Youth's desire to learn: The pedagogies of platformised learning communities

Abstract

Online, youth have opportunities to shape their learning differently than within formal education. Vermeire is interested in these alternative forms of learning that youth create on social media platforms, as these might question fixated ideas about what constitutes ‘good’ learning. To research how youth (alternatively) shape their learning online, Vermeire has done an ethnography of six learning communities on YouTube, Twitch and TikTok, including in-depth interviews with community members. In her research, Vermeire acquired an understanding of how youth shape their own learning online and, in doing so, how they resist and appropriate the pedagogical opportunities and limitations that formal education, social media platforms, and online learning communities offer them. Youth for instance describe how they experience YouTube and TikTok as platforms to learn to be active on societal issues that matter to them in a manner that lacks within their formal education. Youth furthermore describe how they discover alternative careers online, for which online learning communities are perceived as more relevant in preparing them than formal education. Additionally, youth feel like they can control social media’s algorithms to an extent that they can ‘curate’ which ‘lessons’ and ‘teachers’ they see online, even though those same algorithms are also experienced to thwart their community’s educational aims. Vermeire hopes that her in-depth study of how youth shape their learning online offers inspiration to educators and policy makers to move beyond dystopian perspectives on youth and social media and towards reimaginations of educational practices.