Investigating the Lived Experience of a Virtual World After School Club- RF2 slides for my PhD

1. Investigating the Lived
Experience of a Virtual
World After School
Club.
Chris Bailey

2. My Background
• Teacher / Assistant Headteacher -
primary age range
• Researcher - digital literacy,
practitioner research, PhD - education,
literacy, technology
• Club Leader - extra-curricular Minecraft
Club

3. Forthcoming Study
'Investigating the lived experience of a
children's virtual world after-school club.'
• Year long ethnography of a Minecraft
Club
• Approx 15 Y6 children (10 – 11 years)
• Classroom based, using laptops / ipads
• Building and inhabiting a ‘virtual
community’

4. What is Minecraft?
Sandbox indie video game
Building Blocks
'Virtual Lego'
Survival / Creative modes
Edu mod
Virtual World

5. Context
• New Literacy Studies (Street, 2003)
• Multiliteracies (Cope and Kalantzis,
2000)
• Hybrid sites (Burnett and Bailey, 2014)
• School Based Studies
• Virtual Worlds

6. Focus
• Illuminate the experience and motivations of
individuals who are compelled, motivated and
engaged by participation in virtual world play. (O’Mara,
2012; Bailey and Moar, 2001; Merchant, 2009)
• Articulate how identities are formed and meanings
are made by participants interacting in and around
social, virtual environments. (Wohlwend et al, 2011;
Dickey, 2011; Marsh, 2011)
• Explore how children negotiate the complex
relationships between material and virtual place and
space. (Dickey 2010; Ito, 2009)

7. Background to the Club
• Child initiated club
• Flat, empty space
• Famework: Building 'a community space'
• 'Bradborough'
• Self guided / Adult input

8. ‘… amazingly, we started off with
just a flat land and we have
produced this big community...’ –
Abigail
‘Bradborough is a
town which is
relentlessly
growing... where
anyone can build.'
- Joseph

9. Self-guided activities
Just a few examples of what the children did.....
• Made squid farms
• Built a hotel with a bar, swimming pool and sauna
• Made a library
• Erected a central statue - 'the butter God'
• Created a history for the village
• Enacted play based on popular culture references
• -Hunger Games, Baby Monkey, Kensuke's Kingdom
• Set traps for each other
• Created a rollercoaster
• Crafted 'armour and weaponry at the forge'
• Created a theatre and staged a performance of 'Mamma
Mia'

10. The Tornado - destruction of a
community
• Adult input
• Topic Link
• Rules disappeared, Conventions
Activities dispersed

11. Designing an Research
Approach / Complexities
1a. Why Ethnography?
b. Why Participatory Ethnography?
2. Focus of observations (Photography analogy)
3. Re-conceptualising ethnography:
a. For a hybrid site (on / off screen)
b. For existing relationships
4. Methods outlined

12. 1a. Why Ethnography?
– Longitudinal, ongoing, changes over time
– Detailed interpretation of an aspect of socially
located, human experience (Denzin and
Lincoln, 2011)
– Learning about a culture, describing what
participants do and the meanings they ascribe
to their actions (Wolcott, 2008, p. 71)
– 'Thick description' (Geertz, 1993)
– (Virtual / Connective? (Hine, 2000))

13. 1b. Participatory Ethnography
• Participatory - my role in the club
• Participatory - children as researchers
• Taking account of the 'competing versions
of reality and multiple perspectives'
(Brewer, 2000, p. 108)
• Addressing the balance of power

14. 2. Photographer's
Dilemma
‘Of all the objects
in the world: why
choose (why
photograph) this
object, this
moment, rather
than some other?'
(p. 6)

15. 2. Photographer / Ethnographer's
Dilemma
Capturing a representation of the truth but
there are decisions to be made:
• Where to look? When to look?
• What to capture?
• Which angle? Which perspective?
• Close-up or from a distance?
• Fixed or movable viewpoint?
• Edits and filters? Is the original more 'true'?
• Self - disappear or make visible?
• Complicated further by 'hybrid sites'

16. 3a. Hybrid Sites
• Complex network of places and spaces.
• 'hybrid on/offscreen sites' / 'hybrid physical/virtual
sites' (Burnett and Bailey, 2014)
• Fluid, not fixed.
• Participants inhabit a number of ‘inter-related
social realities’ (Merchant, 2009) resulting in a
‘multiplicity of presence’ (Martin et al, 2012).
• The complexity can lead to 'an unravelling of
certainties about researching literacies' (Burnett
and Merchant, 2013)
• Necessary to focus on multiplicities that avoids the
'temptation to reify an event as a unit of analysis.'
(Burnett and Merchant, 2013)

17. 3b. Rethinking My Identity
Renegotiating
• 'Burdened with pieces of ready-made identities' / required to ‘extend and
redefine already existing relationships’ (Nespor, 2010, p. 203)
• Establishing a researcher identity
Positioning
• Hybrid role as the club leader and a researcher
• An adult who is open to contribution, co-construction and participation at
children's invitation
• Responsibility towards the safety and wellbeing of the children
• Control?
Performing
• Rehearsal - Clothing / Appearance
• Virtual me?
• Power balance
• Reflexivity
• ‘Second level of reflection’ (Watt, 2007, p.83) - reflective research journal /
blog

18. Making a room for
'Ava the tiny babby'

19. 4. Outline of Methods
Selected to take account of different perspectives
that represent the multiple modalities and
interactions that will arise in this hybrid space.
1. Participant Observation (45 hrs)
2. Discussion Activities (5 hrs)
3. Interviews (8 hrs)
4. Collection of materials (ongoing)

20. References
• Burnett, C. & Bailey, C. (in press). Conceptualising collaboration in hybrid sites:
Playing Minecraft together and apart in a primary classroom. In: Burnett, C.,
Davies, J., Merchant, G. & J. Rowsell (ed.). New literacies around the globe:
Policy and pedagogy. . Abingdon, Oxon, Routledge.
• BAILEY, Fiona and MOAR, Magnus (2001). The vertex project: Children
creating and populating 3D virtual worlds. International journal of art and design
education, 20 (1), 19-30.
• BARTHES, Roland (1981). Camera Lucida: Reflections on
photography. Macmillan.
• BREWER, John D. (2000). Ethnography. [online]. Buckingham [England], Open
University Press..
• BURNETT, Cathy and MERCHANT, Guy (2013). Points of view:
Reconceptualising literacies through an exploration of adult and child
interactions in a virtual world. Journal of research in reading, , n/a-n/a.
• COPE, Bill, KALANTZIS, Mary and New London Group (2000). Multiliteracies:
Literacy learning and the design of social futures. New York, Routledge.

21. • DENZIN, Norman K. and LINCOLN, Yvonna S. (2011). The discipline and practise of
qualitative research. In: DENZIN, Norman K. and LINCOLN, Yvonna S. (eds.). The SAGE
handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, Calif, Sage, 1-19.
• DICKEY, Michele (2011). The pragmatics of virtual worlds for K-12 educators: Investigating
the affordances and constraints of active worlds and second life with K-12 in-service
teachers. Educational technology research and development, 59 (1), 1-20.
• GEERTZ, Clifford (1993). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. London,
Fontana.
• ITO, Mizuko (2009). Engineering play: A cultural history of children's software. The MIT
Press.
• LAW, John (2004). After method: Mess in social science research. London, Routledge.
• MARSH, Jackie (2011). Young children's literacy practices in a virtual world: Establishing
an online interaction order. Reading research quarterly,46 (2), 101-118.
• MARTIN, C., et al. (2012).
Playing together separately: Mapping out literacy and social synchronicity. In: 226-243.
• MERCHANT, Guy (2009). Literacy in virtual worlds. Journal of research in reading, 32 (1),
38-56.
• NESPOR, J. (2010). Tangled up in school. New York, Routledge.
• O'MARA, Joanne (2012). Process drama and digital games as text and action in virtual
worlds: Developing new literacies in school. Research in drama education, 17 (4), 517-534.
• STREET, Brian (2003). What's "new" in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy
in theory and practice. Current issues in comparative education, 5 (2), 77-91.
• WATT, Diane (2007). On becoming a qualitative researcher: the value of reflexivity. The
qualitative report, 12 (1), 82-101.
• WOHLWEND, Karen E., et al. (2011). Navigating discourses in place in the world of
webkinz. Journal of early childhood literacy, 11 (2), 141-163.
• WOLCOTT, Harry F. (2008). Ethnography: A way of seeing. [online]. Lanham, Md;
Plymouth, Altamira Press.

22. Follow up / Feedback
Blog: http://prmrytchr.co.uk
Twitter: @mrchrisjbailey