RICERCA ITALIANA     

Research program

DIGITAL IDENTITIES AND VIRTUAL, EDUCATIONAL, PROFESSIONAL COMMUNITIES

University Co-ordinator

Università degli Studi di PAVIA - PSICOLOGIA - ()

Research Unit Leader

Maria Assunta Zanetti

Description

1) STUDENTS AND PROFESSIONALS IN TRAINING
We want to explore a Teacher Education laboratory that uses weblogs and web forum to develop collaborative practices and to enhance a professional identity in the student (Alsup, 2005; Berry, Clemans, Kostogriz, 2007).
In an asynchronous web site, the students are going to work in a personal weblog where they can build their professional profile as future or in service teachers; in the web forum they can interact among themselves to solve a shared school-based problem and reflect on educational practices.
By analysing the verbal protocols of on line discussions, and through the analysis of interview, the research group will explore how student-teachers build and modify their professional profiles (professional identity) in the weblogs, pre-, post- and during a case-work on line activity; b) the nature of the interactive processes activated during case-work on line activity.
The research aims specifically to investigate:
1. The pre- and in-service teacher beliefs;
2. How the on line interactions support professional identity construction;
3. Which roles the weblog and web forum technologies play in the previous processes;
4. What type of relations exist between technology (web forum and weblog) and different students (age, curriculum, professional experiences).

HYPOTHESES
1. It is hypothesized that the on line activities and specifically the weblog technology support the student’s motivation and enhance the quality of on line interactive processes and products; so the students, future and in service teachers, can build and develop a shared professional identity.
2. It is hypothesized that the different characteristics of students (young pre-service teachers, adult in-service teachers) determine different on line processes and products.

THE RESEARCH STEPS
In the first year we are going to project the educational activities; we are going to begin the activities on the field: 75 second year students of SFP (the faculty of Educational sciences for primary teacher preparation) will engage in the on line laboratory for about six month. They are of different age and professional status.
At the beginning and at the end of the laboratory activities, students will undergo study motivation questionnaires, and will be invited to express their beliefs regarding the “good teacher”.
During the laboratory activities of case work in small groups (6 subjects), students will interact with different network tools (web forum and weblog articulated in differential writing and reading spaces).
In the second year, narrative interviews will be carried out with selected witnesses from subjects involved the previous year, and the quantitative and qualitative analysis and treatment of the gathered digital texts (produced in forum and blogs) will be carried out; this will include an ad hoc revisiting of the analysis categories suggested by Garrison and Anderson (2003) and by Harrington (1996), already used in the last years.
The web blogs will be structured in such a way that each student dispose of an individual and interactive blog “space” (with “open” and individual reading and writing), and a blog space of individual writing and reading only (as a personal “diary” or “note pad”); a third individual blog space will be available, this time “not modifiable”, to be used at the beginning and at the end of activities, with the individual “narration” of personal beliefs on teaching and on the function-role-prerogative of the “good teacher”.


DATA COLLECTION
We will analyse and elaborate data collected by:
- questionnaires
- web forum
- web blogs
- narrative interviews <br />
METHODS AND TOOLS
The recordings, texts and data gathered will be analyzed and processed in the following way:
-statistical elaboration of the questionnaire data (study ability and motivation towards study);
-sociometric and conversational analysis in relation to students’ and group’s ability of activation and epistemic management (also with the use of the Net-miner software for SNA)
-statistical analysis of the texts produced on-line: specificity analysis, correspondence analyses and cluster analyses (also using the T-Lab software);
-descriptive analysis, qualitative and non-parametric, referring to an ad hoc revision of the analysis categories suggested by Garrison and Anderson through a bottom-up process and using the Atlas-T software for text analysis;
-critical-interpretative analysis of the narrative interviews held with selected witnesses.

EXPECTED RESULTS
We expect future young teachers in training to use the potentialities of web blogs in a more articulate and complete way compared to adult students already in practice, and that this will determine diversities in the elaboration of the respective professional profiles.
We further expect future young teachers in training and teachers in practice to activate different processes in the web forum case work activities, with a consequent differing professional identity elaboration.
The project is articulated in two parallel paths: 1) that which investigates a population of students and professionals in University; 2) that involving young bloggers

2) BLOGGERS
We intend to study the ways in which new technological means of communication may create the conditions for and opening towards subjective construction as a result of on-line interaction processes. The analysis of the investigated processes will privilege the activation of bottom-up mechanisms, traceable to social sharing strategies for the construction of Self. This modality has ancient roots, spanning from the form of social narration to the new communication technologies. According to De Kerckhove (2001), this represents a new form of intelligence emerging as a collective construction from the bottom, starting from such self-narrations

HYPOTHESES
1. The existence of a gender difference in Self representation is hypothesized, both for length and articulation of the content of the narrations, and for the richness of details in the iconographic representations.
2. It is hypothesized that it possible to identify different types of Self-representation processes, influenced by the quality and quantity of feedback sent and received on one’s web blog.
3. It is hypothesized that being more socially competent and having a well adapted self-image activates a leadership behaviour in the social network, able to influence narrative trajectories of other bloggers. It is further hypothesized that an adequate technical competence in the use of technologies influences the position of the individual in the social network.

ARTICULATION
The first year will be dedicated to the structuring of the platform in which web blogs will be allocated, to the construction, by single users, of their personal narrative space and to the monitoring of the social interactions which will be produced, in order to evaluate the effects of Self-representation. In this first phase, students attending the first year of the Undergraduate course in Psychology will be involved, and they will be administered appropriate tests assessing individual characteristics relative to the competencies in the use of new technologies, as well as value orientations, beliefs and life skills.
During the second year, the quantitative and qualitative analysis and treatment of the gathered digital texts and images produced in the web blogs (narrations and iconographic representations) will be carried out.
The weblogs will be structured in such a way that each user disposes of an individual and interactive blog “space” (with “open” and individual reading and writing), in which it is possible to identify two areas for self-representation, a blog space of individual writing and reading only (as a personal “diary” or “note pad”), and an interactive IM space.

DATA GATHERING

We will analyse and elaborate data collected by:
· Questionnaires
· Web blogs
· Narrative interviews

METHODS AND TOOLS
The sample will consist of 100 University students attending the first year of the Undergraduate course in Psychology (50 male and 50 female) for the production of the blogs and other activities of network interaction and construction. The tools used for the activities will consist of common Internet software. The data and the interactions produced will be analyzed in order to guarantee the secrecy of subjects’ identity.
The modalities of self-representations will be analyzed, both through iconographic representation analyses, and through self-narration.
A second aspect will concern the objectives aimed at exploring, following the premise, the characteristics of the new technologies in relation to the construction of Self. Furthermore, the blog data analysis (content, narrative modality, communication styles, interaction) will help identify the ways in which these new means of technological communication influence everyday life (effects on beliefs and values, style of relationships).
The iconographic representations will be examined considering the categories already elaborated and experimented in the analysis of on-line interactions (Danet, 1998, 2001, Danet, Ruedenberg, Rosenbaum-Tamari,1998).
The linguistic aspects will be examined with the DICTION 5 software, a programme which allows for the analysis of the content, taking into account both linguistic context and word frequency. Thanks to this analysis, it will be possible to investigate the tone and semantic characteristics of the blogs, also through the monitoring of their change in time, by focusing on linguistic styles such as determination, activity, communion, and the sub-components of passivity, aggression and cooperation in interactions (Hart, 2000). In examining both iconographic and narrative-linguistic aspects, we should be able to jointly consider the aspects of Self which may be more stable in time, observing them in this new context of identity exploration.

The recordings, both text and images, will undergo the following analyses and elaborations:
-statistical elaboration of the data gathered through the questionnaires (self-image, social competencies, values, moral and civic disengagement scales)
-quantitative and qualitative statistical analysis, parametric and non-parametric, of the texts produced on-line: specificity analysis, correspondence analyses and cluster analyses (also using the T-Lab and DICTION 5 softwares);
-descriptive analysis, qualitative and non-parametric, evaluated with the analysis categories suggested by Garrison and Anderson through a bottom-up process, and using the Atlas-T software for text analysis;
-sociometric and conversational analysis in relation to students’ and group’s ability of activation and epistemic management (SNA and beyond also with the use of the Net-miner software)


EXPECTED RESULTS
Through the web blog analyses we expect to find significant gender differences in the modalities of subjective identity expression on-line. Specifically, we believe we may identify the different modalities of narrating personal individuality, both in terms of iconography and narration inside the web blog. Particularly, females may prefer more refined iconographic modalities, more oriented towards the expression of emotional states, aspects we believe to collect in narration as well. As far as males are concerned, we expect to find a greater use of narrative styles characterized by a more “action-oriented” language, with more aggressive linguistic contents and references, and more determined expressive styles. Finally, we expect differences in interaction modalities, both with respect to feedback characteristics and the influence of these in the re-definition of the individual subject’s Self.