There are widespread concerns about inequities among children in whether they learn to use computers in ways that can promote their own development and about who becomes interested in pursuing advanced knowledge that would position them to work in technological design fields. Schools are being asked to cultivate technological fluency, digital literacy, the capacity to collaborate and other 21st century competencies. Yet, as with other subjects, schools differ widely in the kinds of learning resources they offer.

The goal of our research is to understand how interest can be nurtured across life settings. Our research methods include designing and studying learning environments, carrying out quantitative survey research to investigate how adolescents use technology in their daily lives, and in depth case studies that provide a richer portrait of how technology can be used for learning and creative expression. 

A better understanding of how learning takes place across settings and of the possible synergies and barriers between learning contexts may help educators find ways to supplement school based learning. To make progress on understanding learning across the life spaces of home, school, community, work, and neighborhood we need frameworks and perspectives that help articulate questions that will advance theory and guide data collection. YouthLAB projects are contributing to a learning ecologies framework for studying the emergence of interest and the development of technological fluency.

A learning ecology is defined as the set of contexts, comprised of configurations of activities, material resources, and relationships found in physical or virtual spaces that provide opportunities for learning. A learning ecologies perspective foregrounds that 1) adolescents are simultaneously involved in many settings; 2) they are active in creating activity contexts for themselves within and across settings, and 3) that interest driven activities tend to be self-sustaining given adequate resources.

This research had been supported by of a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF)-sponsored CAREER award (REC-238524) to Barron who is also co-leader of the NSF-funded Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Center. The LIFE Science of Learning Center (Learning in Informal and Formal Environments), an NSF funded (REC-354453) effort seeking to understand and advance human learning through a simultaneous focus on implicit, informal and formal learning, thus cultivating generalizable interdisciplinary theories that can guide the design of effective new technologies and learning environments. Support has also been offered by the Oracle Education Foundation, the Iris Litt Foundation, the Wallenberg Foundation, and the International Education Collaborative Foundation.