What is Subcultural Capital

This chapter describes a study conducted with nine adolescents hired to instruct week-long video game making camps over the course of one summer and the subsequent fall, working with younger children ages 9-12. Data was collected through participant observation, repeated interviews, and focus groups with the participant adolescent teachers. By engaging in teaching as well as playing, these youth have had greater opportunities to critically reflect on their learning, assessing the value of the technical and ideological approaches to video games. Several themes emerged as we reviewed the discussions we had with the instructors, related to knowledge of content, issues of management of learning environments, and learning how to teach. In this chapter we hope to point to the importance of the cultural and subcultural capital that adolescents bring to learning experiences, in order to better utilize their expertise and to recognize ‘texts’ such as video games as sites of meaningful learning.