Affinity Space Characteristics within Virtual and In-person Music Classes
Affinity spaces are the physical, virtual, or combination of locations where people come together around a shared affinity (interest) (Duncan & Hayes, 2012). Gee and Hayes (2010) categorize a space as an affinity space when it has the majority of the following twelve characteristics: 1) Affinity spaces share a common endeavor; 2) affinity spaces are not segregated by age; 3) affinity spaces are not segregated by experience; 4) affinity spaces encourage, but do not require, active participation; 5) interaction transforms content within an affinity space; 6) affinity spaces encourage both intensive and extensive knowledge; 7) affinity spaces encourage individual and distributed knowledge; 8) affinity spaces encourage dispersed knowledge; 9) affinity spaces encourage and honor tacit knowledge; 10) affinity spaces encourage a multitude of engagement; 11) affinity spaces have multiple routes to status; and 12) leadership is porous and leaders are resources. This session discusses each characteristic in relation to informal, online music-related affinity spaces of each characteristic and explores both practical and theoretical applications within virtual and in-person educational contexts.
Chapter Information:
O’Leary, J. (2020). Applications of Affinity Space Characteristics in Music Education. In The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning, edited by Janice Waldron, Stephanie Horsley, and Kari Veblen (pp.65-87). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Podcast Episode On This Chapter:
In this episode I unpack my (2020) publication titled “Applications of affinity space characteristics in music education,” which has twelve characteristics of informal learning spaces that I will discuss in relation to computer science education.