The Memory Game: Mediational Processes in Social Inclusion

This article examines mediational processes in educational activities at Projeto Clicar, a program designed to promote the social inclusion of young people living on the streets of Sao Paulo, Brasil. It presents an ethnographic description of how informal digital and hands-on activities at Projeto Clicar provide for an integrative socio-cultural process, resituating these children in time and place through the mediation of shared tools and artifacts. This interactive "third space" enables these children to transform their participation in the program's activities over time, and to re-conceptualize their experience as agentive partners in a community of learners collectively engaged in mastering the tools of sociality. In particular, this ethnographic narrative offers a case study of one child's interaction with others in learning relatively simple digital games. Using the strategies of participant observation to explore the interactions between children and educators and among the children themselves, this research explores the process of participatory appropriation and suggests alternative modes of relation in the co-construction of inclusionary social and educational activity.