Is digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’?

The British government is claiming digital skills will deliver economic growth to the country and social mobility to young people: its ministers call it ‘a pipeline to prosperity’. While declaring this pipeline, the government assumes the needs of the economy and young people’s needs are (or should...

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Main Authors: Davies, H, eynon, R
Format: Journal article
Published: SAGE Publications 2018
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author Davies, H
eynon, R
author_facet Davies, H
eynon, R
author_sort Davies, H
collection OXFORD
description The British government is claiming digital skills will deliver economic growth to the country and social mobility to young people: its ministers call it ‘a pipeline to prosperity’. While declaring this pipeline, the government assumes the needs of the economy and young people’s needs are (or should be) synchronised. We challenge this assumption and the policy it sustains with data from questionnaires, workshops and interviews with 50 young people from communities in South Wales (including a former mining town and a deprived inner city area) about digital technology’s role in their everyday life. We use a new typography to compare the reality of their socially and economically structured lives to the governmental policy discourse that makes them responsible for their country’s future economic success. To explain these young people’s creative and transgressive use of technology, we also make an empirically grounded contribution to the ongoing theoretical debates about structure and agency.
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spelling oxford-uuid:d13c8244-39ae-4a4d-af7e-05474dd17b4c2022-03-27T07:55:43ZIs digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’?Journal articlehttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_dcae04bcuuid:d13c8244-39ae-4a4d-af7e-05474dd17b4cSymplectic Elements at OxfordSAGE Publications2018Davies, Heynon, RThe British government is claiming digital skills will deliver economic growth to the country and social mobility to young people: its ministers call it ‘a pipeline to prosperity’. While declaring this pipeline, the government assumes the needs of the economy and young people’s needs are (or should be) synchronised. We challenge this assumption and the policy it sustains with data from questionnaires, workshops and interviews with 50 young people from communities in South Wales (including a former mining town and a deprived inner city area) about digital technology’s role in their everyday life. We use a new typography to compare the reality of their socially and economically structured lives to the governmental policy discourse that makes them responsible for their country’s future economic success. To explain these young people’s creative and transgressive use of technology, we also make an empirically grounded contribution to the ongoing theoretical debates about structure and agency.
spellingShingle Davies, H
eynon, R
Is digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’?
title Is digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’?
title_full Is digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’?
title_fullStr Is digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’?
title_full_unstemmed Is digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’?
title_short Is digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’?
title_sort is digital upskilling the next generation our pipeline to prosperity
work_keys_str_mv AT daviesh isdigitalupskillingthenextgenerationourpipelinetoprosperity
AT eynonr isdigitalupskillingthenextgenerationourpipelinetoprosperity