as we could. This resulted that in each research cycle, different theoretical lenses helped us to think about the problem.
1.4 Conceição das Crioulas
The community of Conceição das Crioulas is located in the town of Salgueiro, state of Pernambuco, Brazil, home to around 3800 inhabitants (Paiva, 2009). Conceição das Crioulas is a quilombola community, a Brazilian word to name a settlement founded by Afro-Brazilian people who escaped slavery and succeed in having land rights. The story states that in the
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nineteenth century six young creoles arrived at Salgueiro, and Francisco José de Sá, a rebel slave, took them to the place we know today as Conceição das Crioulas (Souza, 2005; Zaccara, 2016). At that time, an indigenous group called Atikum, inhabited there with the creoles (Souza, 2005) .The name of Conceição happened because of an image of Nossa Senhora da Conceição, a saint, that was placed in a chapel because of the work in the cotton fields (Paiva, 2009).
This community is recognized by its political stand in the fight for its rights, having participated in several movements and being part of the union of the rural workers of Salgueiro. In 2000 the community founded the Quilombola Association of Conceição das Crioulas (AQCC), to promote, strengthen and fight for the community’s political organization, ethnic and cultural identity (Faria, 2016; Paiva, 2009; Souza, 2005; Leite, 2010; Silva, 2012). Besides the political recognition of the community, Conceição das Crioulas is recognized for its remarkable work in consolidating in the quilombos an education that is aligned with the community’s values and history, and for its work in craftsmanship, based in raw materials extracted from the region ecosystem, such as, clay, caroá, palha de catolé, among others (Leite, 2010; Paiva, 2009).
To think about education is, for us, to think according to Freire’s (1970) pedagogy, which establishes education as a political act of freedom and emancipation (1973, 1976, 1985).
Freire (1968) challenges the relevance of questioning theoretical paradigms and ideologies contained in the act of teaching, proposing a critical introspection of the ethical conscience of a subject that declares the ability to teach. Freire (1973) places education as the practice of freedom, which must detach itself from agendas and practice its own methods, challenging itself and others to question the conventions and regulations.
The community of Conceição das Crioulas defines itself as protagonist, creator of its own reality and learning paradigm. Through the establishment of their own local association, “Associação Quilombola de Conceição das Crioulas”, the community states its mission as promoting its own development by enhancing the political organization, the cultural and ethnic identity, and the fight for quilombola’s rights. The educational committee of this organization is devoted to promote proposals to achieve a curriculum that responds to the community’s system of values and historical heritage. They intend to use education to maintain their identity, achieve better conditions of living and social development, and share their history through their own means of expression.
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Figure 4: Conceição das Crioulas image from Google Earth.
The community of Conceição das Crioulas is known for its active role in building its own discourse, as part of the consolidation and consummation of its rights and its own pedagogy and value systems.
A team of editors and authors of documentary narratives was born in 2005, after a meeting involving Portuguese and Brazilians, in which a workshop of video was started (Assis, 2012). This meeting consisted of several workshops about a different areas, during nine days. This program, called “Identities”, proposed that the participants should dislocate from their geographical and social contexts, in that way dislocating from themselves, in order to question a
priori conceptions and stimulate critical thinking, by getting in touch with the community’s
reality.
The areas of intervention were the following: video, ceramics, visual education, plastic expression, cultural animation, art in the territory. In 2006 the subject of web design was introduced, making these the same areas of intervention today. At the same time, several other points of action with the teachers of the community are proposed, such as a textual modality of journalism and content writing.
This action took place in 2005, and its unfolding and development are described in the text written by the coordinator of the project and professor, José Paiva. One year after that initial contact with video technology, there was already inside the community an institutionalized and autonomous group producing a series of documentaries to support the community’s struggles and
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share of the characteristics of its reality. In an attempt to find and share its own discourse, the group defined itself “Crioulas Vídeo”.
Between 2005 and 2018, this group produced a series of documentaries with narratives they created either to express legends of their ancestor, or to speak and reflect about issues they considered important to reflect from the daily life inside the community.
The short movie “Blackout” was published in 2016 as a co-production between the researcher Felipe Peres Calheiros and Crioulas Vídeo, “Quilombo of Conceição das Crioulas, Salgueiro, North-Eastern Brazil, a movie about the invisible.
The movie starts with the image of a group of people playing cards in the dark, “the candle is going to end and we haven’t finished this game”. The members of the community are assembled observing their own images (shot for the movie) being projected. There is a meta-reflection about identity divided in different screens. The viewer is challenged to ask himself/herself what is the real image, and is led to question the concept of real image and what makes it more or less real than. The discussion that is progressively presented in the video talks about the concept of
blackout, since this is a familiar experience to the community due to the lack of proper electric infrastructures. When the electricity fails, people gather in the street telling stories or playing games rather than being at their homes watching television.
Figure 5: Blackout (2016) – Felipe Peres Calheiros, at https://vimeo.com/166134478 Several images of a discussion involving the community’s members about invisibility, the matter of the dark, black skin and lack of electricity appear intertwined. “We were able to see a
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life in the dark.” There is also a discussion about matters of self-identification as African and quilombola, and as members of society. All of these reflections are combined with a discussion about the construction of the movie itself, proposing a meta-reflection and overlap of discursive layers that helps us to understand the complexities in the relationships that are established from the inside to the outside of the community.
Figure 6: Blackout (2016) – Felipe Peres Calheiros, at https://vimeo.com/166134478 Ideas of invisibility and the need for political reforms are juxtaposed while reflecting on a sentiment of persistent fight for a future of belonging: “I feel privileged and protagonist of my own story.”
This political stand and the claim for an education that is adjusted to the community’s system of values will be addressed through the perspective of the critical pedagogy presented by Freire (1968). This author, teacher and philosopher, was one of the most important contributors to the history of pedagogy and critical pedagogy in Brazil and in the rest of the world. He defines education as a political act of emancipation that takes place in a recursive movement between teaching and learning: “Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.” (1998, p. 31)
The attempt to integrate new methods in the teaching practices that stand for paradigms of social justice, and do not despise the learners’ prior experience and knowledge, are some of the important features that Freire highlights (Freire, 1992, 2007). We cannot think about the education in Freire without an ethical consciousness of positioning of the subject as an educator able to learn. It is necessary that there is a self-evaluation with a critical perspective that takes place prior and during the teaching act.
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Freire (1985, 1993) argues for the political nature of education and the importance of questioning theoretical paradigms and ideologies which are frequently crystalized in the academic context. He proposes education as the practice of freedom (1967) that should distance from social determinisms, and execute its own interventions, challenging itself and others to question the conventions.
It is about one understanding himself/herself as a conditioned being, integrating part of a specific context that is by itself limited. It is about doing this with values that have their grounds in humbleness and harmony, and that seek emancipation and critical consciousness. Thus, we will address the necessity of the emancipatory act as mandatory in the relationship with the other, key to the definition of a life in society.
1.5 Identities, Artistic Movement, and Research Group
The intercultural activities focused on several disciplines, such as theatre, plastic arts, archaeology, art history, music, literature and anthropology, counted with the participation of Paiva between 1993 and 1996, under a movement designated “CumpliCIDADES” (Paiva, 2009).
“Identidades” is a movement composed of artists, students and teachers who, for more than 15 years, have been visiting several communities to develop their research (Paiva, 2009).
The goal of this movement is not its effectiveness in the teaching paradigm, but in the establishment of intercultural space that questions the way art communicates, and the difficulties it has to do so outside its own context (Paiva, 2009).
This is an artistic movement that participates in the conflicts of the post-colonial era, highlighting the value of the cultural relationships. It believes in an art that could move in a contemporary narrative that would diverge from discriminatory concepts, revealing the value in the diversity of cultural speeches that define our times (Paiva, 2009).
In 2003, a relationship between “Identidades” and the Community of Conceição das Crioulas was established with the aim of working collaboratively to strengthen an intercultural experience (Paiva, 2009). The first visual arts workshop was created and from it emerged an interest in formalizing a long-lasting project that would have its groundings in the complicity of producing an artistic intervention in the community’s land that would be connected with the struggles of the community. In 2005, a program designated as “Deslocações” [Dislocations], established an annual presence focused on the following practices: video, web design, ceramics, visual education and artistic expression, cultural animation and land art (Paiva, 2009). The video workshop was attended by six young people chosen by the community. This allowed the creation of the group referred to in the previous section, “Crioulas Vídeo”. This group was institutionalized and developed, in a complete technical and narrative autonomy, several documentaries that supported the community’s fight (Paiva, 2009; Assis, 2012).
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23 The community had at that time one extra tool to express their fight and identity narratives, which led to the interest in creating a website that would gather the work they were developing (Paiva, 2009).
Throughout the years, “Identidades” has been actively giving a continuity to the actions developed in its three main field interventions: Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Brazil. This investigation is inscribed in the participation in one meeting that took place in July of 2017, under the name “Encontro com as Artes, Lutas, Sabores e Saberes da Comunidade de Conceição das Crioulas” [Meeting with the Arts, Struggles, Knowledges and Tastes of the Community of Conceição das Crioulas]. A collaborative book was published in the same year with reflections of the participants. This meeting had the participation of 10 higher education institutions from several states of Brazil, Portugal and Cape Verde, and emerged as the first of a series of meetings to be held under the same characteristics every two years (Paiva, 2017).
It is in this intercultural context that “Identidades” seeks to approach historical identity as a particular position in relation to the contemporary (Paiva, 2009). In this way, the members of this group place themselves as artists and citizens, focused in establishing action models that seek to evolve and differentiate (Zaccara, 2016).
Currently, Identidades is focused in developing work that supports the community’s teachers to acquire the necessary competences to teach art to their students. It is also currently being discussed to further continue to the possible integration of a digital literacy action among the community’s teachers, which would rely on finding ways of relieving the workload they have to do for classes, and facilitate new forms of interacting with the students.
This subject was the main reason for the second field visit during the course of this research (in March 2018), and established the grounds for further development in the work related to ICT and web design.
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2. Methods
This research was developed over the course of one year in a Brazilian Quilombola community. Through active participation, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observation around the topic of building and sustaining the autonomy of a website as a tool for the expression and emancipation of the community.
2.1. Action-Research
This research involved three completed research cycles, each with the length of 4 months, with two field visits to the community, one formal educational activity, and an informal relationship maintained for one year. The study was based on an action-research model.
The first field visit took place at the end of the first cycle, and addressed the issue of supporting the development of a website for the community by engaging in a formal educational activity with 5 students who would be held responsible for its maintenance and update.
The second field visit closed the second research cycle and developed in a more neutral environment, being paced by the usual day to day routine of the community.
The third research cycle consists in the reading of all the data generated across this period through three theoretical lenses: participatory culture and new media, as the digital context that involves us; ICT education and integration or ICT4D, as an answer to the specific problem of the development and maintenance of the community’s website (explored through educational activities); and social representations theory as the lenses for enabling a critical the reading of data, phenomena, and limitations/problems that emerge from this dynamics.
