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Educational Support to Develop Socially Disadvantaged Young People’s Digital Skills and Competencies: The Contribution of Collaborative Relationships Toward Young People’s Empowerment

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Towards a Collaborative Society Through Creative Learning (WCCE 2022)

Abstract

Digital skills and competencies are necessary for thriving in the coming digital society, and it is important for youths to gain these competencies as well as to become empowered as actors in the digital environment. This paper contends that collaborative relationships established as part of an educational support group to develop socially disadvantaged young people’s digital skills and competencies positively impact their empowerment. We discuss the findings of four years of action research among a support group for socially disadvantaged youths in a provincial city in Japan. The results suggest that the collaborative relationships established within an educational support group can create a rich learning context and foster collaborative agency for youths. Moreover, computer programming carried out in the context of these relationships may generate cooperation and a unique programming culture shared among the youths.

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Notes

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    Mugbot was initially designed by the Koike Laboratory in Tokyo Metropolitan University http://www.mugbot.com.

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    The typical length of a day’s field notes was approximately 1,000 to 2,000 words in English.

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    Number of Encapsulated Subcodes.

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    Number of References to Field notes Description.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank all of the members of the support group who kindly offered the opportunity for this study to be conducted. This study was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number 16K01136.

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Correspondence to Toshinori Saito .

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Saito, T. (2023). Educational Support to Develop Socially Disadvantaged Young People’s Digital Skills and Competencies: The Contribution of Collaborative Relationships Toward Young People’s Empowerment. In: Keane, T., Lewin, C., Brinda, T., Bottino, R. (eds) Towards a Collaborative Society Through Creative Learning. WCCE 2022. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 685. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43393-1_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-43393-1_9

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