Six Degrees of Aspiration Raising

Created by Catherine Howell (La Trobe University) on September 21, 2005

How do pupils and teachers find out about opportunities in higher education? And is there a way that social networking and semantic web technologies can be applied to the joint problem of raising educational aspirations and widening participation in HE?

Last week, I attended the British Educational Research Association conference, BERA 2005. One of the papers that intrigued me most was from a research team based at Edge Hill College, located in the North West of England. The team, lead by Rob Foster, worked with secondary school teachers in the region to find out about their knowledge of opportunities in higher education. What they found was that teachers and pupils alike rely heavily on personal networks.

I mentioned in a recent post that a lot of work by cognitive psychologists and scientists has been done in the area of affective cognition (or “hot” as opposed to “cold” cognition). Social scientists have extended the metaphor and are now talking about the phenomenon of “hot” and “cold” contacts. “Hot” contacts are characterized by a personal connection. The key is that the connection need not be a direct one in order to achieve the valuable status of “hot”.

A couple of weeks ago, Matt Pasiewicz re-posted the news that UMass Amherst researchers have discovered an algorithm that explains the “six degrees of separation” theory. This might not be an earth-shattering proposal, but it seems to me that there is an obvious application of this algorithm in the dilemma of the student or teacher located in smaller schools or schools that do not have a strong track record of turning students into university applicants. The same would hold for students who may be first in their family to consider higher education as an option. Could there be an aspiration-raising version of the Facebook?

There is some indication that physically disabled students and students with specific learning disabilities may be especially reliant on personal connections for the information they receive about higher education. So if a means of leveraging semantic web / social networking technologies can be found, there may well be a specific payoff in terms of increasing equity and access.

Ref:
Z. Kunda (1999), Social cognition: Making sense of people, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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		Six Degrees of Aspiration Raising Created by Catherine Howell (La Trobe University) on September 21, 2005 How do pupils and teachers find out about opportunities in higher education? And is there a way that social networking and semantic web technologies can be applied to the joint problem of raising educational aspirations and widening participation in HE? Last week, I attended the British Educational Research Association conference, BERA 2005. One of the papers that intrigued me most was from a research team based at Edge Hill College, located in the North West of England. The team, lead by Rob Foster, worked with secondary school teachers in the region to find out about their knowledge of opportunities in higher education. What they found was that teachers and pupils alike rely heavily on personal networks. I mentioned in a recent post that a lot of work by cognitive psychologists and scientists has been done in the area of affective cognition (or “hot” as opposed to “cold” cognition). Social scientists have extended the metaphor and are now talking about the phenomenon of “hot” and “cold” contacts. “Hot” contacts are characterized by a personal connection. The key is that the connection need not be a direct one in order to achieve the valuable status of “hot”. A couple of weeks ago, Matt Pasiewicz re-posted the news that UMass Amherst researchers have discovered an algorithm that explains the “six degrees of separation” theory. This might not be an earth-shattering proposal, but it seems to me that there is an obvious application of this algorithm in the dilemma of the student or teacher located in smaller schools or schools that do not have a strong track record of turning students into university applicants. The same would hold for students who may be first in their family to consider higher education as an option. Could there be an aspiration-raising version of the Facebook? There is some indication that physically disabled students and students with specific learning disabilities may be especially reliant on personal connections for the information they receive about higher education. So if a means of leveraging semantic web / social networking technologies can be found, there may well be a specific payoff in terms of increasing equity and access. Ref: Z. Kunda (1999), Social cognition: Making sense of people, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Equity and Access \| Semantic Web \| Social Networking \| Widening Participation Catherine's blog Login or register to post comments 4266 reads
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