While social inclusion projects have centred on digital technology for a long time now, they have remained silent about educating and empowering children to act as technology makers and shapers, not merely passive users. We have organized, together with children, digital technology projects that we now critically examine from the perspective of inclusion/exclusion. The paper shows that in social inclusion projects, there is exclusion taking place in a multitude of forms, shaped by a variety of rules and powers. We use nexus analysis as a theoretical and methodological tool that guides us to study inclusion/exclusion as processes, within which both discourses and concrete actions are to be acknowledged as well as historical and interactional aspects-both at individual level and at the level of social structures. Our study shows that inclusion and exclusion may be intentionally accomplished by children themselves, those may result without any intentional effort because of circumstances and those may also be done for children by various kinds of adults.Although children's empowerment and agency are significant, also adults play a decisive role. Implications for social inclusion and digital technology education research and practice are discussed. Nexus analysis is suggested as a useful means for revealing and managing the complexity involved in social inclusion/exclusion.

Abstract. Children's participation in information and communication technology (ICT) design is an established interdisciplinary research field. Methods for children's participation have been developed, but a closer link between theory and design has been called for, as well as an examination of various participants influencing children's participation in ICT design. This paper addresses these gaps by introducing the research strategy of nexus analysis as a promising theoretical framework. Especially the concepts of 'interaction order' and 'historical body' are utilized in the analysis of six empirical studies on ICT design with children. The analysis shows that through the participating children there were also 'others' involved, multiple voices to be heard, often invisible but informing design. Some of these 'others' have already been acknowledged in literature but the issue has not been examined in depth and common vocabulary for this is lacking. Some practical implications will be offered by illustrating how to consider these concepts in different phases of ICT design: when establishing relationships with children, involving children as participant designers, and analysing the results of these participative processes.

This paper examines video diaries gathered from 10-11-year-old pupils with the aim of inquiring children's technology use in their everyday life. A discourse lens is utilized to provide novel insights into the nature and use of videos and diaries in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research and design. The paper shows how the children, given the same assignment, produced their video diaries from a range of different positions such as 'a diarist', 'a news anchor' and 'a stage performer', and through a variety of widely known genres such as 'an intimate, confessional diary entry', 'a news broadcast', and 'a homework assignment'. The children also smoothly moved between the positions and genres sometimes changing them several times even during one video clip. Our findings bear implications on two types of HCI research: firstly, studies using diaries for research and design purposes and, secondly, studies interested in videos produced by the research subjects. The paper emphasizes videos and diaries as a multifaceted resource not only revealing facts from the producers' lives but also playful experimenting with different positions and genres highlighting constant identity exploration and construction going on during the creation of the data. During the data analysis it is useful to consider within what kind of positionings and genres the pieces of data or 'facts' have been created as these genres and positions always frame and limit what is said and how. The paper also suggests that researchers could try to guide the research subjects to adopt certain positions and to rely on certain genres in producing their diaries or video clips to obtain better-focused data for particular research or design purposes. On the other hand, challenges involved with this kind of an attempt are also highlighted.

Abstract. Despite abundant research on educational technology and strategic input in the field, various surveys have shown that (language) teachers do not seem to embrace in their teaching the full potential of information and communication technology available in our everyday life. Language students soon entering the professional field could accelerate the process, which highlights the role of teacher education in contributing to the change. The students should see how technology-development may change the affordances for languagelearning, at the same time transforming the teachers' professional roles and practices. However, taking an active role in designing a new kind of language pedagogy seems to be challenging for students. This study explores an attempt to facilitate the students' perspective-switch from the teacher role to the designer position through participatory design. This effort was to lead the students to envisioning new practices for language learning and teaching with new technologies. However, initial analyses of the research materials indicated that despite the support the students were not fully able to see their role as designers for the future. Cultural-historical activity theory was used to examine the problem more closely. The analysis suggests that in order to position themselves as designers of the future language learning activity, language students need to understand their role as designers, conduct real-life experiments on the evolving visions with their learners, and involve learners as participants in the design activity by sharing visions and collaborative reflection on the experiments. The findings of the study provide tools for language teacher educators to make these activity systems visible and, thus, target for change.

PurposeThe low number of women in the information technology (IT) field is a concern. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors behind the exclusion of girls from the IT field.Design/methodology/approachThe present work includes a narrative literature review and an exploratory interview study with ten girls and six study guidance counsellors (GCs) from Finnish senior high schools. Using the nexus analysis as a theoretical lens, the authors examined the exclusion of girls from IT.FindingsEarlier literature directed attention to the cultural norms, assumptions and stereotypes still prevalent in society and the lack of role models and positive media as factors contributing to girls excluding themselves from the IT field. In this research study’s data, the authors not only found evidence of the unintentional exclusion of girls from IT by others but also by the girls themselves. Findings of this research study illustrate the various discourses, actors and their interactions, their background and history-related factors affecting girls' career choices. The novelty of this study is in approaching high school as a site of exclusion, where problematic discourses, interactions and histories come together, reproducing exclusion of girls from the IT field.Originality/valueThe authors contribute with a literature review of the research study on gender and IT and the inclusion/exclusion dynamics around IT. Using the nexus analysis, the authors identify the exclusion dynamics in this complex social issue. Several decades of research have shown that the inclusion of women remains low in IT disciplines. In this study, high schools are viewed as sites of exclusion, engendering a prevalent lack of information and education on the field. The authors offer novel insights into the role of curriculum, GCs and online information excluding girls from the IT field.

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Girls' disinterest in Information Technology (IT) careers is a persisting problem. We wanted to examine girls' perceptions of the IT field as well as factors shaping their career choices, to find ways girls might see IT/Information Systems careers as more interesting. For this purpose, we interviewed Finnish senior high school students, as senior high school is the last opportunity to influence girls' career choice in higher education. In addition, we asked senior high school IT teachers about IT education and their perceptions of students' relations to IT. Using nexus analysis as a sensitizing device, we focused on various discourses circulating around, different actors and their relations, as well as experience and background related matters that affect girls' career choice. Surprisingly gendered understandings of the IT field and career choices were still prevalent among the studied young people, and this supports educational and occupational segregation.

Abstract. We contribute in this study a first step in theory-based understanding on how creativity in collaborative design sessions relates to the elements that are present in a creative act. These elements include group composition, objects present, practices used, and previous knowledge of the participants. The context of this study was our search for lightweight methods for technology design with children, which can be used in a school context with large groups, will require as little amount of training as possible, and can be set up quickly. We formed a mixed group, consisting of young children, an older child and an adult, with the aim of involving children in creative collaborative brainstorming during the very early phases of design, so as to come up with fruitful ideas for technology development. We report our process and examine the implications of our results in relation to different elements that trigger and affect creativity in the collaborative design process. Use of Vygotsky's cycle of creativity as our theoretical lens together with timeline analysis method presented in the paper were essential for seeing beneath the surface of what happened in this complex, collaborative creative process. Our results can be used for further methodological development of creative collaborative sessions, both with children and adults.2