Lisa G’s Week 1 Readings

I loved the insights from the readings this week. I gave more attention to New Media Literacies and Rogoff’s 2007 piece, as well as the AAP brief.  I enjoyed the interplay between the critical developmentally appropriate lens of Alper and what I felt were the somewhat overbearing and fear-mongering AAP recommendations, including  “Examine your own media use habits; pediatricians who watch more TV are less likely to advise families to follow AAP recommendations.” I liked how Rogoff gave us a nest of rich contexts to consider technologies and children inside of, be they explanations of child repertoires or developmental niches, as well as the facets of learning environments via the prisms that force or ask certain tacit responses.

There is one excerpt that I want to speak to in particular by Alper:

Such assumptions ignore three core problems: (1) the participation gap, defined as ‘the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills and knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow’…

…another hurdle might be a scaffolding gap, whereby young children from low-income backgrounds receive little direction or support from caregivers in their early literacy experiences, potentially widening the participation gap, even between children with equal access.

I feel like I’ve been trained to be highly suspicious of the words “culture” and “[insert anything] gap,” be it language, achievement, participation, or scaffolding gaps.  I’m wondering if it is possible to discuss any “gap” without addressing essential contradictions in American values which seem to be a silently waged war every day in every level of decision-making in schools (do we make moves to benefit the top cut and increase our own institutional standing or do we empower the whole crop equally). It seems that implicit in the idea of the gap, we’ve already clearly named what side we are in favor of. In reference to these excerpts, who says there is a participation gap? Who defines what is a scaffolding gap? Who is setting the bar of proficient or advanced achievement in new media literacy, and why do we compulsively keep ranking everybody?