Picking Up the Mantle of "Expert": Assigned Roles, Assertion of Identity, and Peer Recognition Within a Programming Class

Changing an established role in a classroom is difficult. It involves constructing a new set of relations within a community. In this article we investigate how students with newly developed interest and experience in programming developed outside the classroom pick up and establish their roles as e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Mind, culture and activity culture and activity, 2013-04, Vol.20 (2), p.113-131
Main Authors: Fields, Deborah, Enyedy, Noel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Classroom Environment
Classroom observation
Clubs
Computer Software
Expertise
Grade 6
Identification (Psychology)
Interaction
Interpersonal Relationship
Peer relationships
Peer Teaching
Programming
Programming Languages
Recognition
Self Concept
Student Role
Students
Teaching Methods
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Summary:Changing an established role in a classroom is difficult. It involves constructing a new set of relations within a community. In this article we investigate how students with newly developed interest and experience in programming developed outside the classroom pick up and establish their roles as experts in programming within the classroom community. More specifically, we focus on how two 11-year-old software designers shifted their established roles in their classroom to gain status as expert programmers. We use an identity lens to understand how peer expertise was established in the context of a classroom community, adopting a multifaceted perspective of identity by focusing on an individual's narrativization of self, full, or peripheral participation among a group of people, and individuals' social recognition by others. Our findings point to the importance of both positive positioning by authority figures in the classroom and activities and roles that provide opportunities to establish intersubjectivity among peers in facilitating students' identities as experts in the classroom. Students' willingness to take up a new position in the established activity system also played a role. We consider implications of how making roles flexible within classroom stratification may provide opportunities for more students see themselves as experts.
ISSN:1074-9039
1532-7884
DOI:10.1080/10749039.2012.691199