Potapov, Kyrill;
(2024)
Understanding and orchestrating adolescents' interpretation of personal informatics data: social practices in school and at home.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Though most teens in the UK are reported to have used self-tracking technologies, little is known about how or why. The sparse prior work in this area has tended to implement such tools as part of behaviour change interventions. The present thesis supports teens’ agency in directing their own self-tracking practices, explores how they use these tools and considers how to support their process of interpretation in school settings. Drawing on a cultural-historical theoretical approach, this thesis makes two primary contributions to answer the following research question: how can social practices in a secondary school context facilitate the interpretation of personal informatics data and to what ends? First, it improves understanding of how teens use self-tracking tools and how schools can support them, particularly in social and emotional learning. Teens prove versatile and creative users of personal informatics tools, adapting them to track a range of factors from their sleep to their worries. I characterise self-tracking as a slow and tentative process in which the meaning is formed through social practice. I examine how data visualization can mediate everyday situations in young people's lives. My findings demonstrate that data visualisations can support learning by acting as a shared object of inquiry in wider classroom discourse. Drawing out the ambiguities and contradictions of personal data can help learners critically evaluate aspects of their everyday life. Second, I propose a novel theoretical framework for the analysis of meaning in personal informatics. Critically engaging with more familiar methodological approaches in HCI, I draw on the work of Vygotsky to consider meaning at the micro and macro levels of social practice. I characterise the process of self-determination and the development of a critical stance that learners can experience through ongoing engagement with a technology, on their own and with others.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Understanding and orchestrating adolescents' interpretation of personal informatics data: social practices in school and at home |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > UCL Interaction Centre |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10188790 |
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