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Genealogy as a lifelong learning endeavor
Abstract
Genealogy has gained much popularity in recent years as a lifelong learning endeavor, usually conducted by adults during their leisure time. So far, only little is known about the educational aspects of genealogy. In this study, we define six characteristics of genealogy as lifelong learning: harmonious passion, suddenly triggered; implementation of research practices; inductive and deductive relationships with multiple disciplines; technology as a research partner; consuming information and producing knowledge in multiple representations; and strengthening intergenerational connections – present, past and future. This set of characteristics is based on a qualitative study of active genealogists (N = 8) through in-depth interviews. We discuss these features and their implications on learning and teaching genealogy to various audiences.
... Lifelong learning practice has incorporated family phenomena into curricula in different ways. Investigating family histories and genealogy are popular topics in lifelong learning programs [20][21][22]. Autobiographies, storytelling, life histories, life-story writing and memoir writing are other popular topics [23]. These approaches have been linked to higher levels of cognitive and social well-being for older adults [24]. ...
... Lifelong learners in this study showed affinity for historical moments involving family members, cultural heritage and genetic backgrounds. Courses on history and culture are common topics of interest in older adult lifelong learning [14,22]. Lifelong learners' genetic interests in this study did not just concern historical lines, but health indicators as well. ...
... Lifelong learners' genetic interests in this study did not just concern historical lines, but health indicators as well. While lifelong learning courses have often explored family trees and genealogical discovery [21,22], courses focused on particular families' genealogies and health variables are likely scant. Courses that explore connections between family genetics and health may be interesting course offerings, and these courses could possibly lean more on making meaning out of the health aspects than only the family aspects as well. ...
Family relationships and systems are important in older adulthood. Families often provide social support and care for individuals in later life. Still, the effects of family phenomena on lifelong learning decisions, behaviors, and experiences require more research. This exploratory study looks at the importance of family phenomena to older adult lifelong learners and notes direct and indirect links to learning choices and behaviors. A semi-structured interview approach was undertaken. Content analysis was utilized to identify salient family codes. Eight core codes were elucidated: (1) family backgrounds; (2) family changes; (3) family distance; (4) family education; (5) perceptions of the family’s future; (6) family history; (7) family influence; and, (8) family stories. Family stories were the most prevalent code across the 21 interviews analyzed. Insights for research and practice are shared, so that family phenomena are not overlooked in future lifelong learning endeavors.
... However, these formal indicators of expertise have not been taken into consideration in previous studies. Instead, study participants have been described as "professional" [23], "non-professional" [75], "amateur" [33][34][35]75], "hobbyist" [35,105], or by the number of years they have spent in genealogical research [45,92,119,120]. As a result, we cannot compare genealogists' research practices except for occasional hints from authors. ...
... Genealogy was depicted as life-long learning endeavor through which practitioners learn about family history, themselves, and proper genealogy research methods [45]. In this process, amateur genealogists might skip initial learning on how to conduct genealogy research, diving in with a trial-and-error approach [19]. ...
Genealogy, the study of family history and lineage, has seen tremendous growth over the past decade, fueled by technological advances such as home DNA testing and mass digitization of historical records. However, HCI research on genealogy practices is nascent, with the most recent major studies predating this transformation. In this paper, we present a qualitative study of the current state of technological support for genealogy research, collaboration, and education. Through semi-structured interviews with 20 genealogists with diverse expertise, we report on current practices, challenges, and success stories around how genealogists conduct research, collaborate, and learn skills. We contrast the experiences of amateurs and experts, describe the emerging importance of standardization and professionalization of the field, and stress the critical role of computer systems in genealogy education. We bridge studies of sensemaking and information literacy through this empirical study on genealogy research practices, and conclude by discussing how genealogy presents a unique perspective through which to study collective sensemaking and education in online communities.
... Genealogy research is a life-long learning pursuit for those engaged in researching their family roots (Darby and Clough 2013;Fulton 2009;Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe 2017). There are many twists and turns that present obstacles or dead ends along the way and many researchers find that they must find ways around those dead ends when possible. ...
... An interesting note in this article is how many scholars use their own genealogy research to segue into their various disciplines. Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe (2017) took the idea of genealogy as a multi-disciplinary process for life-long learning, which is also an aspect of the current study. The genealogists that I interviewed had continued their research over the course of several years. ...
The intersection of education and genealogy is of interest to academia. Although learning is an important aspect of the genealogist’s need to understand the connection with family relationships, there is a paucity of research about the intersection between education and genealogy. This study sought to answer the research question, “How do genealogists use education to better understand family connections?” A narrative inquiry method was used to interview 10 members of the Oberlin African-American Genealogy and History Group, in Oberlin, Ohio (OAAGHG). Participants were recruited through convenience sampling and purposive sampling, after an announcement about the study was presented at the January meeting of the genealogy society. Members who were interested in participating contacted the researcher through e-mails, text messages, and by telephone. Interviews were transcribed, and transcripts were sent to each member to verify the accuracy of each transcript. Nvivo11 was used to assist with analysis of the data. The results of the study presented three ways that education intersected with genealogy: self-directed learning, collaborative learning, and life-long learning. The conclusion of this study is that genealogists are life-long learners and expand their education as necessary to better understand family connections.
... Carefully examining such gems, while triangulating information they reveal with other relevant sources, may shed new light on our relatives; this could be done by referring to, e.g., old photographs (e.g., Taylor 2013), historical documents, old letters, diary entries, or book dedications (e.g., Dix 2009), just to name a few; it is possible to learn from them much more than the eye sees and the heart feels. By doing so, genealogists can improve their familiarity with their relatives, particularly with those whom they never knew personally, thereby maintaining intergenerational continuity; this continuity is also one of the unique motivations for engaging in genealogical research in the first place (Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe 2017). ...
This article presents a detailed analysis of a unique item from the author’s family archive: the work diary of his grandfather, Mordechai Livnat (Libman). In this diary, Livnat meticulously recorded, between 1928 and 1931, the details of his work as an agricultural laborer in Herzliya—at the time, a small village in the central part of Eretz Israel (aka pre-State Israel)—primarily during the establishment of the new colony’s citrus orchards. The diary documents employment details, employer information, working hours, and wages received. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the information contained in the diary paint a comprehensive picture that allows us to learn about the lives of Jewish agricultural laborers in Eretz Israel at that time. In particular, the hardships faced by these workers stand out, primarily job insecurity, which manifested mainly in their dependence on the weather and the need to work for multiple employers. This article also sheds light on aspects related to agricultural work before the introduction of technological advancements to the agricultural sector, which was mainly manual then, and its impact on the daily routine of the agricultural laborer. The diary is analyzed using an inductive approach—from the text outwards—in a way that emphasizes the complexity and importance of the connections between the macro and micro in historical research. This way, it is demonstrated how items collected during genealogy research can shed important light on historical knowledge, and not just the other way around.
... It also fosters an interest in language learning, as in order to work properly with the historical documents of our people, one needs to know German, Russian, Polish and Latin, to be able to decipher the various handwritings, to be familiar with Cyrillic, Fraktur and antique letters. This activity is a successful example of lifelong learning, as it can be undertaken by people of different ages (Darby & Clough, 2013;Fulton, 2009;Hershkovitz & Hardof-Jaffe, 2017). ...
Latvian language and literature, like the history of the nation and country, is an essential basis of national and cultural development, and an important part of civic education. One of the problems we face daily is related to the fact that many of young people do not perceive the Latvian language as a value, and do not want to learn some part of the curriculum, because it seems to them too far from reality, useless and irrelevant. To create more interest in language learning content, it should also include topics that may be personally meaningful to students or should be viewed in a context that is engaging to them. The purpose of the paper is to justify the need to include the study of family history in the learning content of the Latvian language, ensuring the connection between subjects, and to characterize the developed linguo-didactic material. The author’s experience in creating family trees and involving students in this work in interest education classes shows that this not only creates interest in young people in the set of personal names of their family and the motivation of their choice but also promotes the desire to more fully learn the history of the Latvian language and the language as a system, to develop their language and communication skills. The research was conducted in the 10th grade using the methods of document analysis, case analysis, pedagogical observation, and pupil’s survey. The research concluded that the study of family history can be successfully included in Latvian language lessons. The students were interested in lessons related to the topic of family history, admitting that they find the lessons more interesting, where it is possible to acquire not only theoretical knowledge of the Latvian language but also additional information about their family members. For the work to be more successful, students should already at the stage of primary education develop persistent habits, the skills of independent work, information acquisition, compilation, and analysis, as well as age-appropriate linguo-cultural tasks should be included in the curriculum, which would promote the study of language learning as a cultural phenomenon.
... In trying to understand the role of data and platforms in the information behavior of family historians we have, as in previous studies (Fulton 2009a;Friday 2014;Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe 2017), turned to the concept of serious leisure. The Serious Leisure Perspective (SLP) was developed by Roberts Stebbins as he started his research on leisure in the 1970s. ...
Alongside established heritage institutions, family historians are central figures in the ecosystem of digital heritage, both as contributors to and users of digitized historical sources. With that in mind, this research aims for a wide examination of family historians' engagement with the broader selection of available digital platforms, providing knowledge about how and why they choose to use one platform over another. This knowledge is important for the future development of sustainable digital platforms in the heritage sector. With a large variety of digitized source providers, many with free access platforms, Denmark and Danish family historians make an excellent case for this study. Through both a questionnaire and focus group interviews, using a grounded theory approach, this study has developed a model of engagement with digital platforms, referred to as a buffet model. This model illustrates how family historians pick and choose from a selection of digital platforms throughout their search and management of information as well as their community interaction. Moreover, through the lens of the Serious Leisure Perspective we find that family history is often a life-long leisure activity and family historians’ usage of digital platforms support this finding.
... Using the theoretical frameworks of Jorn Rüsen's Disciplinary Matrix (Rüsen 1993) and his Typology of Historical Consciousness (Rüsen 1996), these authors conclude that engaging in genealogical research shapes and refines researchers' historical understandings and consciousness. The study supports other findings that amateur family historians, even those with little or no historical training, are teaching themselves about the research methods of history and the nature of reliable evidence (e.g., Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe 2017). In doing so, they are making important contributions to the history discipline and, as Shaw and Donnelly put it, "shifting the historical landscape through the dissemination of their research for public consumption beyond traditional family history audiences". ...
The idea for this Special Issue of Genealogy came from my fascination not just with my own family history research, but through my involvement with groups of other passionate fellow family history researchers [...]
... A third psychosocial motive that has been postulated for intense interest in family history research is the cognitive challenge of a complex puzzle to be solved, one that requires new learning, organisation and persistence. A few studies suggest that the detective work of the genealogical research process becomes, for some, an end in itself, with genealogists often reporting elation and other strong emotions as they discover a new link or break down a 'brick wall' (Bishop 2008;Darby and Clough 2013;Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe 2017). Shaw (2020), in a large-scale study of the motives of Australian family historians, described the largest group of her sample (44%) as 'seekers' who were trying to solve a mystery or puzzle associated with their heritage. ...
Participation in family history research may be a passing phase for some, but for others, it is a recreational pursuit exciting passionate intensity that goes beyond idle curiosity or short-term interest. In this paper, we explore some of the underlying motives that drive amateur genealogists, including the search for self-understanding, the desire to give something of value to others and the enjoyment of the many intellectual challenges that this hobby can provide. Using data accessed from an online survey of 775 Australian family historians, we developed a reliable and valid measure of the intensity of these psychosocial motives and used research participants’ qualitative data to suggest four further motives of interest for future research and measure development.
... Online teaching and online courses have evolved from teachers being available to help a student, to the teacher now serving as an additional resource within an expanding educational learning network (Conrad and Donaldson 2012). Genealogists are lifelong learners (Hershkovitz and Hardof-Jaffe 2017) and their research takes on an important role in their life as a form of serious leisure. Social media take on the form of an informal classroom for genealogists as they participate on these sites, ask questions, and answer questions in an effort to aid in each other's research endeavors. ...
In the not-so-distant past, genealogists and family history hobbyists had to lug around heavy boxes, documents, and copious notes and references as they travelled to discover their family roots. Technological advances in mobile devices and applications have created efficiencies and opened paths of exploration that facilitate researching genealogical roots while travelling. This research employs a netnographic approach in studying genealogy blogs, social media, and websites to see how genealogy tourists use mobile devices and apps. Mobile apps used by genealogists are categorized into a taxonomy which shows the plethora of apps and functions that genealogists can rely on before, during and after a trip. The paper then analyzes how smartphone use in general, and mobile app use in particular, affect genealogy tourism. It is found that travelling genealogists use their mobile devices and apps extensively throughout all travel phases to plan and prepare for trips, to conduct and inform their research, and to share their findings. Genealogy tourists also use technology to create and tap into a virtual collective of like-minded others by sharing their knowledge online to help others, acting as a teacher, but at other times may post questions and seek others’ knowledge, as a learner. As such, the study contributes to ongoing efforts to better understand the impact of mobile technologies on travel.
... Increasingly, with postmodernity having challenged notions of stable identities, many people give meaning to their selves through their genealogy (Santos & Yan, 2010;Yakel, 2004). Genealogy research often becomes a form of serious leisure for its adept, where the set of special skills, knowledge and experience acquired over time turns the hobbyist into a near professional (Hershkovitz & Hardof-Jaffe, 2017). This serious leisure often translates into ancestral tourism where amateur genealogists seek to reconnect with places and people relevant to their family history, often after having done extensive genealogy research beforehand to identify sites of personal relevance Mehtiyeva & Prince, 2020). ...
... We find, for example, that they do not use technology as heavily as one would expect from young 21st-century students. As many of us know, using technological tools during genealogy research is almost a necessity to produce a meaningful project (Arnon Hershkovitz & Hardof-Jaffe, 2017;Veale, 2004). This finding is interesting but not surprising. ...
... In recent years, a number of scholars studied the informational and knowledge development aspects of serious leisure in different hobbies and volunteer activities such as gourmet cooking (Hartel, 2010), environmental activist (Savolainen, 2007), volunteer fund raising (Lee & Kim, 2018), rubber duck collecting (Lee & Trace, 2009), liberal arts (Hartel, 2014;Jones & Symon, 2001), birdwatching (Lee et al., 2015;Scott & Lee, 2010), gardening (Cheng et al., 2017), urban exploration (Fulton, 2017), museum visiting (Skov, 2013), genealogy and family history (Hershkovitz & Hardof-Jaffe, 2017), ultra-running (Gorichanaz, 2015(Gorichanaz, & 2017, music record collecting (Shuker 2004;LaPlante & Downie, 2006;Margree et al., 2014) and adventure tourism (Løseth, 2018). ...
Background. Until recently, information behaviour scholars have mainly focused on the workplace or educational settings, and defined information as either a tool for problem solving or a means to satisfy needs. This, however, only represents a partial picture of a larger horizon. In some arenas of life, such as serious leisure, people do not seek information to necessarily solve a problem or satisfy an urgent need. They look for information to enjoy a hobby or participate in an entirely voluntary activity. Objectives. The paper introduces transcendental information as a subjective and contextual concept to provide insights on lesser explored corners of the information behaviour scholarship. This concept is compared with existing theories and concepts in the information behaviour area. Method. This conceptual paper is based on a critical literature review of human information behaviour, and reflects on some key concepts in the field, including the nature of information, information needs, information seeking and sharing. The paper also provides a selective literature review of the serious leisure perspective to contextualise the analysis. Results. It is found that transcendental information usually has an aesthetic and intellectual essence. It may be expressed in various imaginative forms and can appear in different non-textual and embedded formats. Moreover, it can generate joyful and inspiring impacts. The paper refers to serious leisure as an exemplary setting to contextualise transcendental information within a relevant and well-established theoretical framework.
Genealogy, the study of family history and lineage, has seen tremendous growth over the past decade, fueled by technological advances such as home DNA testing and mass digitization of historical records. However, HCI research on genealogy practices is nascent, with the most recent major studies predating this transformation. In this paper, we present a qualitative study of the current state of technological support for genealogy research, collaboration, and education. Through semi-structured interviews with 20 genealogists with diverse expertise, we report on current practices, challenges, and success stories around how genealogists conduct research, collaborate, and learn skills. We contrast the experiences of amateurs and experts, describe the emerging importance of standardization and professionalization of the field, and stress the critical role of computer systems in genealogy education. We bridge studies of sensemaking and information literacy through this empirical study on genealogy research practices, and conclude by discussing how genealogy presents a unique perspective through which to study collective sensemaking and education in online communities.
Encouraging a new way for non-Indigenous researchers to think reflexively through their positionality and relationship with Indigenous peoples, lands, and claims for decolonization in their research, this paper introduces the concept of anti-colonial reflexivity. Anti-colonial reflexivity describes the slow process of looking into our genealogies, not simply to locate the names of ancestors in a family tree, but to attempt to critically understand the sociopolitical worlds in which they lived in order to trace our lineage in relation to settler colonization. As an intervention into reflexive practice, anti-colonial reflexivity seeks to re-personalize the settler colonial past and present, and to make reflexivity a practice that develops new self-understanding and accountability.
This chapter opens with a discussion of agreeable versus disagreeable obligation. The agreeable project-based variety is occasionally found in making something, as in a swing hung from a tree for a child’s pleasure or a special meal with which to celebrate a birthday. Volunteering on a project basis can be moderately agreeable. Some fine artists get drawn into one-off projects that fall outside their routine involvements. Theatrical skills may be especially relevant here, as in being invited to emcee a talent show or variety-arts show or serve as a chairperson for a set of scholarly conference papers.
This chapter offers the broadest canvas portraying PBL found in this book as such leisure bears on subjective well-being. The following subjects are covered: PBL as intriguing activity, as consisting of making things, as liberal arts activities, as activity participation, as artistic expression, and as one-off volunteering. The PBL activities are considered interstitial, and their meaning to the individual is anchored in this understanding of them, as is their signal capacity for generating that person’s well-being. Apart from these conditions most of the activities considered here are of interest to the participant, in the sense that they are domestic or, if outside the home, are easily accessible. Given this quality they can in effect serve interstitially as time fillers. Most are also reasonably inexpensive. This said, certain activities are treated of as resembling a liberal art or a participant activity that do encourage some people to travel far from home.
Purpose
This paper provides selective findings from a broader research project on information behaviours in serious leisure. This paper focuses on the positive feelings of information seeking and sharing in this context, aiming to capture and contextualise the joy of information embedded in and inspired by leisure activities.
Design/methodology/approach
The required data were obtained using semi-structured interviews with 20 serious leisure participants from Wagga Wagga city in Australia, recruited via a maximum variation sampling technique. The data were fully transcribed and analysed based on a qualitative thematic analysis method.
Findings
The joy of information is embedded within a wide spectrum of information activities in serious leisure ranging from information seeking and browsing to information sharing and information creation. Among all these activities, information sharing with peers and a broader audience is the most joyful experience because it often generates social engagement, a sense of belonging and friendship. Moreover, serious leisure is a productive ground to transform hedonic wellness into eudaimonic well-being, while continuous information seeking and sharing play a significant role in achieving this goal.
Practical implications
Information system designers can use the findings to consider the emotional aspects of information seeking and sharing to improve the usability of their products. At the policy level, cultural policy writers and decision-makers can make more informed decisions to support serious leisure.
Originality/value
This study explores the joyful aspects of information behaviour in a unique context. Exploring the joy of information is an emerging topic in human information behaviour scholarship, and the existing knowledge on this issue is still limited. This paper can contribute to creating new knowledge in this emerging area.
Purpose
This paper reports findings from a research project about human information behaviour in the context of serious leisure. Various forms of information activities in this context have been identified and categorised to depict common patterns of information seeking, sharing, using and producing.
Design/methodology/approach
The project adopted a qualitative approach in an interpretive paradigm using a thematic analysis method. Data-collection technique was semi-structured interview and 20 volunteers were recruited via a maximum variation sampling strategy. The collected data was transcribed and thematically analysed to identify the main concepts and categories.
Findings
The participants have been experiencing six qualities of serious leisure during their long-term engagement with their hobbies or voluntary jobs and their experiences can be fully mapped onto the serious leisure perspective. The findings also confirmed serious leisure is a unique context in terms of the diversity of information activities embedded into a wide range of individual and collective actions in this context. Information seeking and sharing in serious leisure is not only a source of personal satisfaction for the participants, it also can provide them with a sense of purpose in a meaningful journey towards self-actualization and social inclusion.
Research limitations/implications
The generalisability of the findings needs to be examined in wider populations. Nonetheless, the existing findings can be useful for follow-up research in the area.
Practical implications
This study will be useful in both policy and practice levels. In the policy level, it will be beneficial for cultural policy makers to gain a better understanding about the nature of leisure activities. In the practice level, it will be helpful for serious leisure participants to understand the value of information seeking and sharing in their leisure endeavours. Also, information professionals can use it to enhance the quality of their services for the serious leisure participants who are usually among devoted patrons of libraries, museums, archives and galleries.
Social implications
Learning about serious leisure can provide new insights on people preferences in terms of choosing different entertaining and recreational pursuits – such as indoor and outdoor hobbies – in their free time.
Originality/value
The informational aspects of serious leisure is an emerging and evolving ground of research. This paper provides empirical evidence on this topic from a specific context in the regional areas in Australia.
This paper presents an analytical review of the existing literature about Human Information Behaviour (HIB) in the context of Serious Leisure (SL). Various forms of information activities in this context have been identified and categorised to depict common patterns in information seeking and sharing. The findings show the informational aspect of SL is a rich and productive topic in HIB because it entails the continuous pursuit and recreation of knowledge and often involves several types of information-related actions including information seeking, searching, browsing, retrieving, gathering, saving, organising, sharing, evaluating, measuring, analysing, producing and disseminating. The paper also presents a tentative model of predominant information sources in SL based on the analytical literature review and theoretical speculation. This preliminary model categorises SL activities into three main groups including (1) intellectual pursuits, (2) creating or collecting physical objects/materials/products and (3) experiential activities. Similarly, the paper categorises SL participants into three major groups of appreciators, producers/collectors and performers. Each category has its own priorities, source preferences and information behaviour. The findings also indicate that exploring various aspects of HIB in the SL domain is still an emerging ground and that the majority of studies have been thus far been qualitative. As a result, further research needs to be done to gain a more comprehensive picture of this area and to validate the growing knowledge base with larger samples and further settings.
This article is a first attempt to generate discussion and academic analysis of the modus operandi of genealogy and genealogists. Genealogy is on the verge of becoming a recognised profession and an academic discipline, with one or more qualification routes. This article summarises the author’s philosophy, motivations and experiences in establishing educational/training courses and qualifications in a University context. Definitions of genealogy and related concepts are discussed, in the light of an epistemological analysis. Such philosophical considerations are rarely discussed among professional genealogists. It is hoped this article will be a stimulus to more enlightened debate of the epistemological and philosophical bases of family history-type genealogy. There is also a dearth of research into the motivations of amateur and professional genealogists, and almost no scholarly scrutiny of genealogy as an academic discipline. Nor can it be dismissed as “a branch of history”; genealogy and history are related but separate disciplines with overlapping skills-sets.
Serious, casual, and project-based leisure constitute the foundation of the serious leisure perspective (SLP). So far as we know in the interdisciplinary field of leisure studies, these three forms together embrace all leisure activities. The SLP is the theoretic framework that synthesizes three main forms of leisure showing, at once, their distinctive features, similarities, and interrelationships. More precisely the SLP offers a classification and explanation of all leisure activities and experiences, as these two are framed in the social psychological, social, cultural, geographical, and historical conditions in which each activity and accompanying experience take place.
Teaching students to use and interpret different representational tools is critically important if they are to be scientifically literate, to understand how scientific ideas and concepts are represented and to appreciate how scientists think and act. Moreover, students not only need to be competent at using and explaining representations and learning new representations quickly but they also need to have opportunities to work cooperatively with others as it is through interactions between learners, tools and the environment that learning occurs. The current case study (part of a larger study) aimed to: (a) identify the effects of different teacher-introduced representational tools on students’ conceptual understandings, dialogic processes, motivation and learning; (b) examine the representational tools used by students during their inquiry science; and (c) examine the physiological states indicative of engagement and cooperation during learning activities. Prior to and on completion of the curriculum unit, participants completed a series of measures to assess actual as well as self-perceived ability in science. Students also wore wireless wristbands to measure autonomic arousal level that were analysed to assess the level of synchrony in physiological states between children. The results showed that the teacher successfully used embodied representations to engage the students in the science unit and maintained their focus in the cooperative groups by using language that encouraged on-going participation in the task. In turn, the students remained on-task and the majority of the language they employed was used to construct and communicate their scientific understanding to others. This high-level common engagement during whole class activities and student-centred learning during the cooperative group activities were also reflected in the physiological measures of synchrony between students. By integrating the video and biometric data with the data from the individual assessments, we construct a rich picture of relationship between the teacher’s use of multimodal representations and cooperative small groups with the students’ use of scientific language, physiological engagement and their beliefs and attitudes towards science.
This research article deals with the way in which ‘senior’ immigrants from Argentina, residing in a kibbutz in the south of Israel, constructed their collective memory. This group of Israelis, who emigrated from Argentina to Israel at the start of the 1960s, is a unique group originating from the Jewish agricultural settlements founded in Argentina at the end of the 19th century. Upon arriving in Israel, they encountered a society that rejected their past in the diaspora. This intercultural encounter generated conflict between the wishes of these immigrants to preserve their original identities and cultural heritage, on the one hand, and to integrate into and belong to the host society, on the other—a central element in their Zionist worldview. This research presents the manner in which the politics of the collective memory of the investigated group was constructed, such that it helped the group to reach its goals while allowing for the preservation of the unique past. In this case, the politics and the agents of memory called on the collective memory in order to assign and locate themselves in the kibbutz’s present, and to claim seniority in the kibbutz hierarchy, while appealing the status relegated by the dominant metanarrative.
In aiming to support school-based outdoor learning opportunities, the paper critiques the extent to which Deweyan and neo-Aristotelian theorizing is helpful in highlighting how personal growth and practical wisdom gains can be realised. Such critique is necessary, as there are signs of an implementation gap between practice and policy which is made worse by a lack of conceptual clarity about how educational aspirations can be dependably achieved. We review Dewey’s habit-forming social constructivist emphasis on learning and problem solving and then contemplate the prospects of a neo-Aristotelian conception of human flourishing which recognises that virtues are nurtured as moral sensitivities. We also address concerns that Dewey’s writings are often vague on how ideas can be operationalized and criticisms that Aristotle’s educational thoughts rather over-privilege cognition relative to emotions. We conclude by teasing out suggestions on how Deweyan and neo-Aristotelian ideas on learning might coherently inform curriculum planning and pedagogical practices.
This article examines an informal online community dedicated to The Tudors, a historical television show, and the ways in which its members engaged with a variety of sources in their discussions of the drama’s real-life past. Data were collected over a 5-month period. The analysis included the types of sources used in conversation; members’ purpose for invoking and reaction to sources; as well as topic, participation, and response patterns in the discussion forum. The community is a space in which popular culture and the discipline of history meet. Members come together because of a fictional depiction of the past, yet a desire to corroborate, clarify, contextualize, or uncover what really happened leads users to participate in detective-like inquiry work and the learning of new topics they had not previously considered. Members also challenge and critique one another’s positions and the sources other members invoke in multiple ways, including by using more formal disciplinary heuristics in this informal setting. Key differences emerge in members’ purpose for invoking sources, with popular media used more frequently for illustrating a point or asking a question and nonfiction works most invoked to support and argue historical claims.
Genealogy has been practiced by people all over the world for many years, and in recent years, its leveraging to the academic level has been suggested. Mostly, discussions about the academization of genealogy were focused on teaching in the field, rather than on promoting it as a legitimate research field. This article suggests taxonomy for genealogy as an academic multidisciplinary research field. The taxonomy consists of six components: people, families, communities, representations, data, and bird's-eye view. This taxonomy demonstrates how genealogy is related to many other existing disciplines, highlights its unique points of view, and hence, promotes it as a separate field of study. The discussion goes further and recommends a way of actually building this new academic community in a bottom-up fashion, gathering currently affiliated scholars from other disciplines who will together work for constructing the new field.
This paper traces complex negotiations of multiraciality in the context of transgenerational genealogy work in the wake of historical violence, genocide and colonialism. Basing the analysis on detailed ethnographic material about Indonesian-Dutch (Indisch) genealogy and memory work, I explore how the regulation of ‘races’ [sic] during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies and under the White Australia Policy employed genealogical charts to determine freedom from imprisonment and/or rights to full citizenship for Indisch individuals, and how these feature in the genealogy work of the children and grandchildren of those subjected to racial regulatory norms. Centring the analysis on a specific family history writing project, I demonstrate how such a project is haunted by the ghostly figures of historical ‘miscegenation’ – the Indonesian foremother, and the white woman who crosses lines of respectable white femininity by marrying an Indisch man. The paper explores how narrative strategies of exclusion are used differently across generations as a way of dealing with feelings of shame, guilt and secrecy produced by institutionalised racism, historical violence and imperialism. The paper argues that genealogy work operates not only as a vehicle for self-exploration and belonging for transnational families of historical diaspora, but is also central for the collective identity formation and the production of Indisch peoplehood.
Teaching students to use and interpret representations in science is critically important if they are to become scientifically literate and learn how to communicate their understandings and learning in science. This study involved 248 students (119 boys and 129 girls) from 26 grade 6 teachers’ classes in nine primary schools in Brisbane, Australia. Teachers were randomly allocated by school to one of three conditions: the contemporary science + representations condition (Experimentala), the contemporary condition (Experimentalb), or the comparison condition as they participated in an eight-week inquiry-science unit on Natural Disasters. Data on students’ discourse were collected at two time points during the implementation of the unit and data on the concept maps were collected pre- and post-intervention while data on the reasoning and problem-solving (RP-S) task were collected following the intervention. The results show that when students participate in an inquiry-based science unit that is augmented with a variety of multimedia resources presenting a range of current contemporary events (Experimentala and Experimentalb conditions), they demonstrate significantly more social language and basic scientific language and marked increases in moderate scientific language than their peers in the comparison condition. Interestingly, although there were no significant differences on the Personal Concept Map scores between the conditions at Times 1 and 2, the students’ scores in all conditions improved decidedly across time. It appears that as the children had more time to engage with the material, participate in cooperative peer discussions, and receive encouragement from their teachers to provide elaborated feedback to each other, their conceptual understandings of earthquakes were enhanced. However, although the children in the experimental conditions demonstrated significantly more social and scientific language than their peers in the comparison condition, these oral language skills did not transfer to the RP-S task, possibly because they may not have had enough time to consolidate their application in a novel context where they had to work independently.
A central challenge for science educators is to enable young people to act as scientists by gathering and assessing evidence, conducting experiments and engaging in informed debate. We report the design of the nQuire toolkit, a system to support scripted personal inquiry learning, and a study of its use with school students aged 11-14. This differs from previous work on inquiry learning by its emphasis on learners investigating topics of personal significance supported by a computer-based toolkit to guide school pupils through an entire inquiry process that connects structured learning in the classroom with discovery and data collection at home or outdoors. Findings from the studies indicate that the toolkit was successfully adopted by teachers and pupils in contexts that include teacher-directed lessons, an after-school club, field trips, and learner-managed homework. It effectively supported the transition between individual, group and whole class activities, and supported learning across formal and non-formal settings. We discuss issues raised by the intervention studies, including how the combination of technology and pedagogic approach provided support for the teacher, despite difficulties in managing the technology and integrating field data into a classroom lesson. We also discuss the difficulty of altering young people’s attitudes to science.
The range of uses and applications of technology suggests a number of alternative approaches for integrating technology into adult basic education. There are four basic approaches to integrating technology into adult learning and instruction. The unique educational benefits as well as limitations of the four approaches are technology as curriculum, as delivery mechanism, as complement to instruction, and as instructional tool. From the perspective of maximizing the acquisition of information about and competence in using specific technology applications, a curriculum focused on the computer and its applications might be desirable. Components of such a curriculum include keyboarding skills, database manipulation, spreadsheet use, word processing, desktop and Internet publishing, and Internet search skills. Hands-on opportunities to develop a comfort level with the various appli-cations and discussions about the kinds of tasks that might be best managed with each application would provide a basis for using the technology in the various situations in which it is appropriate. Benefits. There are a number of benefits to a "technology course" that deals only with technology applications. First, because the course focuses on technology alone, an efficient structured ap-proach that deals with each aspect of technology in a clear, orderly, and concise way is possible. Little time is lost dealing with periph-eral learning issues or any alternative goals of education beyond technology instruction. In a relatively short time, all learners have acquired a discrete set of technology skills that they are then en-couraged to apply as needed.
The world of education is currently undergoing a massive transformation as a result of the digital revolution. This transformation is similar to the transition from apprenticeship to universal schooling that occurred in the 19 th century as a result of the industrial revolution. In the apprenticeship era, most of what people learned occurred outside of school. Universal schooling led people to identify learning with school, but now the identification of the two is unraveling. All around us people are learning with the aid of new technologies: children are playing complex video games, workers are interacting with simulations that put them in challenging situations, students are taking courses at online high schools and colleges, and adults are consulting Wikipedia. New technologies create learning opportunities that challenge traditional schools and colleges. These new learning niches enable people of all ages to pursue learning on their own terms. People around the world are taking their education out of school into homes, libraries, Internet cafes, and workplaces, where they can decide what they want to learn, when they want to learn, and how they want to learn. Who will benefit ultimately from this revolution? In America there is a commercial push to sell educational products to consumers who are looking for an edge up in the race for success. This means that technological products and services are popping up all over the American landscape. Education, once viewed as a public good with equal access for all, is now up for sale to those who can afford specialized services and computer programs.
Drawing on the 2008 Mass Observation Directive ‘Doing Family Research’, this article explores the role of genealogy in personal lives from the perspective of genealogists and non-genealogists in the UK. Analysing the ends to which genealogy is put, it finds that genealogy is a key kinship practice, mapping connectedness, offering a resource for identity-work, and allowing belonging in time. Engaging with anthropological work on kinship, relatedness and remembrance and with recent sociological work on identity and affinity, this article explores how family history as a creative and imaginative memory and kinship practice is simultaneously used to map affinities and connectedness, enact relatedness, and produce self-identity. It argues that examining the role of genealogy and the genealogical imaginary reveals that conventional as well as non-conventional kinship produces partial and insecure identities. This compels everyday personal engagement with the meaning and legacy of inheritance for collective and individual identification and identity.
Along with Australia, Canada and the USA, contemporary British society is immersed in a seemingly unprecedented boom in the family heritage industry. Drawing on recent work in memory studies which attends to the relationship between individual and collective historical experiences, this article analyses the celebrity genealogy BBC TV programme Who Do You Think You Are?, as well as viewers’ and critics’ reception of it, to problematize genealogy as a form of mediated or mediatized memory practice which mobilizes traces of the past through the idiom of family. It asks: what is the role of genealogy in facilitating the relationship between identity and memory, both for celebrity participants and viewers? How does television make memories remotely accessible, and how do viewers engage with such modes of accessing the past?
The purpose of this article is to explore the importance of identity in First Nation adoption. It is adapted from a PhD study completed by the author in 2005. The objectives of this study were: (1) describe how connectedness relates to health for First Nation adoptees, and (2) explore legislative, policy and program implications in the adoption of First Nation children. The findings suggest that, for First Nation adoptees, there is a causal relationship between connection to birth family, community and ancestral knowledge, adoption and health. The major finding is that loss of identity may contribute to impaired physical, spiritual, mental and emotional health for First Nation adoptees. This article provides suggestions on how identity can be preserved in First Nation adoption through programs, policies and practice.
Today's students need to be fully prepared for successful learning and living in the information age. This book provides a practical, flexible framework for designing Guided Inquiry that helps achieve that goal. Guided Inquiry prepares today's learners for an uncertain future by providing the education that enables them to make meaning of myriad sources of information in a rapidly evolving world. The companion book, Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century, explains what Guided Inquiry is and why it is now essential now. This book, Guided Inquiry Design: A Framework for Inquiry in Your School, explains how to do it. The first three chapters provide an overview of the Guided Inquiry design framework, identify the eight phases of the Guided Inquiry process, summarize the research that grounds Guided Inquiry, and describe the five tools of inquiry that are essential to implementation. The following chapters detail the eight phases in the Guided Inquiry design process, providing examples at all levels from pre-K through 12th grade and concluding with recommendations for building Guided Inquiry in your school. The book is for pre-K–12 teachers, school librarians, and principals who are interested in and actively designing an inquiry approach to curricular learning that incorporates a wide range of resources from the library, the Internet, and the community. Staff of community resources, museum educators, and public librarians will also find the book useful for achieving student learning goals.
The serious leisure perspective (SLP) can be described, in simplest terms, as the theoretical framework that synthesizes three main forms of leisure showing, at once, their distinctive features, similarities, and interrelationships. The forms consist of the (1) serious pursuits (i.e., serious leisure [amateurism, hobbyism, and serious volunteering] and devotee work), (2) casual leisure, and (3) project-based leisure. The serious pursuits are distinguished by six qualities, are motivated by several special rewards, sometimes including flow, and offer a leisure career. Eight types of casual leisure are presented along with their benefits. Project-based leisure fits into leisure lifestyle in its own peculiar way as interstitial activity, like some casual leisure but not like most serious leisure. It can therefore help shape a persons optimal leisure lifestyle.
Family history research connects very well with multicultural curriculum because it opens up the multiple experiences of members and communities of a society, as well as helping to make visible the historic construction and ongoing legacy of unequal relationships. The author of this article began to play with what she later called "critical family history," while simultaneously teaching a course on Multicultural Curriculum Design and researching her own family history. However, it wasn’t until years later that she was able to include critical family history within a multicultural education course. In this article, after discussing various ways in which people approach family history research, the author offers three theoretical lenses for critical family history, then two sets of tools to guide research. Then she discusses her experience teaching a multicultural curriculum course for teachers that included critical family history. She concludes by proposing critical family history as a highly useful tool for deepening the practice of multicultural education in classrooms.
Intergenerational learning can be seen as an entity of lifelong learning. When lifelong learning was introduced as a concept by OECD, UNESCO and EC it was connected to the theory of human capital. As such quantitative measures were used and economics outcomes were in focus.
This study was aimed to investigate the relationship between the perceived strength of motivation and level of physical activity during their leisure time of youth. The randomly selected 1,097 (boys = 342, girls = 755) youth reported their duration, frequency, and intensity of physical activity and also indicated their strength of motivation in relation to physical activity. Two-way contingency table analyses and t tests revealed that the strength of motivation for physical activity, was significantly and positively related to active participation.
Genealogy has become a widely popular pursuit, as millions of people now research their family history, trace their forebears, attend family reunions and travel to ancestral home sites. Geographers have much to contribute to the serious study of the family history phenomenon. Land records, maps and even GIS are increasingly used by genealogical investigators. As a cultural practice, it encompasses peoples' emotional attachments to ancestral places and is widely manifest on the ground as personal heritage travel. Family history research also has significant potential to challenge accepted geographical views of migration, ethnicity, socio-economic class and place-based identities. This volume is possibly the first ever book to address the geographical and scholarly aspects of this increasingly popular social phenomenon. It highlights tools and information sources used by geographers and their application to family history research. Furthermore, it examines family history as a socio-cultural practice, including the activities of tourism, archival research and DNA testing. © Dallen J. Timothy and Jeanne Kay Guelke 2008. All rights reserved.
The article explores the role of digital media in supporting lifelong learning. In particular, it focuses on bloggers who write their blogs voluntarily in their own free time. The aim is to examine how lifelong learning—viewed as self-directed, nonformal learning and active participation that evolves from a desire for self-actualization—occurs in the processes of blogging. The data for this small-scale study were collected by qualitative email interviews. In all, 11 Finnish bloggers participated. The findings show that active participation, promoted and enabled by blogging, was actualized in both online and offline environments. It was embedded within six functions of their blogs that the bloggers mentioned: (1) learning and studying, (2) guidance and tutoring, (3) bringing new perspectives to public discussions, (4) applying expertise, (5) creating in one’s own space and at one’s own pace and (6) being part of a digital media culture. The findings indicate that blogging can promote nonformal, lifelong learning in many ways. Blogs and blogging constitute a learning environment that promotes active participation by making interesting, meaningful and enjoyable activities possible, and consequently the enthusiasm to actively learn and develop.
Older people’s civic participation contributes to community development while at the same time providing opportunities for personal growth in later life. One important dimension of civic participation that has been largely underexplored is informal learning. The aim of this study is to explore the learnings experienced by Spanish older people through their participation in political organizations as one important type of participation that has received little attention in the literature to date. A total of 192 people aged 65 years and older and actively engaged in three kinds of political organizations participated in the study. Participants answered an open-ended question regarding learnings through political participation. Results show a range of informal learnings, relating to social, political, or instrumental domains. Both the type of organization and some sociodemographic and participatory characteristics are associated with the type of learnings experienced by participants. Implications for political organizations are discussed.
This article explores the kind of "archivization"2 that is produced by family historians. Within this process, the function and meaning of archives in Scotland is changing and here is offered an examination of this transformation. Firstly, an overview of how family history has developed over time and its relation to the history of Scottish archives is provided. Secondly, the article investigates several themes within family history and tourism. These include an exploration of the Scottish diaspora and the idea of homecoming; a comparison of how the concept of authenticity is used within the tourist industry and archives; and finally a discussion on the role that archives play in the construction of identity.
This engaging book sheds light on the ways in which adults in the twenty-first century interact with technology in different learning environments. Based on one of the first large-scale academic research projects in this area, the authors present their findings and offer practical recommendations for the use of new technology in a learning society. They invite debate on: Why ICTs are believed to be capable of affecting positive change in adult learning. The drawbacks and limits of ICT in adult education. What makes a lifelong learner. The wider social, economic, cultural and political realities of the information age and the learning society. Adult Learning addresses key questions and provides a sound empirical foundation to the existing debate, highlighting the complex realities of the learning society and e-learning rhetoric. It tells the story of those who are excluded from the learning society, and offers a set of strong recommendations for practitioners, policy-makers, and politicians, as well as researchers and students. © 2006 Neil Selwyn, Stephen Gorard and John Furlong. All rights reserved.
Participation or active engagement with life is advocated internationally and is the core for successful aging of individuals. Although participating in volunteering has been proven to benefit older adults’ health and well-being, men participate less in volunteerism than do women. Experiences are considered the primary resources for adults’ growth and learning, yet learning when helping others has been rarely explored. This study provides a new perspective by exploring volunteering as a resource for learning. The purpose of the study was to understand the learning process when older men help others. A total of 17 men aged 60 years and above who had volunteered regularly for at least 2 years were interviewed. Findings, reached by inductive analysis, indicated that these men perceived the learning during volunteering differently from classroom learning. Although learning had not been their intention or focus, the men did develop, in multiple ways, knowledge, skills, and wisdom through volunteering. We concluded that volunteering provides a holistic context with the three attributes of learning: (a) using experience as a foundation, (b) building content that is practical, wide, and diverse, and (c) employing multiple methods and flexibility. Building upon plentiful life experiences, volunteering is a learning context as well as a learning resource for older men, which makes successful aging a reachable aim.
Inquiry experiences can provide valuable opportunities for students to improve their understanding of both science content and scientific practices. However, the implementation of inquiry learning in classrooms presents a number of significant challenges. We have been exploring these challenges through a program of research on the use of scientific visualization technologies to support inquiry-based learning in the geosciences. In this article, we describe 5 significant challenges to implementing inquiry-based learning and present strategies for addressing them through the design of technology and curriculum. We present a design history covering 4 generations of software and curriculum to show how these challenges arise in classrooms and how the design strategies respond to them.
The serious leisure perspective (SLP) can be described, in simplest terms, as the theoretic framework that synthesizes three main forms of leisure and shows, at once, their distinctive features, similarities, and interrelationships (the SLP is discussed in detail in Stebbins, 1992, 2001a, 2007/2015). Additionally, the Perspective (to avoid confusion, Perspective is capitalized wherever it appears as shorthand for serious leisure perspective) considers how the three forms — serious pursuits (serious leisure/devotee work), casual leisure, and project-based leisure — are shaped by various psychological, social, cultural, and historical conditions. Each form serves as a conceptual umbrella for a range of types of related activities. That the Perspective takes its name from the first of these should in no way suggest that it be regarded as the most important or superior of the three in some abstract sense. Rather, the Perspective is so titled simply because it got its start in the study of serious leisure; such leisure is, strictly from the standpoint of intellectual invention, the godfather of the other two. Furthermore, serious leisure has become the bench mark from which analyses of casual and project-based leisure have often been undertaken. So, naming the Perspective after the first facilitates intellectual recognition; it keeps the idea in familiar territory for all concerned.
The meaning of kinship received little sustained attention for some time in British sociology. However, we are now beginning to see a shift, and Jennifer Mason's (2008) conceptualisation of kinship affinities makes an important contribution to emerging debates. In this article I seek to add to such debates and also provide original data from the field of donor conception and lesbian motherhood, a particularly rich field in which to explore the meaning of kin. I investigate stories about becoming parents, and demonstrate that the issue of bringing kinship into being is a key concern in that process. I develop the argument that kinship is a multilayered and malleable resource with an exceptional capacity to encompass difference. This leads me to suggest that we need to be sensitive to the multitude, shifting ways in which connectedness is experienced in personal life.
National surveys investigating the ways in which the public connects with the past have identified the significant role played by family memories and stories. While historians have largely been dismissive of this dimension of historical consciousness, sociologists and psychologists perceive these stories to be essential elements in human development and the creation of social identity. In this study, a cohort of twelve multigenerational families in the southwest of England recounted their family stories, the shared narrative patterns and themes of which challenge existing paradigms of family memory and historical consciousness.
Findagrave.com and Ancestry.com are sites that support the cooperative creation of public historical resources. These sites of cooperative production have attracted tens of thousands and millions of contributors respectively, yet they embrace content standards, social norms, and models of editorial control that differ radically from the well-studied exemplar of Wikipedia. In this study, we investigated how Ancestry.com and Findagrave.com support production of historical resources through analysis of message boards and interviews with participants. We found that these sites are not only places for building a historical resource, but simultaneously serve as opportunities for public memorialization and familial identity construction. Notably, we found that contributors to these websites embrace the idea of familial oversight of biographical information in order to maintain high standards of quality, and they harbor a corresponding skepticism of the open editing practices that have become a hallmark of many open collaboration projects.
Participation in educational and social research helps to develop understanding of how young people learn and to consider wider aspects of their lives to enable their voices to be heard and acted upon. Research also facilitates the articulation and sharing of methodologies across a range of professional practices. We assert that theory and practice in educational youth work offers a position of strength from which to undertake research. In making this assertion, we suggest cross-disciplinarity between youth work and research practices in order to build research mindedness among youth workers who, through this nexus, are well-placed to engage in practice based research. Drawing on discourses about young people, youth work and youth participation, we identify five elements of youth work practice that can be aligned with research processes: reflexivity; positionality and bias; insider cultural competence; rapport and trust; power relationships. The article examines how these elements are present in youth work and a range of research settings. We identify youth work methods and dispositions as enhancing research capacity which could also be useful in building participatory research methods in disciplinary areas beyond education. Yet, in making these connections, we also identify a range of factors that show this nexus as complex and contestable. Reflecting on the lessons learned from our experiences as youth work practitioners and academic researchers, we propose that finding nexus, which in this instance is between youth work and research paradigms, could inform educational research practices and contributes to developing a meaningful praxis.
Travel for the purpose of seeking roots, or roots tourism, is understood to be focused on the descendants of a diaspora living in contemporary multicultural societies and travelling to ancestral homelands in search of identity and belongingness. It is an almost negligible niche segment of heritage tourism due to an obscure amalgam of contextual concepts. The primary purpose of this review is to construct a conceptual framework of reference based on sociological and psychological literatures concerning identity and belongingness. This framework is then employed to synthesize contributions to roots tourism from scholars both within and beyond tourism studies. On the basis of a unique conceptual overlap with seeking roots, travel for the purpose of tracing lineages, or genealogical tourism, by diasporic descendants is concisely discussed with respect to tourism scholarship. It is recommended that researchers in tourism studies systematically develop the contributions of this review by continuing to draw from established disciplines and closely aligned fields of study.