Developing a design culture in a computer clubhouse: the role of local practices and mediators

This paper focuses on the development of a design culture in a Computer Clubhouse, a type of community technology center known for its emphasis on design and creative production. Drawing from theories of situated learning and cultural historical activity, we used a mixed methods approach to document, describe, and analyze local portfoliobuilding practices and the role of mediation that best supports more complex types of designbased technological fluencies. The study also explores aspects of the Clubhouse setting that mediated community members’ participation in design activities and then discusses how these findings can be used in other after-school settings interested in implementing design cultures with racially and ethnically marginalized youth. While schools have always been seen as a primary site for learning, after-school settings are gaining recognition for their contributions to the development of student identity formation (Gee, 1996), technology fluencies (Schon, Sanyal, & Mitchell, 1998), and traditional forms of literacy development (Hull & Schultz, 2001). More than 2,000 after-school programs and community technology centers (CTCs) have opened in the last decade, most of which have been created with the goal of providing access to safe and engaging after-school spaces along with educational games and introductory computer activities, including email communication, web surfing, and word processing (Vasquez & Duran, 2000; Zhao, Mishra, & Girod, 2000). Most well known of these after-school initiatives is the Fifth Dimension program, which was established in the 1980s as a partnership between community centers and local universities (Cole, 1998). At these sites, college students and youth play games, work on homework, and write to whimsical characters via email. Results of an extensive evaluation demonstrated that across the Fifth Dimension program contributed to gains in computer literacy, mathematical understanding and problem-solving, as well as reading, writing, and grammatical skills (Cole, 2007). A set of common local practices and mediating means for organizing activities (Kozulin, 1998; Wertsch, 1997) have been documented that support the maximization of learning and development at these after-school programs, including the use of computers, task cards, the meta-organizational maze, and a mythical figurehead known sometimes as “El Maga” (Cole, 2007). All of these deliberately constructed mediational means (i.e., the tools and artifacts) serve to regulate youths’ interactions as they pursue their personal goals at the after-school programs. Like the Fifth Dimension, many after-school programs have focused on the development of traditional literacies and technology skills (i.e., word processing and typing), although there has been an increasing need to involve youth in creative production and a fuller range of technology fluency building activities in order move youth from consumers to creators of technologies (Peppler & Kafai, 2007). A small subset of after-school programs, most notably including those in the Computer Clubhouse Network, explicitly focuses on the development of a design culture, moving youth beyond basic computer skills and helping them to design, create, and invent with new technologies (Resnick, Rusk, & Cooke, 1998). Computer Clubhouse youth engage in applications such as Adobe® PhotoshopTM, Macromedia® FlashTM, and Kai’s SuperGooTM that encourage skills beyond typing and general computer familiarity, allowing participants to use various design tools to develop creativity, critical thinking, and technological fluency (Gallagher & Michalnik, 2007). However, very little is known about the local practices and the role of mediation that best supports even more complex types of designbased technological fluencies, such as computer programming. We need a better understanding of how mediational means in traditional after school programs can be extended for such fluency-building activities. A Computer Clubhouse in South Los Angeles offers a promising opportunity to explore the ways in which the local culture has developed their collective understanding of new tools for authorship and communication, particularly capitalizing on software that allows designers to use computation or computer programming (Kafai, Peppler, & Chiu, 2007). Aiming to uncover how design cultures are developed within existing community structures, we used a mixed methods approach to document, describe, and analyze (1) the local practices that underlie the larger Computer Clubhouse design community, focusing on local portfoliobuilding practices. We also (2) explored aspects of the Clubhouse setting that mediated community members’ participation in design activities, which was important to our understanding of how and why youth get involved in design activities amidst a host of other possibilities, including video gaming and web surfing that are predominant in youth culture. Other in-school and out-of-school settings could benefit from better understanding the critical role of mediation and local practices in the establishment of a robust design culture. These issues are of relevance to the Learning Sciences community because of the shared interest in promoting design-based activities as a tool for learning.