Ratchet Head Pedagogy

This narrative autobiographical study is a tribute to do-it-yourselfers who have long worked on their own, patiently troubleshooting motorcycle-related problems often without having all the information or the parts at hand and frequently without having the proper skills to do so. The authors address a peculiar phenomenon that emerged at the same time as Web 2.0 technologies, deemed to be more social: the capacity for anyone to solve problems that would be otherwise impossible. The specific narratives looked at are the authors’ own experiences with Italian motorcycles and how they learned to customize and tune them through joining asynchronous online discussions. The authors present the context of the study, the theoretical framework inspired by Csikszentmihalyi, Foucault, Freire, Dewey, and Wenger, and the methodology. They make an effort to present the results sequentially so that the reader is given a good sense of their experience. The authors offer a discussion that shows the relationships between their experience and progressive concepts of education, which could be useful for the traditional educational system that is currently adrift.