New Media Pathways: Navigating the Links between Home, School, and the Workplace

Abstract

This chapter uses the case of students enrolled in the Multimedia Pathway offered by Harbourside High School to discuss the tensions and contradictions inherent in the views that: (a) school curriculum and pedagogy have much to learn from young people’s informal and leisure-based learning; and (b) school-based courses in new media are important because they increase student retention and the chance of success in post-school employment. We draw on literature about the “new work order” (Gee, Hull, & Lankshear, 1996) to explore the nature of these students’ learning about and with ICTs and show that the students’ knowledge exists “in a network of relationships” (Gee, 2000) that bridge the formal and informal learning divide. Finally, we discuss the parts played by their in- and out-of-school engagements with ICT in their becoming the kinds of portfolio people supposedly required by the new capitalism.