Family Negotiation in Joint Media Engagement with Creative Computing

Title of the Paper

Negotiating Joint Media Interaction in Families during Creative Computing

Bibliographic Information

• Subject Area: Human-Computer Interaction (HCI); Family Education; Joint Media Engagement (JME)
• Keywords: Family negotiation, joint media interaction, creative production, educational technology, parental roles, child agency, sociocultural learning

Research Background and Issues

• Problems and Challenges:

  • Most research on family joint media interaction focuses on parental roles or media mediation practices, lacking in-depth exploration of the roles and agency of other family members (e.g., children or siblings).
  • Existing studies are primarily based on laboratory or interview data, which may fail to capture the complex family dynamics in natural settings.
  • There is a significant lack of research on non-mainstream families (e.g., marginalized groups in terms of race or socioeconomic status).

• Significance:

  • Families are vital learning ecosystems, where interactions and agency among members have profound impacts on education and technology use.
  • A deeper understanding of the negotiation processes among family members in joint creative activities can inform the design of more inclusive and productive educational technologies and learning experiences.

• Research Motivation:

  • To explore how families negotiate practices while using educational technologies like ScratchJr to create interactive projects.
  • To expand the definition of "productive" joint media engagement to emphasize agency, collaboration, and family cultural contexts.

Solutions

• Methods and Solutions:

  • This study implemented the "Family Creative Learning" (FCL) program in informal learning environments to support and observe interaction dynamics during family creative production.
  • Data collection included field notes, screen recordings, family member interviews, and project artifacts.
  • A negotiation perspective from sociocultural learning theory was used to analyze how family members define roles and participation patterns.

• Innovations:

  • Reexamines learning dynamics in joint media interaction through a "negotiation" framework, focusing on the roles of children and siblings rather than solely parents.
  • Provides a detailed analysis of two main negotiation categories and their specific strategies: device control negotiation and creative control negotiation.
  • Conducted in community centers, the study focuses on non-mainstream ethnic families, offering new perspectives for diversity research.

• Implementation Steps and Key Techniques:

  • Families were divided into five groups and participated in four workshops creating projects using ScratchJr, each session including four phases: dining, discussion, creation, and sharing.
  • Qualitative and thematic analysis methods were used to examine specific negotiation behaviors around device operation and creative direction, such as verbal requests, physical actions, and invitations to collaborate.

Research Findings

• Specific Findings:

  • Classification of Negotiation Practices:
    • Device Control (e.g., requesting the device, taking over the device, returning the device).
    • Creative Control (e.g., inviting creative input, making suggestions, leading creativity, blending ideas).
  • Observations on Negotiation Patterns:
    • Different family members (parents, children, siblings) exhibited diverse negotiation strategies in collaborative dynamics.
    • Younger children often found themselves in weaker positions; identity-related creative content (e.g., personal imagery) was more likely to provoke persistence.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions:

  • Provides a more granular analysis of family interactions, highlighting the distribution of power and roles among members.
  • Emphasizes negotiation as a potential learning experience rather than merely functional conflict resolution.
  • Expands existing frameworks on parental roles while highlighting children's agency and participation patterns.

• Experiments and Evaluation:

  • Analysis of 19 hours of screen recordings and 17 interviews revealed rich dynamics in natural settings, particularly detailed interactions under tension and negotiation scenarios.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  • Participants were predominantly mothers, lacking comprehensive observation of fathers or other guardians.
  • Data was mainly derived from a limited number of specific families, and the generalizability of findings requires further validation.
  • Future research is encouraged to focus on "cultural sustainability" in joint media interaction design across diverse cultural contexts and how design can promote broader negotiation and agency.

Conclusion

This study elucidates how family members achieve joint creative learning through negotiation processes and introduces a new conception of productive joint media engagement—viewing role negotiation and tension management among members as significant learning opportunities. These findings offer critical insights for the design of educational technologies, particularly in supporting family diversity and cultural contexts.