The Routledge Handbook of Digital Literacies in Early Childhood [1 ed.] 9781138303881, 9780203730638

Citation preview

The Routledge Handbook of Digital Literacies in Early Childhood

As fast-evolving technologies transform everyday communication and literacy practices, many young children find themselves immersed in multiple digital media from birth. Such rapid technological change has consequences for the development of early literacy, and the ways in which parents and educators are able to equip today’s young citizens for a digital future. This seminal Handbook fulfils an urgent need to consider how digital technologies are impacting the lives and learning of young children; and how childhood experiences of using digital resources can serve as the foundation for present and future development. Considering children aged 0–8 years, chapters explore the diversity of young children’s literacy skills, practices and expertise across digital tools, technologies and media, in varied contexts, settings and countries. The Handbook explores six significant areas: •• •• •• •• •• ••

Part I presents an overview of research into young children’s digital literacy practices, touching on a range of theoretical, methodological and ethical approaches. Part II considers young children’s reading, writing and meaning-making when using digital media at home and in the wider community. Part III offers an overview of key challenges for early childhood education presented by digital literacy, and discusses political positioning and curricula. Part IV focuses on the multimodal and multi-sensory textual landscape of contemporary literary practices, and how children learn to read and write with and across media. Part V considers how digital technologies both influence and are influenced by children’s online and offline social relationships. Part VI draws together themes from across the Handbook, to propose an agenda for future research into digital literacies in early childhood.

A timely resource identifying and exploring pedagogies designed to bolster young children’s digital and multimodal literacy practices, this key text will be of interest to early childhood educators, researchers and policy-makers. Ola Erstad is Professor and Head of the Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway. Rosie Flewitt is Reader in Early Communication and Literacy, UCL Institute of Education, London, UK. Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer is Professor in the German Department at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Íris Susana Pires Pereira is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education of the University of Minho, Portugal.

The Routledge International Handbook Series

The Routledge International Handbook of Early Childhood Play (2017) Edited by Tina Bruce, Pentti Hakkarainen and Milda Bredikyte The Routledge International Handbook of Early Literacy Education (2017) Edited by Natalia Kucirkova, Catherine E. Snow, Vibeke Grover and Catherine McBride The Routledge International Handbook of Critical Positive Psychology (2017) Edited by Nick Brown, Tim Lomas and Francisco Jose Eiroa-Orosa International Handbook of Positive Aging (2017) Edited by Rachael E Docking and Jennifer Stocks Routledge International Handbook of Schools and Schooling in Asia (2018) Edited by Kerry J. Kennedy and John Chi-Kin Lee Routledge International Handbook of Multicultural Education Research in Asia Pacific (2018) Edited by Yun-Kyung Cha, Seung-Hwan Ham, Moosung Lee Routledge International Handbook of Froebel and Early Childhood Practice (2019) Edited by Tina Bruce, Peter Elfer and Sacha Powell with Louie Werth Routledge International Handbook of Learning with Technology in Early Childhood (2019) Edited by Natalia Kucirkova, Jennifer Rowsell and Garry Falloon The Routledge Handbook of Digital Literacies in Early Childhood Edited by Ola Erstad, Rosie Flewitt, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Íris Susana Pires Pereira For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Routledge-InternationalHandbooks-of-Education/book-series/HBKSOFED

The Routledge Handbook of Digital Literacies in Early Childhood

Edited by Ola Erstad, Rosie Flewitt, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Íris Susana Pires Pereira

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business  2020 selection and editorial matter, Ola Erstad, Rosie Flewitt, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Íris Susana Pires Pereira; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Ola Erstad, Rosie Flewitt, Bettina KümmerlingMeibauer and Íris Susana Pires Pereira to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-30388-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-73063-8 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Swales & Willis Ltd, Exeter, Devon, UK

Contents

List of figures and excerpts ix List of tables x List of contributors xi Acknowledgements xx

Introduction: the emerging field of digital literacies in early childhood 1 Ola Erstad, Rosie Flewitt, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Íris Susana Pires Pereira

PART I

Perspectives on digital literacies in early childhood

17

  1 Researching the digital literacy and multimodal practices of young children: a European agenda for change Jackie Marsh

19

  2 Theorizing digital literacy practices in early childhood Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen   3 Researching digital literacy practices in early childhood: challenges, complexities and imperatives David Poveda   4 Ethics and researching young children’s digital literacy practices Rosie Flewitt   5 Comparative global knowledge about the use of digital technologies for learning among young children Sonia Livingstone, Sun Sun Lim, Anulekha Nandi and Becky Pham

31

45 64

79

v

Contents

PART II

Young children’s digital literacy practices in homes, communities and informal learning spaces   6 Young children’s digital literacy practices in the home: past, present and future research directions Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen

93 95

  7 Reconceptualizing the home of digital childhood Marta Morgade, Cristina Aliagas and David Poveda

109

  8 Older siblings as mediators of infants’ and toddlers’ (digital) media use Andra Siibak and Elyna Nevski

123

  9 Safety issues in young children’s digital literacy practices at home Stéphane Chaudron, Rosanna Di Gioia and Monica Gemo

134

10 Children’s divergent practices and access to digital media in home, school and neighbourhood communities Mastin Prinsloo

146

11 “You know what’s glitching?”: emergent digital literacies in video game play Edward Rivero and Kris D. Gutiérrez

158

PART III

Young children’s digital literacy practices in early education settings 169 12 Digital and media literacy-related policies and teachers’ attitudes Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen, Sascha Trültzsch-Wijnen and Kjartan Ólafsson

171

13 Pedagogical approaches to digital literacy in early years education Stavroula Kontovourki and Eufimia Tafa

187

14 Inclusivity and young children’s digital literacy practices in early education 200 Grace Oakley 15 Young children’s digital play in early childhood settings: curriculum, pedagogy and teachers’ knowledge Elizabeth Wood, Joce Nuttall, Susan Edwards and Susan Grieshaber vi

214

Contents

16 Remixing emergent literacy education: cross-age, plurilingual, multimedia adventures in narrative teaching and learning Heather Lotherington

227

17 Posthuman theory as a tool to explore literacy desirings: Sara-Taylor-iPad-Book becoming in Writers’ Studio Candace R. Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker

242

PART IV

Reading and writing on screen

255

18 Young children’s writing in the 21st century: the challenge of moving from paper to screen Clare Dowdall

257

19 Digital reading in the early years: expertise, engagement and learning Íris Susana Pires Pereira, Cristina Vieira da Silva, Mônica Daisy Vieira Araújo and Maria Manuel Borges 20 Children’s reading in the digital age: a research summary of children’s digital books Natalia Kucirkova 21 The role of moving images in young children’s literacy practices Margaret Mackey 22 Availability and quality of storybook apps across five less widely used languages Adriana G. Bus, Trude Hoel, Cristina Aliagas, Margrethe Jernes, Ofra Korat, Charles L. Mifsud and Jan van Coillie

270

282

295

308

PART V

Negotiating digital literacy lives in hybrid virtual and physical spaces 323 23 Young children’s e-books as digital spaces for multimodal composing, translanguaging and intercultural sharing Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe 24 Virtual play: developing a baroque sensibility Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant

325

342

vii

Contents

25 The quantified child: discourses and practices of dataveillance in different life stages Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway

354

26 Minecraft ‘worldness’ in family life: children’s digital play and socio-material literacy practices Michael Dezuanni

366

27 Digital literacy practices in children’s everyday life: participating in on-screen and off-screen activities Pål Aarsand and Helen Melander Bowden

377

28 P(l)aying online: toys, apps and young consumers on transmedia playgrounds 391 Karen E. Wohlwend 29 Webs of relationships: young children’s engagement with Web searching 402 Susan Danby and Christina Davidson PART VI

Emergent themes and future visions 30 Future pedagogical approaches to digital and multimodal practice in early childhood education Reijo Kupiainen, Pirjo Kulju, Marita Mäkinen, Angela Wiseman, Anne Jyrkiäinen and Kirsi-Liisa Koskinen-Sinisalo 31 Emergent challenges for the understanding of children’s digital literature Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

417 419

430

32 Researching children’s play and identity in the digital age: a holistic approach 442 Becky Parry and Fiona Scott 33 Taking a wide-angled view of contemporary digital literacy Amélie Lemieux and Jennifer Rowsell

453

Index 464

viii

Figures and excerpts

Figures   1.1   3.1   3.2   3.3   5.1   7.1 11.1 11.2 15.1 16.1 16.2 16.3 16.4

17.1 21.1 21.2 22.1 23.1 23.2 23.3 23.4 24.1

Model for research on digital literacies 23 Storytelling in an early childhood classroom 51 Two-year-old and mother book reading at home 52 Redistribution of work in collaborative/participatory research 55 Internet use, by age and country 80 Two ways of representing a person’s developmental ecology 113 Richard watches “invisible room glitch” video 163 Richard looking up “McDonald’s glitch” 164 Web-mapping as a representation of the convergence of traditional and digital play 219 A page from Imagine a World 231 The Dog Was Chasing Me 235 Teacher Sonia with a parent and child completing a Turkish version of The Three (Respectful) Billy Goats 237 A family discusses the title page of their child’s finished The Three Billy Goats (respectful version) book, showcasing children playacting the bridge-crossing scene in costume 238 Sara, Taylor, and Jane create a video 248 The metamodal kineikonic 298 The expanded ecology of the book app 305 Screendumps from the digital book Lightning 320 E-book activity framework 332 Delia’s e-book page about her parents’ wedding 333 José’s pet bird e-book page 335 Celia presenting an e-book page featuring her mother 336 Screenshots from Nicola’s Puppet Pals 347

Excerpts 27.1 Making a pizza on an iPad 27.2 Identifying feelings using a smartboard 27.3 Creating an account on a laptop

382 384 386

ix

Tables

  1.1   1.2 22.1 22.2 22.3 22.4 22.5 24.1

x

Green’s (1988) 3D model of literacy Elements to be embedded in a digital literacy CPD programme Number of digital books per language and age Number of digital books for children published in Catalan and Dutch since 2010 Characteristics of digital books per language Ways in which consumers get access to digital books per language area Finding digital books for children per language area Approaching the baroque through stacking stories

22 25 312 313 314 317 317 350

Contributors

Pål Aarsand is a Professor at the Department of Education and Lifelong Learning, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. His research interest concerns children’s digital technology practices and phenomena such as gaming, playing, identity work, digital literacy, as well as research methodological questions concerning studies of children. Cristina Aliagas is Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain,

specializing in ethnography of literacy and the study of literary identities in children and youth cultures. This anthropological-driven research informs other in-school collaborative projects seeking the integration of digital literacies in literary education, including initial teacher education. Mônica Daisy Vieira Araújo is Adjunct Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, where she is a Researcher at the Literacy, Reading and Writing Centre (CEALE/ UFMG). Her studies focus on digital written culture, digital literacy, digital literary reading and teacher training. Maria Manuel Borges is Associate Professor at the University of Coimbra in Portugal and a co-coordinator of the Research Group on Digital Humanities (CEIS20). Her research focuses on open access, bibliometrics and scholarly communication, e-books and information literacy. Cathy Burnett is Professor of Literacy and Education at Sheffield Hallam University, UK, where she leads the Language and Literacy Education Research Group. Her research interests focus on relationships between technology, literacy and education. She is President Elect for the United Kingdom Literacy Association. Adriana G. Bus is Professor in Reading Socialization at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Her research interests include storybook reading, e-reading, reading promotion and differential susceptibility in reading acquisition. Stéphane Chaudron, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, has coordinated multiple

European research networks and leads researches on digital citizens’ security and safety, young children and digital technology, the Internet of Toys and how users manage (or not) their personal data. Output includes the Happy Onlife toolkit raising awareness of internet risks and opportunities and Cyber Chronix edutainment on digital rights. Susan Danby is a Professor in the School of Early Childhood and Inclusive Education at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. She investigates how young children xi

Contributors

interact with digital technologies, how educators and families engage with digital technologies, and communication across different technological modes. Cristina Vieira da Silva is Coordinator Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the

Higher School of Education of Paula Frassinetti, Portugal. She is a member of the Research Centre on Child Studies at the University of Minho. Her areas of interest are language teaching and learning and literacy education. Christina Davidson is Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Charles Sturt University,

Australia. She is a conversation analyst interested in the ways young children’s interactions enable and accomplish meaning making with digital technologies in home and preschool settings. Michael Dezuanni is Associate Professor at Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

He undertakes research about digital media, literacies and learning in home, school and community contexts. He is the Associate Director of Queensland University of Technology’s Digital Media Research Centre. Rosanna Di Gioia, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, researches cyber-security,

cyber-bullying, empowering citizens’ rights in ICT, Internet of toys, blockchain technologies in energy communities, privacy, data protection and digital play. She contributed to the Happy Onlife toolkit raising awareness of internet risks and opportunities, and a storytelling game introducing Data Protection Rights to (young) citizens. Clare Dowdall is Lecturer in Language and Literacy Education at Plymouth University (UK),

where she works with students in postgraduate research and initial teacher education. She has a particular interest in notions of text, and the role that paper-based and digital textual forms play in the evolving communicative contexts that are constructed by and encompass young people. Susan Edwards is Director of the Early Childhood Futures research program at the Institute

for Learning Sciences and Teacher Education (ILSTE), Australian Catholic University, Australia. Her group investigates the role of play-based learning in the early childhood curriculum for the 21st century. She is Chief Investigator on an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant on digital play and an ARC Linkage Project investigating best practice for playgroups-in-schools. Ola Erstad is Professor and Head of the Department of Education, University of Oslo, Norway.

He was Vice-chair of COST Action DigiLitEY, and in 2016 he was elected as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Science Europe. His books include Digital Learning Lives (Peter Lang, 2013). Rosie Flewitt is Reader in Early Communication and Literacy, UCL Institute of Education,

London, UK, co-Director of the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Pedagogy (0–11 years) and co-chair of the COST Action DigiLitEY Working Group 5: Research Methods. Publications include Research Methods for Early Childhood Education (Bloomsbury, 2019) and Storytelling in Early Childhood: enriching language, literacy, and classroom culture (with Cremin, Mardell and Swann) (Routledge, 2017).

xii

Contributors

Monica Gemo, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, is a scientific officer investi-

gating participatory mobile edutainment tools. Recent edutainment contributions include the Happy Onlife toolkit raising awareness of internet risks and opportunities and Cyber Chronix storytelling game on digital rights. Julia Gillen is Reader in Digital Literacies and Director, Lancaster Literacy Research Centre,

Lancaster University, UK. She was co-chair of Working Group 1: Digital Literacies in Homes and Communities, COST Action DigiLitEY. She is an editor of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy and her publications include Digital Literacies (Routledge, 2014). Susan Grieshaber is Professor of Education at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.

Her research interests are informed by theories that address social justice and equity issues, and include: early childhood curriculum, policy, pedagogies, and families; women in higher education; and qualitative and post-qualitative research approaches. She is founding co-editor of Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood and has published widely. Kris D. Gutiérrez is Professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture in the Learning Sciences and

Human Development cluster in the Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley. Her research examines learning in designed learning environments, with attention to students from non-dominant communities and English learners. Tara Gutshall Rucker has taught elementary school students for 11 years in Columbia Public

Schools in Columbia, Missouri, USA, in 1st, 2nd and 5th grades. Currently she is teaching kindergarten in Lee’s Summit, Missouri. She received her MA in curriculum and instruction through the Teaching Fellows programme and an Elementary Mathematics Specialists Certificate at the University of Missouri. Trude Hoel is Associate Professor at the National Centre for Reading Education and Research at the

University of Stavanger, Norway. In addition to her research activities, she teaches and supervises prospective kindergarten teachers at Bachelor, Master and PhD level. She is currently co-chair of the innovation project VEBB, developing a research-based online assessment tool for picture book apps. Donell Holloway is Senior Research Fellow at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western

Australia. She is the principal investigator on the ARC grant The Internet of Toys: benefits and risks of connected toys for children. Her research centres on the domestic context of children’s media use for children (0–12) and their families. Margrethe Jernes is a Norwegian researcher within the area of pedagogy and early childhood.

Her research interests are professional education, adult learning and supervision, pragmatism and sociocultural perspectives, digital technology and digitization. Her PhD theme was interaction in digital context in kindergarten. At present, she is part of the funded research project Studying Storybook Apps in Language Focused Reading Activities in Kindergartens. Anne Jyrkiäinen is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Education and Culture (EDU), Tampere

University, Finland, teaching subject and educational studies for under- and postgraduate students. Her current research interests include teacher education, collaboration and multiliteracy. Previously, she worked as a Lecturer at the Tampere University Teacher Training School.

xiii

Contributors

Stavroula Kontovourki is Assistant Professor in Literacy and Language Arts Education at the

University of Cyprus. Her research focuses on literacy pedagogy, literate identities across social contexts, multimodality, literacy teachers’ professional identities, and literacy curricula, policy and change. She co-edited Literacies, Learning and the Body (2016) and has published in peerreviewed journals, edited volumes and conference proceedings. Ofra Korat is a Professor at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Her research focuses on early literacy

learning in family and school. Recently, she investigated technology as a support for early literacy development, especially among low-income families. She has published widely in leading journals, and edited the book Cultures and Technology as Support for Literacy Achievements for Children at Risk (Springer, 2013). Kirsi-Liisa Koskinen-Sinisalo is Principal and special needs teacher at the Tampere University

Teacher Training School, Finland. Her areas of expertise include teacher training, collaborative writing, curriculum and experiences of immigrant teachers. Candace R. Kuby is the Director of Qualitative Inquiry and Associate Professor in the

Department of Learning, Teaching, & Curriculum at the University of Missouri, USA. Her research interests are ethico-onto-epistemologies of literacy desiring(s) when children work with materials to create texts, and approaches to qualitative inquiry drawing upon post-theories. Natalia Kucirkova is Professor of Early Childhood and Development at the University of

Stavanger, Norway. Her research concerns innovative ways of supporting children’s book reading, digital literacy and exploring the role of personalization in early years. She co-edits the Bloomsbury book series Children’s Reading and Writing on Screen and the journal Literacy. Pirjo Kulju is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University, and

Adjunct Professor (Mother tongue and literature education), University of Helsinki, Finland. Her current research agenda focuses on literacies and multiliteracies education. Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer is a Professor in the German Department at the University

of Tübingen, Germany. She has been Guest Professor at the universities of Växjö/Kalmar, Sweden, and Vienna, Austria. Recent (co)edited books include Learning from Picturebooks: Perspectives from Child Development and Literacy Studies (Routledge, 2015), Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde (John Benjamins, 2015) and The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (Routledge, 2018). Kristiina Kumpulainen is Professor of Education and Scientific Director at the Playful

Learning Centre, University of Helsinki, Finland. She was co-chair of Working Group 1: Digital Literacies in Homes and Communities, COST Action DigiLitEY. Current research includes Joy of Learning Multiliteracies (funded by Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture) and School-based Makerspaces for Promoting Young Learners’ Digital Literacies and Creativity (funded by Academy of Finland). Reijo Kupiainen is Lecturer of Media Education at the Faculty of Education and Culture,

Tampere University, Finland, and Adjunct Professor of media education at the Department of Education and Lifelong Learning, Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. xiv

Contributors

Amélie Lemieux is Assistant Professor of Literacies at Mount Saint Vincent University in Halifax,

Canada, where she researches youth digital literacy practices. She worked as Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Jennifer Rowsell on Maker Literacies and is interested in youths’ meaning making as they engage in maker education. Sun Sun Lim is Professor and Head of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences at the Singapore

University of Technology and Design. She has researched extensively on the social implications of technology domestication by young people and families. Her latest publications include Mobile Communication and the Family (Springer, 2016). Sonia Livingstone is a Professor in the Department of Media and Communications, London

School of Economics and Political Science, UK. She researches media audiences, children and young people’s risks and opportunities, media literacy, and rights in the digital environment. Recent publications include The Class: living and learning in the digital age (New York University Press, 2016). Heather Lotherington is Associate Dean, Research, in the Faculty of Education, and Professor

of Multilingual Education at York University in Toronto, Canada. She is a Senior Fellow at Massey College in the University of Toronto, and former Gordon and Jean Southam Fellow at Curtin University, Perth, Australia. Her research interests span multimodal literacies, multilingual and plurilingual education; language, literacy and technology; and pedagogical innovation. Margaret Mackey is Professor Emerita at the School of Library and Information Studies at

the University of Alberta, Canada. She researches in the broad area of young people’s media activities. Her most recent book is One Child Reading: my auto-bibliography (University of Alberta Press, 2016). Marita Mäkinen is Professor of Education (Teacher Education) at the Faculty of Education

and Culture, Tampere University, Finland. She has developed interventions for children with literacy disorders and for enhancing inclusive education reform in Finland. Her multi-faceted research relates to teacher education including pedagogy of multiliteracies and teaching for future learning environments. She currently leads the research group Higher Education in Transition (HET). Jackie Marsh is Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield, and was chair of

EU-COST Action ‘The Digital Literacy and Multimodal Practices of Young Children’ (DigiLitEY) from 2015 to 2019. She has conducted numerous projects exploring young children’s digital literacy practices in homes, communities and schools and is a co-editor of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. Giovanna Mascheroni is Senior Lecturer of Sociology of Media at Università Cattolica of

Milan. She is part of the management team of EU Kids Online and was co-chair of Working Group 4 of the COST Action DigiLitEY. Her recent work focuses on the social shaping and social consequences of Internet of Things (IoTs) and IoToys for children, namely datafication and digital citizenship. Helen Melander Bowden is Associate Professor of Education at Uppsala University. Drawing

on video ethnographic studies of children’s digital practices, her research interests concern xv

Contributors

learning in peer groups, the role of epistemics and affect in the unfolding organization of action, identity work, as well as social and moral order. Guy Merchant is Professor of Literacy and Education at Sheffield Hallam University, UK. He

has written extensively about literacy and new media and is co-author, with Cathy Burnett, of New Media in the Classroom: rethinking primary literacy (Sage, 2018). Charles L. Mifsud is Professor of Education and Literacy at the University of Malta, where he

directs the Centre for Literacy. He is a graduate of the universities of Malta, Cambridge and London. He is the chairperson of the National Literacy Agency and the National Language Policy in Education Committee of Malta. He publishes in the areas of early bilingual education and using digital technologies to promote literacy. Mary E. Miller is Assistant Professor of Education at Columbia College, USA, where she teaches

graduate and undergraduate literacy and social studies education courses. Her research focuses on ways to include emergent bilingual students’ languages, cultural experiences, and families as part of the literacy curriculum. She studies how digital tools open up possibilities for creating such inclusive classrooms. Marta Morgade is Associate Professor at the Universitat Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. She spe-

cializes in practices and socialization processes in different socio-educational contexts, particularly with an emphasis on digital, literary, musical or artistic practices; history and theories in psychology; and the philosophical works of Charles Sanders Peirce in relation to psychology and aesthetics. Anulekha Nandi has worked for research projects on risks and opportunities of ICT4D inter-

ventions for adolescents, online child protection, and digital media, marginalization and development policy. Elyna Nevski is Educational Technology Lecturer and doctoral student at Tallinn University,

School of Educational Sciences, Estonia. Her research interests lie in the area of media education and education technology in early years settings. Her doctoral thesis focuses on 0–3-year-olds’ touch-screen use, digital play and parental mediation strategies. Joce Nuttall is Director of the Teacher Education Research Concentration at the Institute for

Learning Sciences and Teacher Education (ILSTE), Australian Catholic University, Australia. Her research describes, implements and theorizes effective interventions in professional learning in schools and early childhood settings. Most recently this work has focused on capacity building among educational leaders in early childhood and junior school settings, using system-wide analyses and actions. Grace Oakley is a Researcher and Teacher at the University of Western Australia, Perth. Her

research focuses on literacy education, educational technology, and teacher education. In much of her work, there has been a focus on enhancing inclusivity through helping teachers meet the needs of children who have literacy difficulties, are from diverse cultural, social or economic backgrounds, and/or who live in developing countries. Kjartan Ólafsson is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Social Science and Law at the University of

Akureyri, Iceland, where he teaches research methods and quantitative data analysis. He has xvi

Contributors

played a key role in the design and implementation of a number of cross-national research projects on children’s media use in Europe. Becky Parry is Lecturer in Digital Literacies and co-director of the Centre for the Study of

Literacies at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on children’s creative and cultural lives, literacies and learning. She is also interested in the uses of creative, visual and participatory research methods with children. Íris Susana Pires Pereira is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Education of the University

of Minho, Portugal, where she also coordinates the research group ‘Technologies, Multiliteracies and Curriculum’ at the Research Centre in Education (CIEd). Her research focuses on multimodal literacy, pedagogy of multiliteracies and teachers’ professional development. Becky Pham is currently Research Assistant in Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences at the

Singapore University of Technology and Design. Her research interests include media and migration, media and family communication, media and young people and out-of-home television. Her research has been published in New Media & Society and in notable edited volumes. David Poveda is a Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. His research inter-

ests include children’s communicative practices in socio-educational contexts, including the use of digital technologies, and understanding the social conditions under which developmental and educational processes take place and social inequalities are produced. He specializes in ethnographic and qualitative research methodologies. Mastin Prinsloo is Professor Emeritus, University of Cape Town, South Africa. He led the

three-year Digital resources in children’s and youth’s learning and networking project in Cape Town. Publications include Translanguaging in Theory and Practice (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), Language, Literacy and Diversity: moving words (Routledge, 2015) and Educating for Language and Literacy Diversity: mobile selves (Palgrave, 2014). Edward Rivero is a PhD candidate in the School of Education at UC Berkeley and part of

Kris Gutiérrez’s Prolepsis Design Collaborative. His research examines learning in co-designed learning environments that aim to develop critical digital literacies and increase civic engagement among youth from non-dominant communities. Deborah Wells Rowe is Professor of Early Childhood Education at Peabody College,

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, USA, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate literacy education courses. She has spent more than three decades studying how young children learn to write in preschool and primary grades classrooms. Her research on preschoolers’ writing has been recognized with the International Literacy Association’s Dina Feitelson Research Award. Jennifer Rowsell is Professor and Canada Research Chair at Brock University’s Faculty of

Education, St. Catherines, Canada. She is co-series editor with Cynthia Lewis of the Routledge Expanding Literacies in Education series and digital literacy editor for The Reading Teacher. She is principal investigator of Maker Literacies, an SSHRC-funded project investigating elementary and high school students’ maker practices in action. xvii

Contributors

Fiona Scott is Lecturer in Digital Literacies and Co-Director of the Centre for the Study of

Literacies at the University of Sheffield. Her current research concerns very young children’s engagements with digital devices and texts. Her research interests include early childhood, digital literacies, social class and socio-material theory. Andra Siibak is Professor of Media Studies at the Institute of Social Studies, University of Tartu,

Estonia. Her research focuses on the opportunities and risks surrounding children’s internet use, social media usage practices, intergenerational relationships on social media, new media audiences and privacy. Eufimia Tafa is a Professor at the University of Crete, Greece. She has authored six books,

edited and co-edited three books, and has authored and co-authored many articles published in edited volumes and scholarly journals. In 2014, she was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame (USA). She is the chief editor of the scientific journal Preschool and Primary Education. Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen is Professor of Media Education at Salzburg University

of Education, Austria, and head of the Centre of Competences for Media Education and E-learning. Her fields of research are audience research focusing on children and adolescents, media socialization, media education and media literacy. She is involved in various international research projects on children’s media use and active member of the ECREA-TWG Children, Youth and Media. Sascha Trültzsch-Wijnen is Associate Professor of the Communications Department at the

University of Salzburg, Austria. His fields of research focus on media usage and content analysis, especially social media but also television genres and history as well as media and sports. He has been part of several international research projects such as COST IS 0906 Transforming Audiences and the World Hobbit Project. Jan van Coillie is Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Humanities of KU Leuven, Belgium. His

teaching and research focused on children’s literature and its translation. From 1999 to 2006 he chaired the National Centre for Children’s Literature [Nationaal Centrum voor Jeugdliteratuur] in Flanders. From 1999 to 2004 he was editor in chief of the Encyclopedia for Youth Literature. Since 2006 he has been associate editor of the Lexicon of Youth Literature. He is also a reviewer, translator and poet for children. Angela Wiseman is Professor of Literacy Education at North Carolina State University in

Raleigh, USA. Her research agenda focuses on understanding literacy learning through multimodal, sociocultural and transactional theories of literacy. She currently co-edits the Journal of Children’s Literature and is principal investigator of Communities United for Success in Family Literacy, a family literacy programme designed to support formerly incarcerated adults and their children as the adults transition back into the public sphere. Karen E. Wohlwend is Associate Professor of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at

Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. She reconceptualizes young children’s play as embodied literacy that creates action texts with toys, popular media and digital technologies. Books include Literacy Playshop: new literacies, popular media, and play in the early childhood classroom (Teachers College Press, 2013).

xviii

Contributors

Elizabeth Wood is Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield, UK. Her research

focuses on early childhood and primary education, with specific interests in play and pedagogy, curriculum and assessment in Early Childhood Education, teachers’ professionalism and professional knowledge, and policy analysis and critique. She is visiting professor at the University of Auckland, and Australian Catholic University, Melbourne.

xix

Acknowledgements

This publication is based upon work from COST Action IS1490 DigiLitEY, supported by COST (European Co-operation in Science and Technology, www.cost.eu). Our special thanks go to Hans Christian Arnseth, Jim Anderson, Cary Bazalgette, Catherine Beavis, Jeff Bezemer, Alicia Blum-Ross, Anne Burke, Courtney Cazden, Barbara Comber, Kirsten Drotner, Bernadette Dwyer, Donell Holloway, John Jessel, Mary Kalantzis, Lisa Kervin, Annika Lantz-Andersson, Kevin Leander, Beatrice Ligorio, Alan Luke, Margaret Mackey, Diane Mavers, Guy Merchant, Kathy Mills, Joanne O’Mara, Kate Pahl, Ioanna Palaiologou, Maria Teresa de la Piedra, John Potter, Sara Price, Julian Sefton-Green, Alyson Simpson, Daisy Smeets, Amy Stornauiolo, and Omar Hamid S. Sulaymani for their helpful comments and reviews on the chapters in this volume.

xx

Introduction The emerging field of digital literacies in early childhood Ola Erstad, Rosie Flewitt, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Íris Susana Pires Pereira

We live in a social world in which communication and everyday literacy practices have been transformed by the digital turn (Mills 2010). From birth, many young children’s lives are immersed in their families’ everyday use of multiple media (audio, video, print and screenbased resources) and even very young children are experiencing the 21st-century phenomenon of digital communication, entertainment and gaming. Technological change has inescapable implications for young children, not only for their early literacy development, but also in terms of how parents and professional educators can help to equip today’s young citizens for a digitally connected future (Säljö 2010). But how and in what ways can we characterize and understand these new early literacy practices? What does it mean in terms of how children learn and how we can best support their learning in this fast-changing communications landscape? Our key aim in this Handbook is to begin to build a shared understanding of the challenges facing early literacy development that have been brought about by fast-evolving technological change, by global flows of people, multiculturalism and multiliteracies. Our focus is specifically concerned with children aged 0–8 years – younger than those covered by most research – and the extent to which digital technologies have changed their childhoods and literacy experiences. We adopt the term ‘digital literacies’ to refer to the diversity of young children’s literacy skills and practices across digital tools, technologies and media. The concepts of ‘digital literacy’ and ‘digital literacies’ have been much debated since the 1990s (Gilster 1997; Lankshear and Knobel 2008; Hobbs 2011; Ng 2012). In line with sociocultural perspectives on literacy as social practice (Street 1995; Gee 1996), we adopt the plural form ‘literacies’ in recognition of the diversity of contemporary digital literacy practices that young children take part in, and also the plurality of ways that this concept has been interpreted in academic accounts. We argue that this more expansive view of digital literacies is significant and beneficial for children’s teaching and learning at home, in the community and in more formal educational environments. We also suggest that ‘digital literacies’ captures the multimedia and multimodal nature of contemporary literacy practices where being digitally literate involves “being skilled at deciphering complex images and sounds as well as the syntactical subtleties of words. Above all it means being at home in a shifting mixture of words, images and sounds” (Lanham 1995: 200). Making meaning with

1

Ola Erstad et al.

digital texts involves comparatively new genres, and requires children to become skilled users and designers of new modal combinations. The term ‘digital literacies’ has been, in both policy and research, increasingly linked to changes in the labour markets in developed economies, knowledge-based transformations and technological developments of our societies (New London Group 1996). As such, digital literacies have often been formulated within broader frameworks of 21st-century skills (Binkley et al. 2012). However, there has been a lack of research targeting early years emerging literacies, and the importance of childhood practices of using diverse technologies, as the foundation for future development of skills and competences for living and growing up in a digital culture, and for further educational pathways, work and citizenship. From an early age, children develop skills, knowledge and attitudes of great importance for their personal development and as members of communities. Digital literacies and 21st-century skills highlight core aspects of growing up in contemporary cultures and being supported by families, communities and education systems in creating conditions for life-long learning. Given that the ability to be digitally literate will have a profound impact on all children’s futures (International Reading Association 2001), a core aim of this Handbook is to make a unique contribution to the development of robust theoretical and analytic frameworks to: • • • •

underpin interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research into young children’s digital and multimodal literacy practices at home, in educational settings and in the wider community; understand how young children develop ‘emergent digital literacy’ (Marsh et al. 2015) in homes, schools and communities, and how they use digital devices for pleasure, learning, creating and communicating (Chaudron, Di Gioia and Gemo 2018); identify and explore the affordances of digital devices and media as literacy tools and socially negotiated sites that can promote children’s operational, creative and critically reflective literacy practices; inform the development of literacy teaching and learning in a digital era, for parents, for educators, for policy-makers and for the digital industry.

This international Handbook brings together key thinkers around the globe who are among the first to take forward this emerging field of research. The contributors are all affiliated with the European Union COST Action ‘The Digital Literacy and Multimodal Practices of Young Children’ (DigiLitEY), which operated from 2015 to 2019 and received funding from the EU Commission to bring together international networks of researchers focused on young children’s digital literacies. We have purposefully invited contributions from diverse disciplinary perspectives, including education, applied linguistics, literary studies, media studies, cultural studies, sociology and psychology. In this introductory chapter, we outline some of the key issues that have emerged in our conversations with scholars during the collation of the chapter contributions, we introduce the thematic orientation of the Handbook and present summaries of each chapter to offer a snapshot of the diversity of content and research in this comparatively new field of scholarship. We begin by presenting the rationale for the Handbook’s focus on the digital literacy practices of children aged 0–8 years in response to the lack of systematized knowledge concerning this age span (Holloway, Green and Livingstone 2013; Sefton-Green, Marsh, Erstad and Flewitt 2016).

Researching childhood in times of change The changes in everyday literacy practices brought about by the miniaturization, mobility, personalization and ubiquitous use of digital technologies are as profound as the changes brought 2

Introduction

about by the invention of the printing press (Kress 2003). Recent research about changing media use from analogue to digital, and about how digital media are often central to children’s everyday interactions with the world, suggest a sea change in the way that children experience their literacy lives in contrast with previous generations. While children continue to be avid meaning makers (Kress 2013) and to be multimodal, multisensory, active and interactive social beings (Kress 1997), digital media offer previously unavailable ways to explore and express meaning. Pan-European research indicates that very young children from birth to three years of age observe and participate in a wide range of digitally mediated, everyday communications and literacy practices (Chaudron et al. 2018; Gillen et al. 2018). By the age of two, research has found that most children are using a tablet or laptop and for those children aged under five who have access to tablets in the home, approximately a third of them own their own tablet (Marsh et al. 2015). In the UK, national statistics report year-on-year increases in young children’s digital media use, with children aged three to seven years spending an average of around one hour per day online, upwards of 45 minutes playing digital games and two hours watching television (on a television set) (Ofcom 2017). From this perspective, childhood can be seen as a period of agentive engagement with cultural tools and practices, which in most societies now include the possibilities provided by digital media and mobile technologies for children to interact with content and with people. Yet the effects of emergent technologies for young children are hotly debated, and there is a “climate of anxiety that surrounds new technology and [creates] a fiercely polarized debate in which panic and fear often drown out evidence” (Byron 2008: 1). Of course, research on the relationship between children and media is not new. For more than half a century there have been public concerns about the influence of modern media on children, from violent cartoons in the 1950s, to the commercialization of television programming for children and increasing concern about the commercialization of childhood with the surge in child-related marketing (Marsh and Bishop 2012). From a policy perspective, there have been different initiatives toward protecting children from negative content and influence from media, with international calls for children to develop “21st century skills and competences” (Ananiadou and Claro 2009). Terms such as ‘media literacy’ have emerged to describe media-competent and critically reflective adults and children, with an increasing volume of research initiatives from the 1980s onwards, often influenced by cultural studies, toward studying what children do with media and the social practices that media use is embedded in (Buckingham 2003). As shown by Drotner and Livingstone (2008), the field of research on children, media and culture has evolved toward understanding the mediational complexity of modern childhood with new possibilities for information access, communicative practices and the creation of communities online and offline. In this Handbook, rather than being viewed as victims of new technologies, young children are seen as emergent specialists in the design of digital texts, who, when given the opportunity and support to do so, can become highly skilled users of a range of modes (such as words, images and sound) with a variety of literacy tools, both traditional and digital. The last decade has seen an increasing tendency for younger age groups to become savvy and active users of digital technologies, supported by families and education professionals who make technologies accessible by investing in them, and who prompt children’s creative and critical use of a range of digital devices during the course of their learning. In more affluent pockets of society, these could include an ever-changing array of digital devices, including desktop computers, interactive whiteboards, mobile devices (such as laptops, tablets, mobile phones, smartphones, games consoles), handheld digital recording equipment (such as flipcams, digital cameras, audio and video recorders – not to mention the inclusion of these facilities in smartphones), the World Wide Web and Web2 technologies (e.g. Dropbox, Cloud technologies, Skype, WeChat, WhatsApp, 3

Ola Erstad et al.

blogs and other social networking sites). At the same time, the digital industry and publishers have invested in the development of literacy-related software and apps, resulting in a plethora of content that is marketed as suitable for early childhood. Over the past decade, the advent of touch screen technologies has heralded a digital sensory revolution, where touch-sensitive interfaces are set to reconfigure what can be touched, and how, in digital and online environments. Yet “there is a significant gap opening between technological advancements and social science methodologies and understandings of digital touch communication” (Jewitt and Leder-Mackley 2019: 92). Furthermore, access to the very latest technologies is inequitable within and across societies, so in addition to issues around child safety, anonymity and security when using digital media, the variable distribution of digital technologies risks worsening issues of child equity on a global scale.

Conceptual and methodological framing As a field of research, digital literacies in early childhood is theoretically diverse. The chapters in this Handbook illustrate the different approaches and theoretical framings that researchers from diverse scientific communities bring to the field. This field of research is guided by theoretical traditions within sociocultural perspectives on learning and development, cultural studies, the sociology of childhood, psychology of play, social semiotics, and others. Still, as stated, the chapters in this Handbook are deeply influenced by the broad theoretical framing of New Literacies Studies (NLS) (e.g. Hamilton, Barton and Ivanic 1994; Street 1995; New London Group 1996), and recognize the range of practices that can be characterized as literate activity (see: Sefton-Green, Marsh, Erstad and Flewitt 2016). This perspective encourages a focus on multiliteracies and emphasizes the multiple social, cultural and linguistic ways of knowing and communicating that typify many young children’s lives. A multiliteracies approach also draws the focus of attention to literacy practices as deeply enmeshed with thinking about, doing and reading in cultural contexts (Street 2001). The contexts of interest therefore extend beyond formal teaching environments, and include the vernacular practices that typify children and adults’ everyday literacy lives. This makes way for the concept of ‘emergent literacy’ (Clay 1966) to be reviewed in light of the diversity of digital practices that hypermedia and global connectivity have introduced into young children’s communication experiences. Authors in this volume argue that, long before beginning more formal learning in school, children build informal yet powerful conceptions of literacy through engagement in a range of literacy-related activities in different social domains (home, school, community, work) and in diverse networks of social practice that form part of their everyday lives (Gregory, Williams, Baker and Street 2004) in diverse literacy eco-systems (Kenner 2005). Digital literacies can cross online/offline and material/immaterial boundaries and, as a consequence, create complex communication trajectories across time and space (Burnett and Bailey 2014; Leander and Sheehy 2004). Using ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ in their broadest terms, digital literacies can involve accessing, using and analysing texts in addition to their production and dissemination. Digital literacies also involve learning traditional skills related to alphabetic print, skills related to using digital technologies, and skills related to accessing, using and creating knowledge. In this sense, our understanding of digital literacies has synergies with definitions that focus on competences. However, we argue that we must move beyond a focus on basic literacy skills, and we draw on Green’s (1988) model of literacy that considers the three dimensions of operational, cultural and critical literacy. The operational dimension refers to technical aspects such as being able to encode and decode language and other semiotic systems, and to use literacy artefacts (pens, paper, screens, keyboards, touchpads, etc.). The cultural dimension refers 4

Introduction

to being able to understand the social and cultural signs embodied in acts of meaning making. Finally, the critical dimension refers to the need to engage critically with texts and artefacts, and to ask questions about power, intended audience and reception (see Sefton-Green et al. 2016). There are methodological and ethical challenges when conducting research with children aged under eight, particularly in digital and online environments or in the private spaces of children’s home and out-of-school lives. Many tools and approaches used with other age groups simply do not work when researching with very young children who are in the early stages of acquiring language. While much progress has been made in terms of understanding children’s rights to actively participate in research, there is still much to be done to engage appropriately with issues of voice, agency and representation. This Handbook brings together cutting-edge research approaches in order to address these challenges, presenting critically reflective and well-designed research that can deepen our understanding of digital media in early childhood. The Handbook also raises issues about methodological challenges and developments for researchers interested in the fast-changing field of digital literacies in early childhood, where public debate and policy have tended toward protectionist approaches in face of the potentially damaging impact of digital technologies on children’s lives. These concerns can sit in tension with the trend in qualitative research toward participatory approaches that enable children of all ages to have an active voice in the research process. Research presented in this volume draws from diverse methodological approaches, from highly structured quantitative methods to flexible and visual ethnographies, and from diverse populations. A conscious effort has been made to include research reporting on disadvantaged and minority communities across Europe, from the Global South and North, as well as research with culturally dominant and more affluent communities. One example is the ‘Day in the life’ methodological approach (Gillen et al. 2007, 2018; Gillen and Cameron 2010), using a combination of interviews, field notes and video recordings to collect data, with the focus being on one day in the life of the child and their family. This observational approach provides extremely rich and authentic data about how technologies are embedded in the everyday lives of children. Below we present the different parts of the Handbook and its structure, and briefly introduce each chapter. Key themes in the Handbook include: how young children around the globe learn with and from digital media; how multiple digital devices are integrated into their lives (or not) in education, at home and in the wider community; what ‘being a reader’ or ‘being a writer’ means in the 21st century; and how children negotiate their digital literacy lives in hybrid virtual and physical spaces. The Handbook concludes with a series of chapters that point to possible themes that we suggest can be carried forward to future research into young children’s literacy practices in a digital age. Each chapter in this Handbook offers insights from cutting-edge research into digital literacies in early childhood, with close scrutiny of the contemporary literacy practices of young children around the globe. The Handbook explores knowledge about how young children interact and play with, through and around digital media, and how they use diverse devices to make meaning as they interact, communicate, play, tell and read stories, and seek information across offline and online environments.

How the Handbook is structured The Handbook is structured in six parts, beginning with Part I Perspectives on digital literacies in early childhood. The five chapters in this first part present an overview of research into young children’s digital literacy practices, scope out the current range of theoretical, methodological and ethical approaches to researching digital literacies in early childhood, and discuss changes to literacy practices as evidenced by large scale national and international surveys. 5

Ola Erstad et al.

Future technological innovations and their implications for early literacy are also considered, including implications for children’s literature and the emerging design of sensory-based digital devices and environments in computer science and Human Computer Interaction (HCI), which herald a digital sensory revolution (Hoggan 2013). Future developments are discussed in more detail in the final part of the Handbook. In the first chapter, Jackie Marsh presents the background to the DigiLitEY COST Action that led to the writing of this Handbook, which consisted of researchers in 35 countries in Europe and near-neighbour countries, in addition to partners in Australia, the USA and Brazil, and connections with wider, global networks. Collectively, this interdisciplinary group of researchers addressed some of the most pressing issues in the field of young children’s digital literacies. Marsh’s chapter provides a rationale for the Action, outlines the theoretical framework for its work, and offers an overview of the activities undertaken by its various working groups. In Chapter 2, Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen outline ways of theorizing digital literacy practices in early childhood, and argue that in present-day research in this field of enquiry, there is not a universally acknowledged sense of progress along a linear line of thinking, but rather a somewhat chaotic yet fruitful state of co-existence. Structured around two broadly defined theoretical orientations: ‘digital literacy as multimodal meaning making’ and ‘digital literacies as embodied, material and socio-spatial’, the chapter discusses highly influential attitudes in defining literacy in early childhood leading up to more diverse orientations during the last decade. The authors conclude by drawing out some implications and issues around theorizing digital literacy practices in early childhood. The third chapter, by David Poveda, reviews key issues in the methodologies employed to investigate young children’s digital literacy practices around the globe, focusing on interpretive and innovative methodologies. The chapter pays particular attention to three issues: the challenges involved in observing and documenting young children’s digital literacy practices; how children’s digital literacy practices are construed and represented in research; and the imperatives associated with involving children in the research process. This review draws from a critical-reflexive approach to social research and is closely interrelated to the ethical framework developed in Chapter 4. In Chapter 4, Rosie Flewitt reflects on ethics and researching young children’s online and offline digital literacy practices. To understand the complexity of influences on ethics in this field, Flewitt looks to the past, present and imagined future of digital technologies in social life and in social research. The chapter problematizes universal research ethics codes and the institutional governance of research ethics practice, and proposes a reflective, situated and dialogic ethics framework to guide future development in this field, focusing on the familiar concepts of voluntary informed consent, confidentiality, privacy and anonymity, potential benefits and harm, and research integrity and quality. In Chapter 5, Sonia Livingstone, Sun Sun Lim, Anulekha Nandi and Becky Pham examine evidence regarding young children’s digital literacy practices around the world. Although comparatively little is known about the digital lives of children under eight years old, especially on a global comparative basis or beyond the West, this chapter identifies such research as exists, including from East Asia and the Global South. The authors discuss how barriers to access represent the major challenge globally, a problem often obscured when research focuses on wealthy countries. Some challenges are shared cross-nationally, albeit in different forms, including inequality, curriculum development and the home–school connection. The chapter reports on experimentation with ways of appropriating digital technologies for learning that is occurring in diverse contexts, and on how valuable lessons are beginning to emerge. The six chapters in Part II, Young children’s digital literacy practices in homes, communities and informal learning spaces, consider young children’s informal reading, writing and meaning making 6

Introduction

with digital texts alongside more conventional literacy media, such as printed resources, both at home and in community spaces. The focus here is on how young children develop their awareness of literacy through their everyday immersion in a range of socially situated literacy practices, many of which are mediated through digital devices. The chapters explore how even very young children are strategic in their approaches to literacy, and display understanding of how literacy works in digital media. Of relevance also are ways of understanding context and situated literacies, and the connections between literacy environments and practices. This part opens with a literature review by Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen, which reviews the latest research knowledge on young children’s digital literacy practices at home, identifies recent research trends, and proposes key research directions for future study. Focusing on papers published in 2016–2017, and building on their earlier review of literature on 0–8-yearold children’s digital literacy practices in homes published between 2005–2015 (Kumpulainen and Gillen 2017), this chapter responds to the urgency in today’s rapidly changing world to conduct and in turn review the latest research into children’s digital literacy practices in homes. The authors approach the notion of children’s digital literacy practices broadly, and include all research studies that deal with young children’s (aged between 0 and 8 years) engagement with digital technologies and media in homes. The chapter offers important messages for educational researchers interested in tackling established and emerging areas in the study of young children’s digital literacy practices in homes. Chapter 7, by Marta Morgade, Cristina Aliagas and David Poveda, presents a conceptual framework where ‘home’ is theorized to understand young children’s digital experiences, drawing from work on network systems theory (Neal and Neal 2013), children’s intimate geographies (Valentine 2008) and sociocultural theories of development (Rogoff, Mejía-Arauz and Correa-Chávez 2015). The authors propose a future research agenda around key themes at the intersection between childhood and digital technologies, namely: children’s everyday activities; digital media within transnational families; and children’s exclusion from the digital home. Furthermore, the authors emphasize the need for more research in this field to investigate the experiences of children in residential care settings and children with developmental needs. In Chapter 8, Andra Siibak and Elyna Nevski provide insight into the daily media patterns of very young infants and toddlers (aged 0–3 years old). Focusing on the mediating roles older siblings can take in influencing, guiding and mediating younger children’s (digital) media use, the authors review current research on this topic, and then home in on an ethnographic case study of how an Estonian 4-year-old girl mediates her 2-year-old sister’s use of media. The chapter concludes by problematizing the roles that older siblings play as gatekeepers, guides or windows when mediating their younger brothers’ or sisters’ (digital) media use. Chapter 9, which is co-authored by Stéphane Chaudron, Rosanna Di Gioia and Monica Gemo and draws on research coordinated by the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), gives an overview on safety issues in relation to young children’s home uses of digital technology and digital literacy practices based on interviews of 234 families in 21 countries. The authors present research on young children’s digital engagement at home and the influence of parental mediation, and discusses safety concerns and measures, including elements of digital literacy that foster children’s criticality and resilience. The chapter concludes with recommendations on how parents, schools, policy makers and industry can support safety while enabling digital literacy. Chapter 10 features research from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where Mastin Prinsloo considers children’s divergent practices and access to digital media in home, school and neighbourhood communities. The case is argued for deeper understanding of children’s digital literacy practices, rather than simply skills, as digital practices are always situated in and influenced 7

Ola Erstad et al.

by ideologies of social class, race, gender, language and place. Digital media, from this perspective, exist in the local despite their translocal origins and offer particular kinds of agency and engagement to situated young children. The chapter illustrates and elaborates on this argument by drawing on contrastive research about children, teachers and their parents in educational and play settings in middle-class and in township and shack settlements in South Africa. Chapter 11 by Edward Rivero and Kris D. Gutiérrez then takes the reader across the Atlantic to explore the emergent digital literacies of an 8-year-old child as he participated in the practice of ‘glitching’ in video game play in the USA. In this chapter, the authors identify glitching as a form of boundary crossing wherein children identify, document, distribute and repurpose system errors, or glitches, within the video games they play. Through robust analyses of the data in a multi-sited ethnography, they document the learning processes that took place as a child learned to glitch through his engagement with various digital tools, YouTube, and an online community of gamers. Moving from the home to the classroom, Part III of this Handbook considers Young children’s digital literacy practices in early education settings. The six chapters in this part present an overview of key challenges for early education brought about by the potential of digital literacy practices to transform early literacy pedagogy. In particular, they discuss international political positioning regarding digital literacies as established in early years curricula and teacher education concerns. This part offers insights into pedagogical principles that sustain innovative digital learning practices, and the implications brought about by children’s digital experiences of play-based pedagogy. The impact of digital literacy practices and learning in special education as well as innovative pedagogical responses to multilingual and multicultural contexts that draw on digital affordances are also reviewed and discussed. Furthermore, Part III offers a posthumanist view on pedagogies for digital literacy as a process of relational becoming. The first chapter in this section, Chapter 12, co-written by Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen, Sascha Trültzsch-Wijnen and Kjartan Ólafsson, examines media and digital literacy public policies and their implementation in kindergartens and primary schools in three European countries, namely, Iceland, Germany and Austria. Strategies for implementing media literacy in these contrasting countries are analysed, and commonalities and differences in policy development are discussed and problematized. The authors reflect critically on the complexities of enacting the international political drive to promote digital literacy in early education, including the difficulties associated with teachers’ professional development, which research suggests is highly dependent on teachers’ personal motivation for promoting digital and media literacy. Chapter 13, by Stavroula Kontovourki and Eufimia Tafa, reviews existing knowledge on pedagogical principles and innovative teaching practices in early years classrooms where digital literacies are embedded in children’s learning. Focusing on studies published between 2010 and 2017, it features three key issues: first, the notion of ‘appropriateness’ as a key pedagogical principle; second, the emphasis on reaffirming long-held pedagogical assumptions about early childhood education; and, third, the differential use of digital technologies and devices, and their pedagogical potentials. The chapter concludes by discussing ways in which the digital might help reconfigure pedagogy in early education and by identifying possible areas of future research. In Chapter 14, Grace Oakley discusses inclusivity and young children’s digital literacy practices in early education, paying close attention to the potential of mobile technologies, particularly tablets, due to their prevalence in early childhood. She considers diverse pedagogical frameworks that can assist educators in designing inclusive digital literacy education for young children in the context of mobile technologies. Oakley argues that mobile technologies can be used to overcome barriers associated with time, space, pedagogies and modes, thus opening up 8

Introduction

new opportunities for creative, authentic, multimodal and collaborative literacy learning for young children with diverse needs. In the next chapter, Chapter 15, Elizabeth Wood, Joce Nuttall, Susan Edwards and Susan Grieshaber draw on the concept of converged play and funds of knowledge to examine changes that might be needed to ameliorate the differences between children’s use of digital technologies at home and provision in early childhood education settings. The authors link the concept of converged play to a Web-mapping tool (Edwards 2016) to illustrate ways in which the participating teachers developed their understanding of children’s interests and funds of knowledge within digital play, and examine the implications of new play pedagogies for teachers’ knowledge and curriculum. In Chapter 16, Heather Lotherington reports on an innovative pedagogic approach that promotes and celebrates multilingualism and multiculturalism through the use of digital media in kindergarten and elementary school settings in Canada. The approach was developed by acknowledging the complex role kindergarten teachers play in managing the linguistic and cultural diversity of school entrants to enable school socialization and emergent literacy education. Drawing on rich empirical data from a decade-long collaborative action research project, this chapter discusses a participatory approach to inviting children’s and teachers’ language and cultural backgrounds into multimedia project-based learning. Chapter 17, by Candace R. Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker, explores the possibilities of thinking about early childhood and literacy education through the lens of Barad’s posthumanist agential realism theory. The authors discuss ‘literacy desiring’ as a way to know/be/do literacies. Kuby and Rucker analyse one particular spontaneous episode taking place in the ‘Writer’s Studio’ of one classroom in North America to argue for the need to consider the pedagogy of digital literacy as relational becoming that involves children’s desiring, time, agency and close interaction with others and with digital tools. The chapter concludes with questions and invitations for readers to consider with regard to pedagogy and possible future areas for research. Part IV of this Handbook, Reading and writing on screen takes a timely and focused look at the rich, multimodal and sensory textual landscape of contemporary literacy and literary practices, and the complexities of learning to read and write both on- and off-screen. The five chapters in this part focus on how children make meaning with contemporary texts as they play and interact within and across digital media, including touch-sensitive screens, such as iPads and LearnPads. The chapters reflect on what reading and writing mean in digital environments in relation to printed media, and consider collaborative reading and writing with e-books and apps. Issues raised in this part are closely connected to the question of how children’s experiences of storytelling and narrative span across traditional print books, interactive digital texts, and transmedia storytelling, and how meanings are elicited by video games, moving images and film. Finally, consideration is given to multimodal and multisensory authoring on tablets, and to how storybook apps and alphabet book apps that are currently found on the European book market might (or might not) enhance children’s cognitive and narrative development. In Chapter 18, Clare Dowdall writes about how current recommendations for policy and pedagogy in England relating to children’s writing focus on the development of technical skills, with scant regard for the opportunities available to educators to promote children’s literacies in global and digital contexts. In a diverse and evolving 21st-century multimodal textual landscape, these requirements can be regarded as anachronistic and at odds with contemporary, socially driven interpretations of what it means to be literate in the digital age. Through close analysis of a key extract from one conversation with early childhood educators, the author proposes a more expansive way of conceptualizing the writing process for young children as they develop writerly behaviours in the 21st-century textual landscape. 9

Ola Erstad et al.

In Chapter 19, Íris Susana Pires Pereira, Cristina Vieira da Silva, Mônica Daisy Vieira Araújo and Maria Manuel Borges offer further insights into digital reading in the early years. This chapter begins by presenting a conceptual framework that relates the multimodal, interactive and interconnected nature of digital texts to the multi-skilled, embodied, metacognitive and critical dimensions of digital reading. This framework is used to conduct a narrative literature review of pre-school children’s digital reading, identifying expertise, engagement and enhanced learning as key issues in current research. These findings are discussed vis-à-vis the concepts of pre-reading and pre-readers, and the chapter concludes by setting out an agenda for future research. In alignment with contemporary theoretical models of reading on screen, Chapter 20 by Natalia Kucirkova suggests avenues for future multi-method research by drawing on psychological as well as sociocultural aspects of reading. Experimental and meta-analytical studies can help develop a more refined understanding of the added value of specific new features in digital books. Kucirkova argues that the key contribution of qualitative studies is the theoretical extension they provide to cognitive models of reading, including the focus on socio-emotional outcomes and corporal responses to texts. Interdisciplinary approaches can provide complementary perspectives and convergent recommendations for the children’s digital book and app publishing industry, and for adults mediating children’s use of digital books and apps. In Chapter 21, Margaret Mackey investigates the role of the moving image in young children’s literacy practices. She argues that many contemporary children, in the West and elsewhere, are regularly exposed to moving image texts, which may be stable or interactive. Children must learn different forms of interpretive engagement with this material, depending on whether their own actions make a difference to the outcome of the text. Mackey discusses what kinds of new viewing models are needed in a world where babies learn that a moving image on FaceTime can offer personal engagement, where toddlers learn that the way they handle the icons on a screen can change the outcome of the story, and where film representations can move from a large vertical screen to a portable horizontal one. The main aim of Chapter 22, written by Adriana G. Bus, Trude Hoel, Cristina Aliagas, Margrethe Jernes, Ofra Korat, Charles L. Mifsud and Jan van Coillie, is to describe the availability and accessibility of digital books for children aged 0 to 8 years with narration as a main source of information. The authors focus on the availability of digital narratives for children in ‘small languages’, that is, comparatively less widely used languages. Five geographic areas are featured: Malta; the Northern part of Belgium (Flanders)/the Netherlands; Israel; Norway; and the Catalan area of north-east Spain (Catalonia). In these areas, less widely used languages are the official language and the language of teaching in school. The chapter aims to illustrate the availability of digital books for young children in these languages, as opposed to the abundance of international narrative apps in the English language. The seven chapters in Part V of the Handbook, Negotiating digital literacy lives in hybrid virtual and physical spaces, address recent work around the relationships between young children’s digital literacy lives, digital data and virtual environments. The chapters explore the often complex notions of collaboration and intergenerational practices between young children and adults, their peers or siblings. Consideration is given to how children negotiate the multiplicity of ‘presence’ in hybrid virtual and physical spaces and different media ecologies, as they play or communicate online while also interacting with others who are physically co-present. This is an emergent area of research, where the authors argue the need to develop understanding of how the complex interactions afforded by virtual/physical interaction both influence and are influenced by children’s developing social relationships. Further chapters in this part consider research on communal literacy practices, notions of collaboration when participants are 10

Introduction

interacting in hybrid physical and virtual worlds (Burnett and Bailey 2014), adult digital literacy practices about young children’s lives, and the notion of the ‘quantified’ self. Chapter 23 by Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe describes a study where second grade emergent bilinguals used digital cameras and touchscreen tablets to take photos in school, at home and in their communities, and then used the images in the classroom to compose e-books. The analyses examine how children came to understand the affordances of digital tools, and composed and shared their e-books, which included digital photos and sound recordings. The authors conclude that the multidirectional travel of digital tools between home and school encourages young students, families and teachers to select from and learn about resources that draw from a complex circulation of interests, cultural experiences and languages. In Chapter 24, Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant reflect on children’s virtual play, using the term ‘a baroque sensibility’ to explore the use of iPads in the early years. Recent studies of children’s play with video games and virtual worlds have emphasized the importance of conceptualizing children’s meaning making across on- and off-screen sites. However, researching meaning making in virtual play is a complex endeavour given the multiple and kaleidoscopic ways in which on- and off-screen activities fold into one another. After exploring what has been learned by researchers investigating the nexus of activities that constitute children’s virtual play, the authors argue that a baroque sensibility recognizes and interrogates multiplicity, and underlines how different interests and engagements intersect during virtual play. The authors of Chapter 25, Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway, examine emergent research on the datafication of children – that is, the process through which children’s identity, play, learning and health information is turned into digital data, stored in online corporate platforms, analysed and monetized, through wearable devices, the Internet of Things, children’s apps and adult social networking sites. Concerns are discussed about how the organizational appropriation of children’s online information compromises the privacy and data security of children. Issues in these debates lead the authors to identify key themes for a future research agenda, namely: the consequences of a surveillance economy for children’s lives; the risks for children’s privacy rights and data security; the changes in parent–child and teacher–child relationships; and the consequences of neoliberal self-tracking for children’s development and self-identity. In Chapter 26, Michael Dezuanni considers children’s digital play and socio-material literacy practices when playing the game Minecraft at home. Dezuanni argues Minecraft involves distinctive socio-material literacy practices across virtual and physical spaces in the family home, and suggests Minecraft is experienced through ‘worldness’ that traverses online and physical spaces in ways that are becoming common in children’s lives. This often includes complex negotiations of collaboration, and the blending of online communication with physically co-present instances of communication and interaction. The chapter draws on ethnographic research in the author’s family home to explore Minecraft as a media production platform that enables even young children to become media producers and informed participants in digital media experiences. Chapter 27, by Pål Aarsand and Helen Melander Bowden, focuses on young children’s use of digital technologies and participation in situated digital literacy practices within and across activities and institutional settings. The authors present a review of research focusing on digital literacy as embedded in children’s everyday lives and on multimodal engagements with and around digital technologies with peers, siblings and adults. Drawing on data about three mundane activities involving different participant constellations, technologies and settings, and using the dual analytic lenses of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, the authors discuss theoretical challenges related to the notion of digital literacies as situated. 11

Ola Erstad et al.

Karen E. Wohlwend’s Chapter 28 considers young children as consumers of ‘transmedia playgrounds’ during their online play. Wohlwend reflects on how children engage with their favourite media toys as interactive assemblages of virtual and real worlds, through popular characters and media narratives that ground a franchise’s constitutive products, such as toys, video games, films, clothing and other consumer goods. This chapter proposes that toy transmedia retail websites resemble online playgrounds while advertising toys, games and apps to young children, and constitute dense webs of consumer and imaginative practices, commercial products, playful desires and embodied and digitized practices. The author problematizes the blurred practices of playing and paying on transmedia websites, and how these practices entangle children, popular toys, apps, avatars and game mechanics as co-actants in assemblages in these contemporary play worlds. In Chapter 29, Susan Danby and Christina Davidson problematize how young children manage their knowledge worlds and their social worlds when engaged in Web searching. The authors report on how children draw on both digital and social resources to support their search practices, often assembling social relationships involving educators, peers and family members. The authors illustrate how through talk around and about the Web, children make sense of their social, physical and cultural worlds, gain access to local, community and global knowledge, and to technological understandings and practices. The children’s orientation to the digital screen shows complex, sustained and multifaceted knowledge construction, and their communicative competence when engaging with the Web both blurs and connects their experiences across physical and digital spaces. In the final part of the Handbook, Part VI Emergent themes and future visions, four chapters draw out connecting themes from across the Handbook, and develop an agenda for future research into digital literacies in early childhood. The chapters in this part discuss critical issues that have emerged in this field of research, look to future developments in technological innovation, and consider their likely impact on young children’s experiences of literacy. The chapters in this part also indicate possible future directions for pedagogies to promote and sustain young children’s digital and multimodal literacy practices, and to engage confidently with digital literature and emerging technologies. Chapter 30 opens this concluding part of the Handbook with a systematic review of literature on classroom pedagogies for multiliteracies by Anne Jyrkiäinen, Kirsi-Liisa Koskinen-Sinisalo, Pirjo Kulju, Reijo Kupiainen, Marita Mäkinen and Angela Wiseman. The methodological framework for this review is driven by clear theorization of multiliteracies pedagogy, and six key themes are identified that can drive the future research agenda in this field: social change; social diversity and multilingual classrooms; third space; digital technology and multimodal learning; embodied and situated learning; and designing as meaning making. Next, Chapter 31, by Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, explores the intricate relationship between digital literacy and children’s literature, thus opening up new vistas on the investigation of children’s digital literature. Four key issues are discussed: the significance of materiality that impacts on children’s understanding of narratives; the mutual influence of printed and digitized children’s books, which is mirrored in the multimodal design, content and narrative structure of digital books; the concept of the storyworld (i.e. the distinction between the user’s own ‘real’ world and the fictional world(s) depicted in children’s stories); and finally, the apparent changes evoked by children’s growing sovereignty in creating their own artworks via the digital medium. In Chapter 32, Becky Parry and Fiona Scott investigate how digital media provide children with new imaginative spaces to develop literacies and identities. The authors argue that in

12

Introduction

the context of the neoliberal university, the pursuit of the new is difficult to resist, enabling researchers to be seen as being at the cusp of digital innovation. However, older media forms such as film and television retain their importance to children and are increasingly accessible digitally. In this chapter, the authors argue for more holistic research focused on children’s socio-dramatic play where the child is constructed as having agency and expertise and where digital media are drawn on as cultural resources, which are assembled with everyday experiences as children explore their emerging identities. Finally, in Chapter 33, Amélie Lemieux and Jennifer Rowsell take a wide-angled view on contemporary digital literacy. They point to the observation that early childhood digital literacy has been revitalized over the past decade through immersive worlds, forest schools, toys, consoles and gadgets. These all offer diverse spaces, places and identities, which complement traditional early childhood literacy paradigms that parents, carers, pedagogues and researchers are more familiar with and trust. With so many interlocking theories and innovative methodologies, the authors argue the need to take a road trip around these new ideas to contextualize their impact within the broader field of early childhood literacy. This chapter therefore addresses broad issues around digital literacies in the early years and looks ahead to the future and implications for such work to reimagine childhood.

The future for a multidisciplinary, international field of research This Handbook raises pressing questions about childhood in contemporary cultures – for researchers, policy makers, professional educators, and indeed for everyone who works with young children in educational settings, homes, communities and informal learning spaces. These questions represent global trends as well as local framings and diverse cultural practices. Together, the chapters in the Handbook build a truly international research agenda that connects researchers from many parts of the world and from diverse disciplinary traditions. Pressing areas for development include working with parents and educators to promote pedagogies that embrace the social, collaborative, communicative, cognitive, creative and critical learning potentials afforded by digital technologies, both at home and in early childhood education, and to forge greater synergies between children’s home and school literacy practices. This, in turn, implies the need for enhanced and specialized programmes of initial teacher training and continuing professional development to enhance current practice, and for greater home–school and school–home liaison with regard to young children’s digital practices. Further research is also needed to understand the complexities for young children of mastering on-screen multimodal meaning making, of negotiating different semiotic systems as they learn to read and write texts that include multiple modes, media and (for many children) multiple languages, and as they move between online and offline lives. It seems likely that if we can work toward supporting all young children’s equitable, confident and creative use of digital media, then their future uses of these comparatively new communicative media will soon begin to step far beyond our current imaginings. Despite a growing body of research in this area from around the globe, it remains the case that there is currently an imbalance in the geographic distribution of this work, with a preponderance of studies conducted in the Global North, a term that is often used to refer to Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and developed regions of East Asia (such as Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan). One of the additional challenges, therefore, is to reach out to develop partnerships with individuals, institutions and organizations that are working in the Global South, including Central and South America, Africa and

13

Ola Erstad et al.

developing regions of Asia, and the Middle East. Given that this Handbook arises from an EU COST Action, the insights offered here are skewed toward a European vision, yet some valuable insights are also offered into research across continental and population divides. The intentions of the DigiLitEY COST Action that lays the foundation for this Handbook were partly to bring together existing research in this field and to develop strong links with the children’s media and cultural industries. We strongly recommend that greater understandings of young children’s digital literacy practices can develop through enhanced collaboration between academics, industry partnerships, parents and education policy makers. All of these parties have specific knowledge and expertise to bring to the shared aim of furthering knowledge in the area and improving the learning experiences of 21st-century children. The importance of establishing partnerships and networks to address key questions about young children’s engagement with digital technologies is paramount; single individuals, or even institutions, cannot do very much alone. We suggest that the kinds of research questions raised, which the COST Action and this Handbook aim to address, can only be fully explored through collaborative endeavour in interdisciplinary, cross-national networks. As such, we also challenge research funding agencies to develop mechanisms to better fund such interdisciplinary research on digital literacies in early childhood as it concerns the future condition of citizens in our societies.

References Ananiadou, K. and Claro, M. (2009). 21st Century Skills and Competences for New Millennium Learners in OECD Countries. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 41: OECD Publishing. Binkley, M., Erstad, O., Herman, J., Raizen, S., Ripley, M., Miller-Ricci, M., and Rumble, M. (2012). Defining twenty-first century skills. In: P. Griffin, B. McGaw, and E. Care (eds.), Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills (pp. 17–66). Dordrecht, Holland: Springer. Buckingham, D. (2003). Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Burnett, C., and Bailey, C. (2014). Conceptualizing collaborations in hybrid sites: playing Minecraft together and apart in a primary classroom. In: C. Burnett, J. Davies, G. Merchant, and J. Rowsell (eds.), New Literacies around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy (pp. 50–71). New York: Routledge. Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2015). The challenge of 21st century literacies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 59(3): 271–274. Byron, T. (2008). Safer Children in a Digital World: The Report of the Byron Review. Department of Children, Schools and Families: Nottingham [Online] Available at: www.iwf.org.uk/sites/default/files/ inline-files/Safer%20Children%20in%20a%20Digital%20World%20report.pdf (accessed 14 December 2018). Chaudron, S., Di Gioia, R., and Gemo, M. (2018). Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology: A Qualitative Study across Europe. European Commission, JRC. Luxembourg: Publication Office. Available at: http:// publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC110359/jrc110359_young_children_online. pdf (accessed 14 December 2018). Clay, M. (1966). Emergent Reading Behaviour. Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Auckland. Drotner, K., and Livingstone, S. (eds.) (2008). International Handbook of Children, Media and Culture. Los Angeles: SAGE. Edwards, S. (2016). New concepts of play and the problem of technology, digital media and popularculture integration with play-based learning in early childhood education. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 25(4): 513–532. Gee, J. P. (1996). Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses (2nd edition). London; Bristol, PA: Routledge. Gillen, J., et al. (2018). A Day in the Digital Lives of Children Aged 0-3. Full report. DigiLitEY ISCH COST Action 1410 Working Group 1: Digital Literacy in Homes and Communities. ISBN: 978-0902831-53-7. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/0-to-3s-FINAL-Reportv3.pdf (accessed 23 May 2019). 14

Introduction

Gillen, J., and Cameron, C. A. (Eds.) (2010). International Perspectives on Early Childhood Research: A Day in the Life. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Gillen, J., Cameron, C. A., Tapanya, S., Pinto, G., Hancock, R., Young, S., and Gamannossi, B. A. (2007). ‘A day in the life’: advancing a methodology for the cultural study of development and learning in early childhood. Early Child Development and Care, 177(2): 207–218. Gilster, P. (1997). Digital Literacy. New York: Wiley Computer Publishing. Green, B. (1988). Subject-specific literacy and school learning: a focus on writing. Australian Journal of Education, 32(2): 156–179. Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000494418803200203 (accessed 9 April 2019). Gregory, E., Williams, A., Baker, D., and Street, B. (2004). Introducing literacy to four year olds: creating classroom cultures in three schools. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 4(1): 85–107. Hamilton, M., Barton, D., and Ivanic, R. (1994). Worlds of Literacy. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Hobbs, R. (2011). Digital and Media Literacy: Connecting Culture and Classroom. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Hoggan, E. (2013). Haptic interfaces. In: S. Price, C. Jewitt, and B. Brown (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Digital Technology Research (pp. 342–358). London: Sage. Holloway, D., Green, L., and Livingstone, S. (2013). Zero to Eight: Young Children and Their Internet Use. LSE, London: EU Kids Online. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/52630/1/Zero_to_eight.pdf (accessed 9 April 2019). International Reading Association (2001). Integrating literacy and technology in the curriculum: A position statement. Newark, DE: IRA. Available at: http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED462709 (accessed 9 April 2019). Jewitt, C., and Leder-Mackley, K. (2019). Methodological dialogues across multimodality and sensory ethnography: digital touch communication. Qualitative Research, 19(1): 90–110. Kenner, C. (2005). Bilingual families as literacy eco-systems. Early Years, 25(3): 283–298. Kress, G. (1997). Before Writing: Rethinking the Paths to Literacy. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2013). Perspectives on making meaning: the differential principles and means of adults and children. In: J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. 2nd ed. (pp. 329–344). London: Sage. Kumpulainen, K., and Gillen, J. (2017). Young Children’s Digital Literacy Practices in the Home: A Review of the Literature. COST ACTION IS1410 DigiLitEY [Full Report]. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wpcontent/uploads/2018/02/WG-1-Lit-Review-04-12-17.pdf (accessed 9 April 2019). Lanham, R. A. (1995). Digital literacy. Scientific American, 273(3): 160–161. Lankshear, C., and Knobel, M. (2008). Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices. New York: Peter Lang. Leander, K., and Sheehy, M. (eds.) (2004). Spatializing Literacy Research and Practice. New York: Peter Lang. Marsh, J., and Bishop, J. (2012). Rewind and replay? Television and play in the 1950s/1960s and 2010s. International Journal of Play, 1(3): 279–291. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21594937.2012.74 1431 (accessed 9 April 2019). Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J. C., Lahmar, J., Scott Davenport, F. et  al. (2015). Exploring Play and Creativity in Pre-schoolers’ Use of Apps: Final Project Report. Available at: www.techandplay. org (accessed 9 April 2019).. Mills, K. A. (2010). A review of the ‘digital turn’ in the new literacy studies. Review of Educational Research, 80(2): 246–271. Neal, J., and Neal, Z. (2013). Nested or networked? Future directions for ecological systems theory. Social Development, 22(4): 722–737. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1): 60–92. Ng, W. (2012). Can we teach digital natives digital literacy? Computers and Education, 59(3): 1065–1078. Ofcom (2017). Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report. Available at: www.ofcom.org.uk/researchand-data/media-literacy-research/childrens/children-parents-2017 (accessed 14 December 2018). Rogoff, B., Mejía-Arauz, R., and Correa-Chávez, M. (2015). A cultural paradigm: learning by observing and pitching in. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 49: 1–22. Säljö, R. (2010). Digital tools and challenges to institutional traditions of learning: technologies, social memory and the performative nature of learning. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 26: 53–64. 15

Ola Erstad et al.

Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., and Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a Research Agenda for the Digital Literacy Practices of Young Children: a White Paper for COST Action IS1410. Available at: http://digilitey. eu (accessed 9 April 2019). Street, B. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Street, B. (1995). Social Literacies: Critical Approaches to Literacy in Development, Ethnography and Education. London: Longman. Street, B. (2001). Literacy and Development: Ethnographic Perspectives. London and New York: Routledge. Valentine, G. (2008). The ties that bind: towards geographies of intimacy. Geography Compass, 2(6): 2098–2110.

16

Part I

Perspectives on digital literacies in early childhood

1 Researching the digital literacy and multimodal practices of young children A European agenda for change Jackie Marsh

Background to the Action This chapter outlines the history to, and achievements of, the COST Action ‘The Digital Literacy and Multimodal Practices of Young Children’ (DigiLitEY), an Action which led to the development of this Handbook as one of the key outputs of the network. COST Actions are funded by the EU Commission as a means of drawing together networks of researchers to work on topics of import (see https://www.cost.eu). The chapter provides an overview of the work undertaken by DigiLitEY members. First, however, the rationale for the Action is outlined. Research has identified the ubiquitous nature of new technology in young lives and has explored related practices. Children aged from birth to eight have access to and use a wide variety of technologies (Rideout 2014; Chaudron et al. 2015; Marsh et al. 2015; Ofcom 2017). Over the past decade there has been a substantial increase in internet use by the under-eights, although this is not uniform across countries, and even if they do not use the internet, children may have well-established digital footprints, created by family members (Holloway, Green and Livingstone 2013). Many children access online sites or apps to play games, watch videos, visit virtual worlds and also they use sites and apps related to popular television programmes and popular literature (Burke and Marsh 2013; Ofcom 2017; Marsh et  al. 2019; Rideout 2014). Children engage online with other users who are both known and unknown to them in their everyday lives (Burke and Marsh 2013; Chaudron et  al. 2015), and in some families whose members are geographically dispersed, children, from the first months of life, communicate with family members using video communication apps/sites, such as Facetime and Skype (Kelly 2015; Marsh et al. 2015). Children develop a wide range of digital literacy skills as they engage in these daily practices (Marsh 2016; Marsh et al. 2019). A second area of focus of research in the area has been children’s digital literacy skills development and the role of parents, kindergartens and schools in this process. Children are engaged in reading, writing and multimodal authoring/design across a range of screen-based media in homes and communities, although there are differences in families due to socio-economic status and family histories (Chaudron et al. 2015; Marsh et al. 2015; Nevski and Siibak 2016). In this 19

Jackie Marsh

use, children draw upon their interactions with digital texts and develop strategies to make sense of a variety of symbolic representations, including print, and vice versa (Flewitt 2011; Harrison and McTavish 2016). Well-designed tools can facilitate children’s learning, such as e-books, which can support children’s understanding of stories and story language (Smeets and Bus 2012; Kucirkova, Littleton and Cremin 2017). Children’s engagement with age-appropriate apps on tablets can extend their knowledge and skills in multimodal communication (Flewitt, Messer and Kucirkova 2015; Kucirkova and Littleton 2017). Family members support children’s interaction with technologies in a range of ways, scaffolding interaction with games, sites and apps and guiding acquisition of technical skills (Plowman, Stevenson, Stephen and McPake 2012). There has been less research on the impact of technologies on the media ecology of the family as a whole, and then how this impacts on the parenting of young children. Lahikainen, Mälkiä and Repo (2017), in a project that involved the collection of 665 hours of video data from 26 Finnish families, argue that family members may be “together individually”, in that family members may pursue individual activities using digital media while being physically co-present, and they suggest that the use of a “sticky media device”, such as a smartphone, can disrupt family social discourse, with young children not always being able to work out the nature of the communication taking place through such devices. A recent survey (Livingstone, Blum-Ross, Pavlick and Ólafsson 2018) of parents of children aged 0–17 in the UK suggests that digital media bring families together rather than separating them, and the authors argue that parents try hard to ensure their children can benefit from technologies and manage risks, but that they feel they do not have sufficient support for dealing with digital dilemmas. Another focus for research in the field has been on the use of technologies in early childhood education. In kindergartens and schools, effective pedagogy and curricula for the development of children’s digital literacy skills in the early years are distinguished by an emphasis on play, collaboration, creativity and the co-construction of knowledge (Sandvik, Smørdal and Østerud 2012; Yelland and Gilbert 2014; Dezuanni, Dooley, Gattenhof and Knight 2015; Harwood et al. 2015; Lee 2015). Early years teachers need professional development in this area in order to support their pedagogical practice (Arrow and Finch 2013). A fourth area of research in the field has been the social and cultural value of children’s digital literacy practices and the impact of the online/offline dynamic on this area. Young children’s play with new technologies is important for enabling them to rehearse the social practices of digital literacy in the wider world (Medina and Wohlwend 2014). Young children construct and perform online identities drawing on their offline resources, yet this does not always equip them for the environments and experiences they meet in online social networks (Burke and Marsh 2013). There is an increasing synergy between children’s online and offline digital literacy practices, with the growing proliferation of apps and toys that make use of this dynamic, such as those that embed augmented reality (AR) (Marsh and Yamada-Rice 2016). Finally, a number of studies have identified the lack of attention to the digital literacy practices of young children in national policies. Although literacy is defined internationally as “the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts” (UNESCO 2013), which does not privilege any specific mode, national curricula tend to continue to define early literacy in traditional terms, that is, focusing on alphabetic code (Flewitt 2011; Sefton-Green, Marsh, Erstad and Flewitt 2016). At the beginning of this Action, in 2015, European work in this area was world-leading and internationally recognized, but was fragmented in nature. In addition, there was a need to develop multi-disciplinary approaches to these vital areas of research. New knowledge was required on a range of issues, including young children’s access to and use of smartphones and 20

Digital literacy and multimodal practices

tablet computers in homes and community spaces across Europe, and the way in which families support children’s engagement in wider social networks through digital media environments. Further, while there had been a number of studies of digital literacies in early years settings, as outlined above, there was a need to identify key areas that deserved further attention, in particular the training needs of early years practitioners. Finally, given the rapidly changing nature of technologies, knowledge was required of the impact of emerging and future technological developments on practices across homes, community spaces (such as museums, libraries and civic spaces), kindergartens and schools. The aim of the Action was to draw together the current knowledge base of research in this area, and to identify the key gaps in the research that required collaborative, concerted action. The Action was joined by researchers from a range of disciplines, including: Communication and Media Studies, Education, Linguistics, Psychology and Sociology, which enabled an interdisciplinary perspective to be undertaken on these issues. This work was undertaken in a context in which there was growing attention paid to the need for children to develop what have been characterized as ‘21st Century Skills’. There are various models of such skills (see van Laar, van Deursen, van Dijk and de Haan (2017) for a review), but they generally identify the following skills and dispositions as being key to meaningmaking in the digital world: communication; cultural understanding; problem-solving; creativity; collaboration; and an ability to manage information. These skills are important if young children are to be prepared effectively for the employment and leisure opportunities of the future, which will be shaped, some argue, by the “fourth industrial revolution” (Schwab 2016). However, while the work on 21st-century skills has been useful in identifying the range of transferable skills required in a post-digital (Cramer 2015) future in which online and offline, digital and non-digital domains blend seamlessly, it does not provide a clear theoretical framework for a focus on digital literacy. Therefore, one of the first tasks undertaken by the Action was to develop a shared understanding of digital literacy, outlined in the following section.

Digital literacy The phrase ‘digital literacy’ refers to the literacy practices of young children as they are undertaken across media. This is not unproblematic. Digital literacy has been adopted as a term used to refer to the digital competences children and adults may acquire through the use of digital technologies (van Laar et al. 2017). Thus, it has, in Barton’s (2007) framing become a metaphorical term, as is the case with other phrases in which literacy is used as a signifier for skills and competence, such as ‘computer literacy’, ‘information literacy’ and so on. In addition, European research and policy have a long-established engagement with work in the field of ‘media literacy’. How, then, can digital literacy be useful as a concept? The following discussion was outlined in an Action White Paper, which informed our work across the four years of operation of the consortium (Sefton-Green et al. 2016). Digital literacy can be defined as a social practice that involves reading, writing and multimodal meaning-making through the use of a range of digital technologies. It describes literacy events and practices that involve digital technologies, but which might also involve non-digital practices. Thus digital literacy can cross online/offline and material/immaterial boundaries and, as a consequence, create complex communication trajectories across time and space (Burnett, Merchant, Pahl and Rowsell 2014). Using ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ in their broadest terms, digital literacy can involve accessing, using and analysing texts in addition to their production and dissemination. Digital literacy does involve the acquisition of skills, including traditional skills related to alphabetic print, but also skills related to accessing and using digital technologies. In this category might also be included skills related to the processes involved in accessing, using and 21

Jackie Marsh

creating knowledge. In this sense, our understanding of digital literacy has synergies with those definitions that focus on competences. However, we must move beyond a focus on skills if we are to understand how children’s digital literacy develops in a more holistic sense. To do this, the Action drew on Bill Green’s (1988) 3D model of literacy. Green (1988) originally developed his 3D model of literacy in an era when the focus was still largely on traditional print practices although recently, he has argued that the model can be adapted to include an emphasis on communication in a digital age (Green and Beavis 2012). Green (1988) suggests that there are three elements involved in considering literacy as a social practice – the operational, cultural and critical. Operational elements include those skills needed to become a competent communicator, such as being able to decode and encode alphabetic print. Cultural competences include understanding literacy as a cultural practice and being able to read the cultural signs embodied in acts of meaning-making. The third element of the model, the critical, emphasizes the need for critical engagement with texts and artefacts of all kinds, the need to ask questions about power, about intended audience and about reception. If the 3D model is applied to digital literacy, then the three elements can be defined as set out in Table 1.1: The three dimensions do not operate in a linear manner, but inter-relate. More recently, Colvert (2015) has adapted Green’s model to identify the way in which the processes involved in meaning-making can be inflected by all three dimensions. Drawing on Kress and van Leeuwen (2001) and Burn and Durran (2007), she identified the following as key elements in the meaningmaking process: design; production; dissemination and reception. These might be explained by focusing on the actions of rhetors. A rhetor is an individual who wishes to communicate a message. The message can take the form of a text or artefact. It is important to acknowledge that a text can be defined very broadly – the term does not simply refer to written texts (Kress 2010). In the design stage, the modes in which the message will be conveyed are decided upon. In the production stage, the producer, who might or might not be the same person as the rhetor/designer, creates the text/artefact using the mode and media decided upon in the design stage. The producer might or might not meet all of the original intentions of the rhetor/designer (Colvert 2015). The message is then disseminated through the chosen media, for example paper, the internet, a combination of both, and so on.

Table 1.1  Green’s (1988) 3D model of literacy Operational

The skills and competences required to read, write and make meaning in diverse media, utilizing a range of modes. This includes: •• Decoding and encoding alphabetic print •• Understanding the affordances of, and being able to use effectively, a range of modes, e.g. image, movement, etc. •• Being able to operate digital technologies in order to engage in communicative/ meaning-making practices •• Knowing where and how to access information

Cultural Critical

22

This is not an exhaustive list. The operational skills include skills that have been identified as significant to other metaphorical concepts of literacy, such as information literacy, computer literacy and media literacy. The cultural understandings and practices derived from engaging in digital literacy practices in specific social and cultural contexts. The ability to engage critically with digital texts and artefacts, interrogating issues such as power and agency, representation and voice, authenticity and veracity.

Digital literacy and multimodal practices

At the reception stage, the audience engages with the text/artefact and brings his or her own understandings to that process. At each of the four stages outlined by Colvert (design, production, dissemination and reception), the operational, cultural and critical dimensions of the 3D model are important. For example, in the design stage, the designer needs an understanding of what modes and media mean in a specific cultural context. The producer requires a range of operational skills if he or she is to create a text or artefact effectively. In the reception stage, the audience brings their own critical understandings to the text/artefact. Thus, the original 3D model was adapted by Colvert to include these elements. Colvert’s model enables an understanding of digital literacy across all aspects – from the original intentions of the communicator to the reception of a text/artefact. It offers a dynamic model, which moves beyond traditional conceptions of literacy as a linear process. However, these processes of meaning-making take place within specific contexts, which also necessitates adding to the model. In Figure 1.1, elements that frame children’s engagement in digital literacy, informed by Marsh’s (2015) use of Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model to develop a framework for considering the context of young children’s digital literacy practices at micro, meso and macro levels, have been added. First of all, at the micro level, is the child him- or herself. He/she has interests, competences and so on that shape meaning-making practices. Identity is a significant aspect of digital literacy as a social practice and vectors of identity such as social class, language and ethnicity are also powerful

- Contexts for digital literacy practices -

N INTERPRETATIO

INATIO N

DISSEM

Operational

Critical

Micro context - Child

friends, peers) – Communities (online and offline) -

Cultural

TION

DESIGN

Homes (family,

PRODUC

- Non-formal learning spaces (e.g, museums, libraries -

- Formal learning spaces -

- Meso contexts Macro contexts – Society/Culture/Nation States

Figure 1.1  Model for research on digital literacies. Adapted from Colvert (2015)

23

Jackie Marsh

in shaping literacy practices (Lewis, Enciso and Moje 2007). At the meso level, beyond the child, there are the wider influences of home, including parents and siblings, the community and society in which the child lives. At this meso level, we need to consider also the digital literacy practices that take place in both informal and formal learning spaces. In informal learning spaces, which are found in a range of sites such as clubs and museums, in addition to online affinity spaces (Gee 2005), children engage in a range of digital meaning-making practices. In classrooms, these digital practices can be framed tightly by wider educational policies. As the work of Dyson (2013, 2016), indicates, classroom practice is shaped by teachers’ intentions, by available resources and by the children themselves. The educational institution (early years settings/schools) can also be a powerful actor in this process, particularly if those institutions have policies and practices that inhibit or facilitate practitioners’ designs with regard to digital literacy. At a macro level, we can find the wider influences of the society, culture or nation state in which the previous practices take place. For example, schools themselves are informed by national educational policy, although the extent to which they conform to mandated policies differs (Hall 2004). At the macro level we might also place the industries (e.g. publishing, toy and media producers) and institutions (e.g. Google and YouTube) that support, and in some ways shape, digital literacy practices. These industries and institutions impact on both the meso level (as they inform home and/or community practices) and the micro level (as they are taken up and/or resisted by the individual child). The inter-relation of all the elements embedded in Figure 1.1 indicates the messiness and complexity of literacy in a digital world, but at the same time as expanding traditional conceptualizations, it also offers a means of integrating previously quite separate understandings of literacy (in its metaphorical forms, e.g. computer literacy, information literacy, media literacy). The model offers a broad framework for conceptualizing the operational, cultural and critical dimensions of diverse schooled and informal literacy practices, providing a theorized and growing research-evidence base for thinking beyond the focus on ‘basic skills’ that currently prevails in many EU literacy curricula and policy discourses. This model thus underpinned the work of the Action over its four years of existence and framed a number of the studies and reports produced by the Action’s five working groups. Each of the groups was organized to focus on a specific theme, and in the final section of this chapter, the work undertaken by each of these groups is outlined.

Overview of the Action’s work The first working group focused on: ‘Young children’s digital literacy and multimodal practices in homes and communities’. As noted previously, there is a great deal of evidence that young children are engaged in the use of a range of digital technologies from birth. One of the key tasks of this group, therefore, was to develop a review of the literature in this area, which was undertaken by Kumpulainen and Gillen (2017). In total, 33 studies published between 2005 and 2015 were identified for the review. Three themes emerged from an analysis of these studies. These were: (i) Parental mediation of children’s digital literacy practices in homes; (ii) Children’s media engagement and literacy learning in homes; and (iii) Home–school knowledge exchange of children’s digital literacy practices, and the key contributions to knowledge in each of these areas were discussed. The review identified the main messages for educational researchers, parents and policy makers based on a review of this work, and proposed key research questions in the field for future study. This working group also considered the needs of parents and carers as they attempt to oversee their children’s digital literacy development. A number of Think Tank meetings were held with key stakeholder groups, such as European organizations for parents, and materials were 24

Digital literacy and multimodal practices Table 1.2  Elements to be embedded in a digital literacy CPD programme (from Marsh et al. 2017) Practitioners have input into the design of the programme Programme sustained over time Practitioners are clear about the aims and objectives of the programme from the beginning, and the programme has coherence Programme embeds opportunities for critical reflection Programme embeds opportunities to explore the different epistemological understandings of literacy, and consider how literacy is being transformed through technological developments Risk-taking and experimentation are embedded Designing and disseminating digital/multimodal texts and artefacts are enabled Technical, content, and pedagogical knowledge are developed in tandem Practitioners are able to personalize content Practitioners are able to localize content Programme promotes the construction and maintenance of communities of practice/networks There are opportunities to relate theory to practice throughout the programme Programme embeds opportunities to undertake (independent and/or collaborative) action research Opportunities for coaching, peer-mentoring and team teaching are embedded Practitioners are encouraged to assess the impact of the programme on a continuous basis, to feed into its development

developed to offer parents and carers information and guidance, which can be found on the Action’s website (www.digilitey.eu). The second working group focused on: ‘Young children’s digital literacy and multimodal practices in early years settings and schools and informal learning spaces’. There has been much debate in the early childhood education field with regard to the use of technology in the curriculum, but there is now general consensus that children need some access in order to become familiar with a range of hardware and software (NAEYC 2012). Nevertheless, there is still a general lack of progress with regard to early years practitioners’ use of technology in the curriculum (Thorpe et al. 2015; Liu 2016). The reasons for this are complex, but relate to a number of barriers that are presented through technological, personal or other reasons. The working group undertook a review of literature that identified these barriers and proposed a model for continuing professional development (CDP) that addressed these barriers (Marsh, Kontovourki, Tafa and Salomaa 2017a). This model drew on what is known about best practice in CPD, and is outlined in Table 1.2. Following this work, Kontovourki et al. (2017) undertook a review of literature on digital literacy practices in early years settings, informal learning spaces and teacher education. The review examined the literature across the three contexts of literacy learning outlined in Figure 1.1 (on micro, meso and macro levels). Building on this review, the authors identified a number of areas that need further research in the years ahead, as follows: While collectively the research reviewed in this paper points to the integration of and destabilisation of binaries between notions of literacy, learning and space, there still is a need to design research that focuses more on these intersections: i.e. on the ways in which broader cultural, political and socio-economic contexts might influence formal and informal learning practices of young children and their teachers. More research is also needed to explore how learning is constructed and negotiated when spaces are virtually and physically traversed, as might be facilitated through the collaboration of different professionals 25

Jackie Marsh

who connect with young children’s learning (e.g. teachers, librarians, museum curators). A further gap is also identified in the representation of different age groups in the literature, with younger children (0–3 years old) being mostly absent from research on pedagogical practices in formal learning settings and comparatively less visible in studies on informal learning spaces. Finally, there is a need to consider locally situated research, as this might help to expand how digital literacy in the early years may be understood on a macro-level. While this might be possible by broadening the selection criteria of future reviews to include research published in languages other than English, it might also hint at the value of promoting comparative studies to explore convergences and divergences in the conceptualisation and enactment of digital literacies within and across contexts. (Kontovourki et al. 2017: 57–58) This sets out a clear research agenda for the future. The third working group focused on the topic of ‘Reading and writing on screen’. This group examined knowledge on the affordances of a range of mobile and fixed screen devices for young children’s reading and writing. A literature review that drew together knowledge on children’s writing on screen was produced (Kucirkova, Wells Rowe, Oliver and Piestrzynski 2017). The report examined studies published between 2010 and 2017. The authors identified six key conceptual categories that can be used in evaluating children’s writing on screen in research and practice: (i) Researchers’ epistemologies and perspectives; (ii) Study methods and methodologies; (iii) Social and adult influence on the activity; (iv) Object and tool influence on the activity; (v) Child’s dispositions and characteristics observable outside the activity; and (vi) Child’s engagement and behaviours related to the activity. These categories are developed and located in the literature, offering a clear structure for future analyses in the field. In addition, the group held a Think Tank that involved discussion between academics and digital book producers. They produced a guideline for book producers that offered guidance on producing high-quality texts (see http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Reading-onlinepolicy-brief-V2.pdf). Working group four addressed ‘Young children’s online digital literacy practices and their relationship to offline digital literacy practices’. The group produced a literature review in the field, which outlined a number of areas that required attention in future years (Marsh et  al. 2017b). These included the Internet of Toys, toys that are connected to the internet, and Virtual Reality (VR). Members of the group went on to produce a number of outputs related to these areas. A report was developed, led by the Joint Research Council of the EU Commission, which presented an overview of some of the emerging themes related to the Internet of Toys (Chaudron et al. 2017). The working group went on to undertake research in the area. An analysis of media reports on the Internet of Toys in a number of European countries was undertaken, using a database of 203 commentaries and 47 advertisements. The report’s authors state that it: set out to map the world of IoToys by exploring how they entered the play culture and play discourses of the 2016 Christmas season. In so doing, we were able to a) provide an operational definition of the Internet of Toys; b) portray the imaginaries that are represented in media and social discourses and will shape the domestication of smart toys; and c) outline a research agenda by pointing out the risks and opportunities of these new toys, as well as their social implications and connections to broader social issues (e.g. datafication, robotification, neoliberal discourses, normative discourses on parenting, the gendered construction of toys, the tensions between global imaginaries and localized consumption). (Mascheroni and Holloway 2017) 26

Digital literacy and multimodal practices

One of the issues that concerned the group working on IoT research was that of data privacy. There are a number of issues to be addressed in this area, as some IoT collect data on children’s background and use, and parents might not always be aware that they are doing so – the legal information given by media/toy producers is sometimes difficult to comprehend. The working group has made a series of recommendations to policy makers, including the need to ensure that regulatory frameworks are in place that ensure data from the toys cannot be used in ways that are detrimental to individual children (see: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/ DigiLitEY-Internet-of-Toys-FINAL.pdf). This working group also considered the implications for children of the increasing popularity of VR. A Think Tank was held in Year 3 of the Action, which explored the opportunities and risks associated with children’s use of VR. The Think Tank involved the children’s media industry, as well as academics. A report was then produced which captured some of the rich discussions that took place during the Think Tank (Yamada-Rice et  al. 2017). The report offered an overview of issues surrounding children’s use of VR, including content design, creating engaging content, health, safety and legal issues, and explored the potential value of VR for education. A booklet for teachers outlined key principles for using AR and VR in the classroom (see http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/DigiLitEY-Policy-VR.pdf). The final working group focused on ‘Methodologies and ethics for research on digital literacy’. This working group developed a database that contained details of research undertaken on young children’s digital literacy practices, and allowed users to identify the methods used using key word search terms (see: http://digilitey.eu/working-groups/wg5-methodologies/). This provided a valuable resource for researchers in the field. There were many other activities undertaken in the Action, too numerous to outline here, but which included work with policy makers, the children’s media industry and other stakeholders. Overall, the Action was highly successful in the work undertaken, and achieved the objectives it set out in its original proposal. It is certainly the case that the Action drew together established knowledge in the field, identified gaps in this knowledge and undertook innovative research that furthered understanding. The outcomes of that work can be seen in its various publications, and in this Handbook.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have provided an overview of the activities of the COST Action ‘DigiLitEY’ and outlined the theoretical basis for much of the work undertaken. While the Action was highly successful, there remains a question about its legacy, and about what the future might hold for European research in this area. The Action’s website and all of the outputs will remain available for some time, and so can inform future work in the field. Importantly, the networks that have been built over four years will also be sustained and lead to new projects and avenues for exploration. There remain key challenges, however. First, the political landscape of the European Union is changing, with the complexities around Brexit and the tensions between member states on key issues such as immigration and financing. It will be essential for researchers to remain steadfast in their determination to work beyond national boundaries and interests. Second, one of the strengths of the Action was its development of international networks outside of Europe, but despite this, there are some areas of the world where research on the digital literacy practices of young children is limited, or under-developed. It will be important for connections to be made to these areas in future years in order to develop a more inclusive global agenda for research. Finally, while much progress has been made, there are still barriers to change in some early education systems, with a number of governments resisting a move to 27

Jackie Marsh

ensure young children have opportunities to build on their home digital literacy experiences in early years settings. It is incumbent on all researchers, students and practitioners involved in the Action to continue to press for changes in our early years curricula in the years ahead if children are to be fully prepared for the digital future. This Handbook serves as a strong call for future action, and policy makers would do well to heed it.

References Arrow, A. W., and Finch, B. T. (2013). Multimedia literacy practices in beginning classrooms and at home: the differences in practices and beliefs. Literacy, 27(3): 131–141. Barton, D. (2007). Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Burke, A., and Marsh, J. (eds) (2013). Children’s Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning and Participation. New York: Peter Lang. Burn, A., and Durran, J. (2007). Media Literacy in Schools: Practice, Production and Progression, London: Paul Chapman. Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2014). The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(1): 90–103. doi:10.1080/01596306.2012.739469 Chaudron, S., Beutel, M. E., Černikova, M., Donoso, V., Dreier, M., Fletcher-Watson, B., et al. (2015). Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology: A qualitative exploratory study across seven countries. Joint Research Centre, European Commission. Available at: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/ handle/JRC93239 (accessed 10 April 2019). Chaudron, S., Di Gioia, R., Gemo, M., Holloway, D., Marsh, J., Mascheroni, G., et al. (2017). Kaleidoscope on the Internet of Toys: Safety, security, privacy and societal insights. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Available at: https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/ a1642559-ec37-11e6-ad7c-01aa75ed71a1 (accessed 10 April 2019). Colvert, A. (2015). Ludic Authorship: Reframing Literacies through Peer-to-Peer Alternate Reality Game Design in the Primary Classroom. Unpublished PhD thesis, Institute of Education, University College of London. Cramer, F. (2015). What is “post-digital”? In: D. M. Berry and M. Dieter (eds.), Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation and Design (pp. 12–26). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dezuanni, M., Dooley, K., Gattenhof, S., and Knight, L. (2015). iPads in the Early Years: Developing Literacy and Creativity. London: Routledge. Dyson, A. (2013). ReWRITING the Basics: Literacy Learning in Children’s Cultures. New York: Teachers College Press. Dyson, A. H. (ed.) (2016). Child Cultures, Schooling and Literacy: Global Perspectives on Composing Unique Lives. New York: Routledge. Flewitt, R. S. (2011). Bringing ethnography to a multimodal investigation of early literacy in a digital age. Qualitative Research, 11(3): 293–310. Flewitt, R. S., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2015). New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. Gee, J. P. (2005). Semiotic social spaces and affinity spaces. In: D. Barton and K. Tusting (eds.), Beyond Communities of Practice: Language, Power, and Social Context (pp. 214–232). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green, B. (1988). Subject-specific literacy and school learning: a focus on writing Australian Journal of Education, 32(2): 156–179. Green, B., and Beavis, C. (2012). Literacy in 3D: An Integrated Perspective in Theory and Practice. Camberwell, Vic.: Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER). Hall, K. (2004). Literacy and Schooling: Towards Renewal in Primary Education Policy. Aldershot: Ashgate. Harrison, E., and McTavish, M. (2016). ‘I’babies: infants’ and toddlers’ emergent language and literacy in a digital culture of idevices. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, published online June 15, 2016. doi: 10.1177/1468798416653175 Harwood, D., Bajovic, M., Woloshyn, V., Di Cesare, D. M., Lane, L., and Scott, K. (2015). Intersecting spaces in early childhood education: inquiry-based pedagogy and tablets. The International Journal of Holistic Early Learning and Development, 1: 53–67. Holloway, D., Green, L., and Livingstone, S. (2013). Zero to Eight: Young Children and Their Internet Use. LSE, London: EU Kids Online. http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/52630/ 28

Digital literacy and multimodal practices

Kelly, C. (2015). ‘Let’s do some jumping together’: intergenerational participation in the use of remote technology to co-construct social relations over distance. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 13(1): 29–46. Kontovourki, S., Garoufallou, E., Ivarsson, L., Klein, M., Korkeamaki, R. L., Koutsomiha, D., et  al. (2017). Digital Literacy in the Early Years: Practices in Formal Settings, Teacher Education, and the Role of Informal Learning Spaces: A Review of the Literature. COST ACTION IS1410. Available at: http:// digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/WG2-LR-March-2017-v2.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, G., and van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Edward Arnold. Kucirkova, N., and Littleton, K. (2017). Developing personalised education for personal mobile technologies with the pluralisation agenda. Oxford Review of Education, 43(3): 276–288. Available at: http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2017.1305046 (accessed 10 April 2019). Kucirkova, N., Littleton, K., and Cremin, T. (2017). Young children’s reading for pleasure with digital books: six key facets of engagement. Cambridge Journal of Education, 47(1): 67–84. Kucirkova, N., Wells Rowe, D., Oliver, L., and Piestrzynski, L. E. (2017). Children’s Writing With and On Screen(s): A Narrative Literature Review. COST ACTION ISI1410 DigiLitEY. Available at: http:// digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/WG-3-LR-Oct-2017.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Kumpulainen, K., and Gillen, J. (2017). Young Children’s Digital Literacy Practices in the Home: A Review of the Literature. COST ACTION IS1410 DigiLitEY [Full Report]. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wpcontent/uploads/2018/02/WG-1-Lit-Review-04-12-17.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Lahikainen, A. R., Mälkiä, T., and Repo, K. (2017). Media, Family Interaction and the Digitalization of Childhood. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Lee, L. (2015). Digital media and young children’s learning: a case study of using iPads in American preschools. International Journal of Information and Education Technology, 5(12): 947–950. Lewis, C., Enciso, P., and Moje, E. (2007). Reframing Sociocultural Research on Literacy: Identity, Agency, and Power. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Liu, P. (2016). Technology integration in elementary classrooms: teaching practices of student teachers. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 41(3). Published online 11 March 2016. Available at: http:// dx.doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2016v41n3.6 (accessed 10 April 2019). Livingstone, S., Blum-Ross, A., Pavlick, J., and Ólafsson, K. (2018). In the Digital Home, How Do Parents Support their Children and Who Supports Them? Available at: www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/ assets/documents/research/preparing-for-a-digital-future/P4DF-Survey-Report-1-In-the-digitalhome.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Marsh, J. (2015). Research technologies in children’s worlds and futures. In: A. Farrell, S. L. Kage, and K. Tisdall (eds.), Sage Handbook of Early Childhood Research (pp. 485–501). London: Sage. Marsh, J. (2016). The digital literacy skills and competences of children of pre-school age. Media Education Studies and Research, 7(2): 197–214. Marsh, J. (2017). The internet of toys: a posthuman and multimodal analysis of connected play. Teachers College Record, 119. Published online November 2017. Available at: www.tcrecord.org/Content. asp?ContentID=22073 (accessed 10 April 2019). Marsh, J., and Yamada-Rice, D. (2016). Bringing Pudsey to life: young children’s use of augmented reality apps. In: N. Kucirkova and G. Falloon (eds.), Apps, Technology and Younger Learners (pp. 207–217). London: Routledge. Marsh, J., Law, L., Lahmar, J., Yamada-Rice, D., Parry, B., Scott, F., et al. (2019). Social Media, Television and Children. Sheffield: University of Sheffield. Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J. C., Lahmar, J., Scott, F., et al. (2015). Exploring Play and Creativity in Pre-schoolers’ Use of Apps: Final Project Report. Available at: www.techandplay.org (accessed 10 April 2019). Marsh, J., Kontovourki, S., Tafa, E., and Salomaa, S. (2017a). Developing Digital Literacy in Early Years Settings: Professional Development Needs for Practitioners. A White Paper for COST Action IS1410. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/WG2-LR-jan-2017.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Marsh, J., Mascheroni, G., Carrington, V., Árnadóttir, H., Brito, R., Dias, R., et al. (2017b). The Online and Offline Digital Literacy Practices of Young Children: A Review of the Literature. COST ACTION IS1410. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/WG4-LR-jan-2017.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). 29

Jackie Marsh

Mascheroni, G., and Holloway, D. (eds.) (2017). The Internet of Toys: A Report on Media and Social Discourses around Young Children and IoToys. DigiLitEY. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/ uploads/2017/01/IoToys-June-2017-reduced.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Medina, C. L., and Wohlwend, K. (2014). Literacy, Play and Globalization: Converging Imaginaries in Children’s Critical and Cultural Performances. New York: Routledge. NAEYC (2012). Technology and Interactive Media as Tools in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth through Age 8. Washington, DC: NAEYC. Available at: www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/ positions/PS_technology_WEB2.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Nevski, E., and Siibak, A. (2016). The role of parents and parental mediation on 0–3-year olds’ digital play with smart devices: Estonian parents’ attitudes and practices. Early Years: An International Journal, 36(3): 227–241. Ofcom (2017). Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report. London: Ofcom. Available at: www. ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/108182/children-parents-media-use-attitudes-2017.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Plowman, L., Stevenson, O., Stephen, C., and McPake, J. (2012). Preschool children’s learning with technology at home. Computers & Education, 59(1): 30–37. Rideout, V. (2014). Learning at Home: Families Educational Media Use in America. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center. Available at: http://static1.1.sqspcdn.com/static/f/1083077/24261539/ 1390575104883/jgcc_learningathome.pdf?token=AN3kMI0mGfExbkjC4kLJU90Y6Gg%3D (accessed 10 April 2019). Sandvik, M., Smørdal, O., and Østerud, S. (2012). Exploring iPads in practitioners’ repertoires for language learning and literacy practices in kindergarten. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 7(3): 204–220. Schwab, K. (2016). The Fourth Industrial Revolution. New York: Crown Business. Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., and Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a Research Agenda for the Digital Literacy Practices of Young Children: A White Paper for COST Action IS1410. Available at: http://digilitey. eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/DigiLitEYWP.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Smeets, D. J. H., and Bus, A. G. (2012). Interactive electronic storybooks for kindergartners to promote vocabulary growth. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 112: 36–55. doi 10.1016/j.jecp.2011.12.003 Thorpe, K., Hansen, J., Danby, S., Davidson, C., Zaki, F. M., Grant, S., et al. (2015). Digital access to knowledge in the preschool classroom: reports from Australia. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 32: 174–182. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2015.04.001 (accessed 10 April 2019). UNESCO (2013). Literacy Policy. Available at: www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/educationbuilding-blocks/literacy/ (accessed May 2013). van Laar, E., van Deursen, A. J. A. M., van Dijk, J. A. G. M., and de Haan, J. (2017). The relation between 21st-century skills and digital skills: a systematic literature review. Computers in Human Behavior, 72: 577–588. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.03.010 (accessed 10 April 2019). Yamada-Rice, D., Mushtaq, F., Woodgate, A., Bosmans, D., Douthwaite, A., Douthwaite, I., et  al. (2017). Children and Virtual Reality: Emerging Possibilities. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/ uploads/2015/09/CVR-Final-PDF-reduced-size.pdf (accessed 10 April 2019). Yelland, N., and Gilbert, C. (2014). iPlay, iLearn, iGrow. Melbourne: Victoria University.

30

2 Theorizing digital literacy practices in early childhood Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen

Introduction As this Handbook demonstrates, we are located in an extremely exciting time for developing understandings of digital literacy practices in early childhood. As other chapters in this volume make clear, the last few years have seen a rapid acceleration in empirical studies of young children’s digital literacy practices in a variety of disciplines (e.g. Chaudron 2015; Akhter 2016; Aliagas and Margallo 2017; Marsh et al. 2017). We see this Handbook as lying in a confluence of various disciplinary endeavours that for many contributors, and, we hope, readers, might usefully be distilled and united through such a term as New Literacies. Yet do we mean New Literacies (Lankshear and Knobel 2003; Burnett et al. 2014), or do we mean New Literacy Studies (Gee 2015) or Literacy Studies (Barton 2007)? Or shall we drop the ‘Literacy’ element in favour of a helpful step away from ‘literacy’ with its connotations with alphabetic print, toward a term like multimodality, or broader conceptions of literacy in the new media age such as design (Kress 2003)? Also, attaching other concepts like ‘digital’ to literacy can be problematic since the aim of Literacy Studies has always been to look beyond a dichotomizing focus. Literacy Studies scholars do not hive off decontextualized texts away from orality; for example, Heath’s (1983) key concept of ‘literacy event’ brought both together in a focus on social action. Literacy Studies scholars tend to prefer to incorporate other sources of evidence beyond the text and, indeed, to bridge the online/offline divide (see Gillen (2015) for a brief overview). And then, how dangerous to use the word ‘new’: theories, just like media, move on and have a habit of ultimately discomfiting the theories they grew with (Marvin 1984; Lankshear and Knobel 2011). So, can we start again? We want to explore ways of understanding a person, here a young child, engaged in digital literacy practices, let us say with a tablet. She is interacting with the screen, mediated by specific technologies, hardware and software, and able to take action through interplays of cognitively based decisions and embodied, physical actions. But this sort of account is, in its own way, reductive, or impoverished, as a century or more of scholarship has shown. If we conceive of a young child as an isolable individual, we are ignoring the social world she lives in and the historical, cultural and political processes that have shaped each and every factor of the activity that we have tried to outline or to begin a description with. 31

Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen

We meant well – conceiving of the child first, with some level of agency, is surely a more humane and inclusive place than starting from a battery of tests and measures that decide whether what this child is doing is ‘literate’ or not, and to what degree. Yet there are other ways of beginning to consider digital literacy and multimodality practices in early childhood, which argue that more ethical understandings can be reached if we value all entities in the picture (Hultman and Lenz Taguchi 2010). But this is to leap ahead, toward notions of digital literacy, multimodality and so on before we have begun considering theories of literacy. So, what constitutes a theory of literacy? One approach in defining theories on literacy has been the historic account of how perspectives on what literacy is have shifted over time, although at any specific moment, including our own, radically different concepts nevertheless co-exist. Any such shifts are identified through key concepts as well as fundamental understanding of the interaction between children as readers and writers and the “immersive textual universe” (Merchant 2010: 138) they relate to in different ways. Historicized accounts of literacy show how literacy, both in its material form and as theoretical construct, is deeply embedded in human development and the transformative nature of technological progress (Street 1983; Olson 1994; Collins and Blot 2003; Graff 2010). We do want theorizations that will help us understand but also improve access, quality, learning and wellbeing in supporting young children’s digital literacy and multimodal practices. In this chapter, we propose that there are many conceptualizations of digital literacies in early childhood that are theoretically rich and fruitful. Nevertheless, there is no sense in which we can offer a synthesis and it is difficult to trace a chronological, linear trajectory. We could argue that from a nineteenth-/early twentieth-century conception of the young child as simply not yet literate, we came into the enlightened 1970s and 1980s to see the child as a meaning maker (Wells 1985). Of course, any such story ignores many predecessors, and it is possible to draw a trajectory from a focus on the child as individual toward an increasing focus on the social, and now, in the contemporary era, to a stretching out toward the all-encompassing ideals of posthumanism. However, this idea of a linear trajectory is too simplistic to describe the development of theories around the complexity of early childhood as they have come together as coherent schema at any given time. History has a habit of spiralling, as old ideas return clothed in new forms. Furthermore, in the present day we witness not a universally acknowledged sense of progress along this line of thinking, but rather a somewhat chaotic state of co-existence. Since several compilations of theoretical positions, classical and more recent, already exist, see for example Mills (2016), we propose to explore some key points and tensions informing understandings of literacies in early childhood. We begin by introducing highly influential attitudes in defining literacy in early childhood leading up to the more diverse orientations during the last decade that relate to the new constellations offered by digital media. Further, what we propose in this chapter and for the purpose of this Handbook is to work around two loosely defined theoretical orientations that we put forward as rich and, potentially at least, fertile, and then try to outline some of the developments and tensions behind these. These useful orientations are now outlined. 1

32

Our first orientation is digital literacy as ‘multimodal meaning making’. There are aspects of multimodality to tease out here. Children, as adults, communicate using a range of modes such as speech, gesture, gaze, movement, drawing and writing, often simultaneously. Wolfe and Flewitt (2010) examined instances of ‘collaborative multimodal dialogue’ in interactions between two young children and their mother in episodes involving both digital and print technologies. They demonstrated the complexity of meaning making. Further, another significant insight of a different kind contributing to our understandings

Theorizing digital literacy practices

of multimodality is that the term ‘mode’ can be used on different levels. We have used ‘mode’ to describe elements of communicative behaviour. It is also often used to describe the different elements of texts themselves (using the word ‘text’ in its broadest meaning), e.g., images, layout, sound, language, etc., and thus all texts are multimodal. From this perspective multimodal literacy practices in early childhood are “engagement in a range of complex activities that unfold in a network of social practices, where becoming literate is a social process that is shaped by a child’s search for meaning in multiple communicative contexts” (Flewitt 2013: 299). 2 Our second orientation to digital literacy practices encompasses notions of embodiment and materiality, conceiving of practices as socio-spatial and multisensory (Mills 2016). As soon as we think about space, we perceive that even what seems at first sight a classroombound activity, for example, will have countless ‘lines of flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1987) to other spaces. Such spaces are socially constituted within changing geographies. Digital literacy practices are complex interactions involving networks of technologies, human and non-human, elements of the environment and much else in dynamic entanglements. Any boundary between ‘digital’ and ‘non-digital’ is just one way of reifying a boundary that is in many ways artificial, that obscures their near-constant interpenetration (Burnett et al. 2012). We must immediately emphasize that by adumbrating these orientations we are not suggesting they are dichotomous. To the contrary, there are many ways in which these positions interpenetrate one another, often productively. These theoretical positions are important underpinnings for the contemporary theoretical landscape. We now try to offer something useful in considering some of the productive tensions that have brought us to the identification of these orientations. As we alluded to above, granting the child status as a creative multimodal meaning maker, as clear as that might have been to nineteenth-century philosophers and poets (Gillen 2007), as clear as it can be to people parenting or working with young children today (Thomson and Clifton 2013), nonetheless represents massive shifts in scholarly views over the last hundred years or more.

The child as meaning maker: shifting positions In the early 1900s, psychology developed as an academic field, with some interest in reading processes. Psychologists focused upon measuring aspects of perceptual behaviour in individuals. They came up with the notion that children had to be ‘ready’ physically and mentally, before they could learn to read. Interestingly, one leading researcher associated with this perspective that proved to be influential for sixty years, Huey (1908), argued that the pedagogical implication of this was that early written language experiences could therefore be located within play. However, a ‘reading readiness’ perspective (Morphett and Washburne 1931) won out, with serious consequences: First, an industry emerged concerned with promoting and selling reading readiness, usually with non-print-related activities and materials. Second, the limited definition of reading perpetuated a notion of learning to read as an associative activity, centred on perceptual identification and matching. Third, it supported an absolute distinction between being a reader and not being a reader. (Gillen and Hall 2012: 3) 33

Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen

Key understandings were built around developmental aspects of the child for language and literacy learning from an early age. Over time, and with reference to linguistics, this paradigm focused on language development and how it relates to reading and writing. As a theoretical position, it emphasizes information-processing abilities among individuals and individual differences. Of specific importance is early literacy learning for later literacy performance, and the provision of resources and environments to support early literacy learning. Specific for this paradigm are also the many tests that have been developed to map development of different literacy skills among children. Note, for example, the Phonics Screening Check in England, critiqued by Grundin (2018). During the period from the 1960s until today, the cognitive theoretical position has defined literacy as a psycholinguistic process involving component sub-processes such as letter recognition, phonological encoding, decoding of grapheme strings, word recognition, lexical access, computation of sentence meaning, and so on, focusing on specific tasks in the interconnection between the child and the alphabetical text (Morris 1993; August and Hakuta 1997). This also leads to theoretical conceptions of effective literacy instruction identifying crucial sub-processes in reading such as phoneme-grapheme mapping, word-recognition strategies, identification of derivational morphological relations among words, as well as practice to achieve automatic processing of these aspects of literacy. Reading and writing are seen as developmental processes toward what it takes to become skilled readers and writers, involving specified developmental stages as defined by Piaget and others (Chall 1983). This paradigm also showed how reading and writing must be seen as complex, multi-layered and highly skilled processes involving a reflective and strategic meaning-orientated approach to behaviour. A resounding blow was eventually dealt to reading readiness, even if its legacy continues in some aspects, with the perspective that came to be known as emergent literacy (Ferreiro and Teberosky 1982). Early proponents of the emergent literacy paradigm such as Hall (1987) pointed out that children, as active meaning-makers, will acquire cultural knowledge about print literacy before or without direct literacy instruction; an observation that carries at least as much weight in highly technologized twenty-first-century environments. Another influential theoretical position brings together sociocultural theoretical understandings founded on conceptions of the child as an integral participant in socio-historical developments. Cultural activities initially beyond the child’s conscious understanding come to be appropriated by the child as part of their often self-driven learning. This theoretical paradigm grew partly out of a criticism of certain aspects of the cognitive paradigm and what was seen as limitations resulting from a focus upon theorizing literacy as confined by the individual. Drawing on early theories by Vygotsky, the theoretical lens was drawn toward the social practices and cultural contexts where reading and writing were reconceived as constructions of particular social groups (Mills 2016: 17), and how individuals are inseparably connected to cultural history (Gillen and Hall 2012: 6). Sociocultural theorists’ ideas emphasizing the use of diverse mediational tools and means to construct meaning (Wertsch 1998) led to understandings of social interactions underlying pedagogies. The initiatives for these theoretical positions related to literacy came from researchers interested in the cultural contexts and diversities of literacy within different contexts in everyday life, not necessarily limited to schools and other overtly pedagogical institutions. Shirley Brice Heath (1983), for example, brought a commitment to longitudinal, naturalistic research from anthropology rather than psychology to the study of literacy in families. Like Brian Street (1983), another key figure in the movement that became known as New Literacy Studies (NLS), Brice Heath brought ethnographic methods and sensibilities to the study of literacy practices in communities. Schooling could be understood as it was experienced by the child within the totality of 34

Theorizing digital literacy practices

their cultural experiences. Influential over the following four decades, NLS or Literacy Studies (see Barton (2007) and Rowsell and Pahl (2015) for accounts) continued to include linguists, historians, anthropologists, rhetoricians, cultural psychologists and educational researchers within the ranks of those determined to study literacy in naturalistic contexts. Literacy Studies focused on the cultural contexts and diversities of literacy within different settings in everyday life, as an ecological perspective on literacy (Barton 2007). It was sociology and anthropology with their interests in cultural socialization (Holland et al. 1998), the development of sociolinguistics with its interest in language as a social practice (Hymes 1974), and the growing interest in emergent literacy that led researchers in the 1970s and 1980s to look at literacy and homes in a different way (Gillen and Hall 2012: 6). As summed up by Mills (2016): “These theorists emphasized the social, cultural and ideological construction of literacy practices that become taken for granted in daily communication, whether in homes, at school or social contexts” (p. 21). The influential New London Group (1996) sought to rethink the purpose of literacy education within a broad agenda of social development, drawing on a diverse set of theoretical influences such as critical theory (Gee 2000), social semiotics (Kress 2000) and the implications of technological change (Luke 2000). This group of scholars set the ground for many of the diverse theoretical perspectives on literacy during the last two decades. One important contribution was the concept of ‘multiliteracies’ (Cope and Kalantzis 2000), which implied a much broader understanding of different forms of literacy in different contexts. As an implication, the New London Group argued for studying diverse texts, media and practices to fully grasp children and young people’s engagement with reading and writing. Another important aspect of the socio-historical context at the turn of the twentieth century recognized by the New London Group, as well as others, was of course the development of digital technologies (Coiro et al. 2008) with emerging forms of literacy practice in both virtual and physical spaces and new ways of producing and sharing texts. The multiplicity of communications channels, media and modes, associated with the availability and convergence of new digital technologies, as pointed out in the term multiliteracies, makes this field in constant need of revisions of key concepts and theoretical perspectives.

Digital literacy as multimodal meaning making A key theorist at the intersection between the sociocultural paradigm and what is termed as a social semiotic paradigm is Michael Halliday. His work Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning (1978) defined how language and linguistics function together in relation to social purpose and context. Halliday has influenced many literacy theorists, especially within the paradigm termed ‘multimodal literacies’. The most important theorists defining this paradigm have been Gunther Kress, first with Hodge in Social Semiotics (Hodge and Kress 1988), and later on with van Leeuwen (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). These scholars drew attention to different forms of modality as social forms of meaning making and how semiotics has evolved as a field over time.

Texts are multimodal Multimodality has been defined as “the use of several semiotic modes in the design of a semiotic product or event” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 20). Most importantly, social semiotics acknowledged the role of modes beyond the linguistic in human social meaning (Mills 2016: 65). As such it has also been pointed out that reading and writing have always been multimodal in combining words with spatial layout of the text, images, photos and other modes of representation. Nevertheless greater attention has been paid to investigating how texts and literacy have 35

Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen

changed in the ‘new media age’ (Kress 2003; Jewitt 2014). Young children interact with their environments, including people, through all the modes they have at their disposal, deploying sight, sound and touch (Pink 2009). As has long been recognized, “Early childhood is intrinsically multimodal” (Lotherington 2017: 71). Although multimodality studies (e.g. Jewitt 2014) and the sociolinguistics of writing (Lillis 2013) demonstrate that any written text, as indeed any text, written or spoken, is intrinsically multimodal, it is undoubtedly the case that the increasing accessibility of complex combinations of modes deployed in digital technologies has led to a substantial focus on their qualities as multimodal artefacts. The ways children encounter texts as part of their everyday lives are also becoming ever increasingly complex and dynamic, no longer simply decoding, skimming and scanning, but moving across and among texts, modes and media. And rather than taking talk and writing as the starting point, a multimodal approach to literacy and learning starts from a theoretical position that treats all modes as equally significant for meaning and communication (Jewitt and Kress 2003: 2).

The child, multimodality and text-making The child is conceived as both a consumer of multimodal texts and a producer of such texts. And technological developments represent new possibilities for both practices, in what has been termed ‘multimodal literacy’ (Jewitt and Kress 2003). New media represent potentials for new ways of meaning making and sharing through many representational and communicative modes. The term ‘mode’ has been used to “refer to a regularized organized set of resources for meaningmaking, including image, gaze, gesture, movement, music, speech and sound-effect” (Jewitt and Kress 2003: 1). The New London Group, mentioned above, defined multimodal design as the most significant meaning-making area since it concerns the interrelationship of different modes of meaning and the patterns of interconnection among modes (Mills 2016: 66). Concerning children, this dual conception of consuming and producing multimodal texts has been a central part of educational perspectives on literacy and learning. Children encounter storybook reading from an early age and at the same time engage with drawings and making visual representations. Children as active creators of meaning engage in processes of transferring content from one medium to another, inevitably transforming meanings as they do so. In a highly influential study, Kress (1997: 29) proposed the concept of transduction as referring to ‘transitions from one mode of representation to another’, for example from written work to a drawing. Mavers (2011) extended this work, demonstrating from detailed empirical studies such as that of a group of six-year-olds creating a stop-frame animation, that such work of ‘transmodal remaking’ involves considerable efforts of analysis and selection, necessitating understandings of purpose and the appropriate social frame. For several multimodal theorists and researchers, such as Jewitt (2014) and Flewitt (2013), it has been important to understand the implications of new technologies, both for ‘reading’ and ‘writing’, as ways of relating to content made by others and as ways of producing text oneself. Concerning digital literacy in early childhood it is the notion of the child as ‘agentive self’ (Hull and Katz 2006) and forms of agency that become interesting in the way children engage with multimodal texts in diverse ways. Digital texts and modes provide new affordances for children as active producers of textual expressions and ways of sharing these with others.

New directions for multimodal literacies Scholarly interest in various forms of meaning making has a long cultural history on signs and their meaning, but, as (Mills 2016: 80–81) explains, there has, in recent years, been 36

Theorizing digital literacy practices

an important departure from structural and linguistic approaches within social semiotics and studies of multimodality. Hybrid forms of texts across a range of media, and the scale of the growing number of texts we relate to, represent new conditions for theoretical explorations of multimodality, becoming more complex. These developments also point toward theoretical explorations of integrating the multimodal paradigm with other theories about embodiment and space, which we discuss below. Multimodal design has been used in the further development of the production mode as ways of studying young children’s text-making at home (Pahl 2002), or as ways of engaging children in producing personal stories as part of digital storytelling (Hull and Nelson 2005). A continuing debate concerns the similarities and differences across structures of grammatical patterns in different modes, as well as similarities and differences of texts and textual practices across cultures, which also represent a link to sociocultural theorists (Mills 2016: 83). Several attempts have been made to bring the paradigms of multimodality and sociocultural theories closer together, such as by Street et  al. (2014) and Jewitt (2014) in order “to fill out a larger more nuanced picture of social positioning and group practices, texts, contexts, space and time” (p. 41). This also provides a better alignment for studying new literacy practices among children of using Snapchat, touch-screen devices or smartphone apps, as well as broader conceptions of everyday life and communicative competences in a digitally mediated society.

Digital literacies as embodied, material and socio-spatial Even if Literacy Studies, and more broadly sociocultural perspectives, have long demonstrated that it is always rewarding to attend to the multiple activities through which people engage with texts in authentic interactions, this is particularly clear in the case of young children who have not yet succumbed to schooled disciplines of imposed bodily regimes. Although young children are becoming socialized into their society’s conventions, their bodily movements and sensations are part of their interactions with any digital technology. Many useful contemporary theorizations of young children’s digital literacy practices share one element in common: a resistance to seeing young children’s literacies and learning in strictly teleological terms. Too many pedagogic policies are based on essentially deficit-based frames – the child is defined in terms of what she cannot do yet, in terms of the learning goals that are externally set and that lie ahead (Rios-Aguilar 2013; Yoon 2014; Duggins and Acosta 2017).

Critical theory For most people concerned with understanding digital literacy practices with young children, or indeed any other literacy-related activities in the world, the identification with critical approaches is an essential underpinning philosophy, as expressed within NLS (Coiro et al. 2008). Literacy is always ideological since it is located within broader structures of cultural, economic and political power (Luke, Comber and Grant 2003; Mills and Stornaiuolo 2018). A common concern for theories under this paradigm within Literacy Studies is about social inequalities, social structures, power and human agency. Literacy practices are then seen as produced in the course of struggles for power amid unequal relations. Many of the key people in this area, such as Colin Lankshear, Hilary Janks, Peter McLaren, and Henry Giroux, revitalized theoretical perspectives from the Frankfurt school of social research. In particular, Paulo Freire worked to engage children and youth in literacy activities beyond the school and to develop greater consciousness of the social implications of literacy within the cultural context of poverty in north-eastern Brazil. As pointed out by Freire, schooled forms of reproduced knowledge and 37

Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen

literacy could not transform life for those who are oppressed in society. One key text was Freire and Macedo’s (1987) book Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. Critical approaches to literacy address the ideologies of texts and practices and how literacy in schools and kindergartens is defined as from a specific perspective and for certain interests by ways of domination and marginalization. Literacy events in schools, then, are rule-governed social contexts that have embedded values, identities and symbols of the social world (Mills 2016: 42). An aim is to deconstruct dominant traditions in schools and society by providing other perspectives and ways of using a variety of textual opportunities in people’s everyday life that they themselves can find relevant and authentic in order to liberate and transform action and knowledge. Many scholars and educators such as Vivian Vasquez (2014) have pursued these ideas in the context of early childhood education and demonstrated how a critical literacy curriculum can be created out of the problems and everyday life dilemmas that can emerge spontaneously in classrooms. Janks’ framework for critical literacy education (succinctly summarized in Janks 2013) explains how the dimensions of power, diversity, access and design/redesign must be considered as interdependent; critical approaches to literacy curricula, pedagogic approaches, resources, etc., must consider them together. Mackey and Shane (2013: 14) argue that the development of critical understandings of contemporary media aimed at children “must take place in the context of very sophisticated aesthetic, ideological, and commercial manipulation of multimodal options for young people.” They offer a framework of analytical perspectives, perceptual, ideological and structural, drawing on the work of Serafini, to think through children’s ever shifting landscapes of media and modalities. Literacy, including in early childhood, is seen as a constant social struggle. Critical theory reminds us that we need a critical distance in our understanding of the transformations represented by digital technologies on children and families, partly on the wider cultural implications of using digital media and the material as well as the socio-spatial conditions created for agency through using digital media. Giroux, for example, has written about the impact of cultural industries such as Disney with more pessimistic undertones about childhoods in contemporary societies, not only in the US, but worldwide (Giroux and Pollock 2010). In this sense, literacy is not a neutral term, but an ideological perspective on specific social practices that always implies tensions and unequal positions, as between children and adults or between ways of understanding technologies in early childhood. We would argue it is vital that the contemporary panoply of approaches to young children’s digital literacy practices retain confidence in challenging narrow, reductive frameworks that define learning goals in strict terms of the acquisition of skills, and that lead to regimes of attempted global educational governance (Hamilton 2012; Meyer and Benavot 2013). It is vital to recognize that young children are essentially creative, that early education should provide culturally relevant experiences and that play is a vital component of a young child’s wellbeing (Ewing, Callow and Rushton 2016).

Current socio-material approaches More recent theoretical positions represent a rejection of the focus on measurable assessment of narrowly conceived skills of the individual child in an environment that will be inauthentic to many children, especially those whose everyday lives do not readily or comfortably map onto the environment of the testing regime. This rejection, as we have discussed, stems from a recognition that regimes of accountability, of standardized testing, do violence to the life experiences, talents and indeed skills of children from backgrounds that do not comfortably align to what is required of them in such demands. For example, the ‘funds of knowledge’ approach (González, Moll and 38

Theorizing digital literacy practices

Amanti 2005) argues that educators should enter the families and communities of children they teach, and respectfully investigate the rich cultural practices they will undoubtedly find that are not otherwise necessarily visible in school regimes. Such socio-spatial, socio-material, and other allied approaches seek to work from a stance grounded in social justice, to offer richer cultural educational contexts in which young children may develop to their full potential. The cluster of approaches presented in this section represent a turn toward paying more attention to the socio-material aspects of all living and learning, in which it is not always most fruitful to conceptualize of agentive action as necessarily only in humans and not in technologies. See, for example, the review by Burnett (2010), which draws on actor-network theory. Such lenses might be seen as a development onwards from the sociocultural perspective on early childhood learning through a rethinking of some key sociocultural terms. For example the notion of ‘tools’ in classic Vygotskyan theory encompassed everything from a stick to a symbolic system such as language (Vygotsky 1988). A child might be sitting on a chair, using a tablet, playing in a virtual world in which others are present, and then write a message or sign visible there. Where does the environment start and end? Are the chair, tablet, virtual world, virtual sign that can be written on all tools? But before we tackle the multi-layered and always material nature of the so-called virtual, let us take a step back as it were to some key principles of what we might call a new attention to aspects of materiality. Kuby and Rowsell (2017) introduce a special issue of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy on ‘Early literacy and the posthuman: pedagogies and methodologies’ explaining, Posthumanism is rooted in a relational ontology, meaning we (humans, non-humans and more-than-humans) are all always already entangled with each other in becoming, in making, in creating realities (the world). It is about the now, not solely about a future to come. It is about the in-the-moment realities of literacy learnings that happen today. (p. 288) Among many other implications, this can be seen as a productive revaluing of the importance of play, as place-making entanglements that can be used to call into question established race- and class-based assumptions about literacies (Johnson Thiel and Jones 2017). Socio-spatial and socio-material approaches to literacies seek to place at the forefront of our attention the fact that all literacy-related activities take place in spaces and that these spaces are socially experienced and produced. Comber (2016) argues that using this insight as an underpinning theorization can allow for the creation of a “focus for learning and a frame for curriculum design [that] is both generative and productive” (p. 59). What has been termed ‘the spatial turn’ (Mills and Comber 2015) and ‘spatializing literacy research and practice’ (Leander and Sheehy 2004) represents a deeper understanding of contextual processes of meaning making and how boundaries (Phelan, Davidson and Yu 1993) and (dis-)continuities (Bronkhurst and Akkerman 2016) constitute certain practices. Spaces and places are seen as inter-relational and something people and artefacts move between, as material artefacts and resources that cross between homes and communities. These theoretical explorations also draw on cultural geographies and geosemiotics (Leander and Rowe 2006; Leander, Phillips and Taylor 2010) studying how the childhood experience of and in space has changed dramatically between generations (Leander et al. 2010: 349). One example is the shift from spending leisure time outdoors to indoor play, and how changes in the infrastructure of cities and communities also transform the learning environments of children and their families; what has been termed ‘new mobilities’ (Mills 2016: 94; Leander et al. 2010). Materiality also becomes evident as part of literacy practices, as well as the cultural sensitivity of 39

Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen

childhood spaces for learning and literacy as diverse. And if socio-spatial understandings emerge from investigations in children’s own environments then those children are positioned as experts rather than positioned as deficient from the beginning. The most important change of spatial literacies in recent years is of course the introduction of digital technologies and online spaces in the everyday lives of children (Merchant et al. 2012; Thomson, Berriman and Bragg 2018). Virtual literacies open up new interactive spaces for participation that have triggered theoretical considerations of new practices for reading and writing. The importance of the interrelationship between online and offline spaces has increased as the multi-functionality of mobile devices has become increasingly accessible, also providing access to new platforms of participation such as ‘Minecraft’ (Bailey 2016). Another recent theoretical perspective is described as “sensory literacies” (Mills 2016: 137). This is especially relevant for digital literacy in early childhood since touch-screen technologies have become key artefacts in the way children interact with digital technologies. The emphasis is on the sensorial and embodied nature of human experience, perception, knowing and practising, which draws from anthropology, sociology and philosophy of the senses (Mills 2016). The history of literacy has been dominated by words and the visual, while new technologies provide opportunities to use a variety of different human senses. In several projects ‘touch’ has been targeted as a more dominant sense than the visual, for example Carey Jewitt’s ‘IN-TOUCH’ project on digital touch communication, also interesting as a further development of multimodal approaches (Crescenzi, Jewitt and Price 2014).

Across the field of digital literacies for early childhood Looking toward contemporary and future orientations of theories on literacy it is clear that the issue of literacies itself is becoming increasingly complex and diverse. We discern a growing desire to take much more account of the environment, understood as physical, cultural, economic and so on, in the multiple networked ways in which agency is distributed, than in more traditional accounts. One implication across different theoretical stances to digital literacies in early childhood education is the need to recognize that the phenomena we study, and are part of, are reactive in ways that may be responsive, agentive, resistant to, or shaped by relations of power that are simultaneously visible in the momentary and local, and yet potentially analysable at the largest scales of economic and political relations. A second implication of different theoretical stances to digital literacies is in understanding that the researcher does not merely collect data but rather generates data (Dyson 2016; Thomson and Hall 2017), as she participates in the research. The researcher is required to reflect on their own positionality, and the importance of actively recruiting diverse ways to elicit others’ points of view. A third implication of different theoretical stances to digital literacies and multimodality in early childhood involves paying constant attention to methodology. There is a greater focus on multimodality in the methodologies that researchers into early childhood practices with digital technologies deploy. Again, it could be argued that this is not in itself new; creative uses of photography and video have a long and honourable history in early childhood research (Barker and Wright 1951; McDermott 1976). Developments in methodologies are significant instantiations of theory and praxis that also require responsible attitudes in deployment and dissemination (Kuntz 2015). As suggested earlier in this chapter, there are several theoretical tensions about digital literacy in early childhood that are apparent in this field of research. One key site of contention 40

Theorizing digital literacy practices

is between measurable assessment and creative play practices among children using digital technologies. Both represent specific ideologies of childhood, literacy and learning, putting the child at the centre. Narrowing down what is researchable to specific categories of measurement limits our understanding of digital literacy practices, while emphasizing creative play might romanticize the agency of children. Rather, the developments of digital technologies today open up much more complex and connected understandings of what literacy practices represent for children and their environments. For example, multimodal approaches acknowledge that the sites of display are being transformed by the design of new and ubiquitous technologies, learning spaces and cultural spaces (Mills 2016: 88). We also see that terms like ‘multiliteracies’ are being repositioned to address contemporary challenges such as twenty-first-century skills (Guo, Cope and Kalantzis 2009; see also the new national curriculum of Finland 2017). However, some also warn that we might risk a ‘pedagogization of everyday life’ (Sefton-Green 2016) in the way we theorize about the implications and possibilities of digital literacy practices in early childhood. In concluding, we will therefore use some insightful words from David Olson: It would be simple minded indeed to believe that any small number of factors could explain major social or psychological transformations such as those associated with literacy. But if we think of a theory as a machine to think with, a device for organizing and interpreting events with the aim of bringing other questions and other forms of evidence into conjunction, then it is not at all unreasonable to aspire to a theory of how writing contributes not only to our understanding of the world but also of ourselves. (Olson 1994: xvii)

References Akhter, P. (2016). A young child’s intergenerational practices through the use of visual screen-based multimodal communication to acquire Qur’anic literacy. Language and Education, 30(6): 500–518. doi: 10.1080/09500782.2016.1141935. Aliagas, C., and Margallo, A. M. (2017). Children’s responses to the interactivity of storybook apps in family shared reading events involving the iPad. Literacy, 51(1): 44–52. doi: 10.1111/lit.12089. August, D., and Hakuta, K. (1997). Improving schooling for language-minority children: a research agenda. Washington, DC. Available at: www.nap.edu/catalog/5286/improving-schooling-for-languageminority-children-a-research-agenda. Bailey, C. (2016). Free the sheep: improvised song and performance in and around a Minecraft community. Literacy, 50(2): 62–71. Barker, R., and Wright, H. (1951). One Boy’s Day: A Specimen Record of Behavior. New York: Harper & Bros. Barton, D. (2007). Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. Bronkhurst, L. H., and Akkerman, S. F. (2016). At the boundary of school: continuity and discontinuity in learning across contexts. Educational Research Review, 19: 18–35. Burnett, C. (2010). Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings: a review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(3): 247–270. Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2012). The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(1): 90–103. doi: 10.1080/01596306.2012.739469. Burnett, C., Davies, J., Merchant, G., and Rowsell, G. (eds.) (2014). New Literacies around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy. New York: Routledge. Chall, J. S. (1983). Stages of Reading Development. New York: McGraw-Hill. Chaudron, S. (2015). Young children (0–8) and digital technology: a qualitative exploratory study across seven countries. Luxembourg. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc. Coiro, J., Knobel, M., Lankshear, C., and Leu, D. J. (eds.) (2008). Handbook of Research on New Literacies. New York: Routledge. 41

Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen

Collins, J., and Blot, R. K. (2003). Literacy and Literacies: Texts, Power and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Comber, B. (2016). Literacy, Place, and Pedagogies of Possibility. New York: Routledge. Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (eds.) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Macmillan. Crescenzi, L., Jewitt, C., and Price, S. (2014). The role of touch in preschool children’s learning using iPad versus paper interaction. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 37(2): 86–95. Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Duggins, S., and Acosta, M. M. (2017). Reading aloud in an era of common core: an exploratory study of the perspectives of primary teachers serving African American children in low-income communities. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. doi: 10.1177/1468798417716980. Dyson, A. H. (ed.) (2016). Child Cultures, Schooling, and Literacy: Global Perspectives on Composing Unique Lives. New York: Routledge. Ewing, R., Callow, J., and Rushton, K. (2016). Language and Literacy Development in Early Childhood. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Ferreiro, E., and Teberosky, A. (1982). Literacy before Schooling. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Flewitt, R. (2013). Multimodal perspectives on early childhood literacies. In: J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 295–309). London: Sage. Freire, P., and Macedo, D. (1987). Literacy: Reading the Word & the World. Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey. Gee, J. P. (2000). New people in new worlds: networks, the new capitalism and schools. In: B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures (pp. 43–68). London: Routledge. Gee, J. P. (2015). The New Literacy Studies. In: J. Rowsell and K. Pahl (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies (pp. 35–48). London and New York: Routledge. Gillen, J. (2007). Derwent’s doors: creative acts. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 14(3): 150–159. doi: 10.1080/10749030701316284. Gillen, J. (2015). Virtual spaces in literacy studies. In: J. Rowsell and K. Pahl (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies (pp. 369–382). London and New York: Routledge. Gillen, J., and Hall, N. (2012). The emergence of early childhood literacy. In J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. 2nd ed. (pp. 3–17). Thousand Oaks, CA/London: SAGE Publications. doi: 10.4135/9781446247518.n1. Giroux, H. A., and Pollock, G. (2010). The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. González, N., Moll, L., and Amanti, C. (eds.) (2005). Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practice in Households, Communities and Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Graff, H. J. (2010). Literacy Myths, Legacies and Lessons: New Studies on Literacy. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Grundin, H. U. (2018). Policy and evidence: a critical analysis of the Year 1 Phonics Screening Check in England. Literacy, 52(1): 39–46. doi: 10.1111/lit.12124. Guo, L., Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2009). Multiliteracies: introduction to the special issue. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 3(2): 159–163. Hall, N. (1987). The Emergence of Literacy. Sevenoaks, UK: Hodder and Stoughton. Halliday, M. A. K. (1978). Language as a Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and Meaning. London: Edward Arnold. Hamilton, M. (2012). Literacy and the Politics of Representation. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with Words. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodge, R., and Kress, G. (1988). Social Semiotics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Holland, D., Skinner, D., Lachicotte, W., and Cain, C. (1998). Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Huey, E. B. (1908). The Psychology and Pedagogy of Reading. New York: Macmillan. Hull, G. A., and Katz, M. L. (2006). Crafting an agentive self: case studies of digital storytelling. Research in the Teaching of English, 41(1): 43–81. Hull, G. A., and Nelson, M. (2005). Locating the semiotic power of multimodality. Written Communication, 22(2): 224–261.

42

Theorizing digital literacy practices

Hultman, K., and Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: a relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5): 525–542. doi: 10.1080/09518398.2010.500628. Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in Sociolinguistics: An Ethnographic Approach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Janks, H. (2013). Critical literacy in teaching and research. Education Inquiry, 4(2): 225–242. Jewitt, C. (ed.) (2014). The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Jewitt, C., and Kress, G. (2003). Multimodal Literacy. New York: Peter Lang. Johnson Thiel, J., and Jones, S. (2017). The literacies of things: reconfiguring the material-discursive production of race and class in an informal learning centre. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3): 315–335. Kress, G. (1997). Before Writing: Rethinking the Paths to Literacy. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2000). Multimodality. In: B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures (pp. 182–202). London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Kress, G., and van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, G., and van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal Discourse: The Modes and Media of Contemporary Communication. London: Edward Arnold. Kuby, C. R., and Rowsell, J. (2017). Early literacy and the posthuman: pedagogies and methodologies. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3): 285–296. Kuntz, A. M. (2015). The Responsible Methodologist: Inquiry, Truth-telling and Social Justice. Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Lankshear, C., and Knobel, M. (2003). New Literacies: Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning. Buckingham: Open University Press. Lankshear, C., and Knobel, M. (2011). New Literacies: Everyday Practices and Social Learning. 3rd ed. Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press, McGraw-Hill Education. Leander, K. M., Phillips, N. C., and Taylor, K. H. (2010). The changing social spaces of learning: mapping the new mobilities. Review of Research in Education, 34: 329–394. Leander, K. M., and Rowe, D. W. (2006). Mapping literacy spaces in motion: a rhizomatic analysis of a classroom literacy performance. Reading Research Quarterly, 41(4): 428–460. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.41.4.2. Leander, K. M., and Sheehy, M. (2004). Spatializing Literacy Research and Practice. New York: Peter Lang. Lillis, T. (2013). The Sociolinguistics of Writing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lotherington, H. (2017). Elementary language education in digital multimodal and multiliteracy contexts. In: S. Thorne and S. May (eds.), Language Education and Technology (pp. 71–85). 3rd ed. New York: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-02328-1. Luke, A. (2000). Cyber-schooling and technological change: multiliteracies for new times. In B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds.), Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures (pp. 69–91). London: Routledge. Luke, A., Comber, B., and Grant, H. (2003). Critical literacies and cultural studies. In: G. Bull and M. Anstey (eds.), The Literacy Lexicon (pp. 15–36). 2nd ed. Melbourne, Australia: Prentice-Hall. Mackey, M., and Shane, M. (2013). Critical multimodal literacies. In: K. Hall et al. (eds.), International Handbook of Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning, and Culture (pp. 15–27). Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Marsh, J., Hannon, P., Lewis, M., and Ritchie, L. (2017). Young children’s initiation into family literacy practices in the digital age. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 15(1): 47–60. doi: 10.1177/ 1476718X15582095. Marvin, C. (1984). When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. New York: Oxford University Press. Mavers, D. (2011). Children’s Drawing and Writing: The Remarkable in the Unremarkable. New York: Routledge. McDermott, R. P. (1976). Kids Make Sense. Stanford, CA: Stanford University. Merchant, G. (2010). 3D virtual worlds as environments for literacy learning. Educational Research, 52(2): 135–150. doi: 10.1080/00131881.2010.482739. Merchant, G., Gillen, J., Marsh, J., and Davies, J. (2012). Virtual Literacies: Interactive Spaces for Children and Young People. London: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780203096468.

43

Ola Erstad and Julia Gillen

Meyer, H.-D., and Benavot, A. (eds.) (2013). PISA, Power and Policy: The Emergence of Global Educational Governance. Oxford: Symposium Books. Mills, K. A. (2016). Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material Lenses. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Mills, K. A., and Comber, B. (2015). Socio-spatial approaches to literacy studies: rethinking the social constitution and politics of space. In: J. Rowsell and K. Pahl (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies (pp. 91–103). Abingdon: Routledge. Mills, K. A., and Stornaiuolo, A. (2018). Introduction: digital diversity, ideology and the politics of a writing revolution. In: K. A. Mills et al. (eds.), Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures (pp. 1–9). New York: Routledge. Morphett, M. V., and Washburne, C. (1931). When should children begin to read? Elementary School Journal, 31: 496–503. Morris, D. (1993). The relationship between children’s concept of word in text and phoneme awareness in learning to read: a longitudinal study. Research in the Teaching of English, 27(2): 133–154. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66: 60–92. Olson, D. R. (1994). The World on Paper: The Conceptual and Cognitive Implications of Writing and Reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pahl, K. (2002). Ephemera, mess and miscellaneous piles: texts and practices in families. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 2(2): 145–165. Phelan, P., Davidson, A. L., and Yu, H. C. (1993). Students’ Multiple Worlds: Navigating the Borders of Family, Peer and School Cultures. New York: Teachers College Press. Pink, S. (2009). Doing Sensory Ethnography. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications. Rios-Aguilar, C. (2013). Policy-making in early childhood literacy: pathways to equity for all children. In: J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 96–114). 2nd ed. London: SAGE Publications. Rowsell, J., and Pahl, K. (eds.) (2015). The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies. London and New York: Routledge. Sefton-Green, J. (2016). Can studying learning across contexts change educational research or will it lead to the pedagogization of everyday life? In: O. Erstad et al. (eds.), Learning across Contexts in the Knowledge Society (pp. 243–251). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Street, B. V. (1983). Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Street, B. V., Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2014). Multimodality and the new literacy studies. In: C. Jewitt (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis (pp. 227–237). 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Thomson, P., and Clifton, J. (2013). Connecting with parents and the community in an urban primary school: creative partnerships to build literacy/ies. In: K. Hall et  al. (eds.), International Handbook of Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning, and Culture (pp. 54–66). Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Thomson, P., and Hall, C. (2017). Place-based Methods for Researching Schools. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Thomson, R., Berriman, L., and Bragg, S. (eds.) (2018). Researching Everyday Childhoods: Time, Technology and Documentation in a Digital Age. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Vasquez, V. (2014). Negotiating Critical Literacies with Young Children 10th anniversary edition. New York: Routledge. Vygotsky, L. S. (1988). The Collected Works of L.S. Vygotsky Volume 1. Problems of General Psychology Including the Volume Thinking and Speech. Edited by R. W. Rieber and A. S. Carton. New York: Plenum Press. Wells, G. (1985). The Meaning Makers: Children Learning Language and Using Language to Learn. London: Hodder and Stoughton. Wertsch, J. V. (1998). Mind as Action. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolfe, S., and Flewitt, R. (2010). New technologies, new multimodal literacy practices and young children’s metacognitive development. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(4): 387–399. doi: 10.1080/0305764X.2010.526589. Yoon, H. S. (2014). Assessing children in kindergarten: the narrowing of language, culture and identity in the testing era. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 363–393.

44

3 Researching digital literacy practices in early childhood Challenges, complexities and imperatives David Poveda

Introduction Current research on young children’s digital literacies is shaped by at least three research challenges. First, digital technologies are a relatively novel and fast-changing phenomenon in the lives of children. As a societal macro-transformation, the digital affects all aspects of social life and involves additional uncertainties in relation to the conventional conduct of social research. As a new phenomenon, it is difficult to draw from pre-existing research and theorization. Often, the provisional solution for a new research topic/scenario is to draw from an existing related field of study – in our case, more obviously, research on children’s “print literacies” and reading and writing development or children’s engagement with nondigital media and television. This strategy facilitates defining research procedures, interpreting findings and building a cumulative body of knowledge; yet, as Bloome et al. (2013) recently pointed out, theories and methodologies contain implicit grammars and chronotopes regarding the object of study and, in this case, the nature of childhood. As I discuss below, this not always conscious relocation of pre-existing tropes in childhood research to the study of the experiences of young children with changing digital technologies can raise problems. In addition, digital devices and derived applications transform at such a rapid pace that the object of study in itself is difficult to define consistently and findings become obsolete comparatively faster than in other areas of child and developmental research. Second, research questions around the digital, in Livingstone and Blum-Ross’ (2017) terms are mediated by “public hyperbole about media-related opportunities and risks” (p. 54). Public attention and public policy concerns gravitate around the “effects” and “impact” of digital technologies on the lives of children, development and future trajectories and this, in turn, has implications for how research problems are formulated and how research is designed (Messer and Kucirkova 2016). This magnification of research questions occurs regardless of the presupposed direction of change. Techno-reluctant views raise concerns about the potentially negative impact on development of intense exposure, more recently with a special focus on infants and very young children, to digital technologies. These concerns are quickly picked up by the media and emerge as moral panics around childhood and technology. Also, as I discuss below, they draw from particular operationalizations of research issues that are limited in their capacity 45

David Poveda

to grasp the complexities of the role of digital media and technologies in human development. Techno-enthusiasts see digital technologies as the revolutionary solution to myriad social issues and problems affecting childhood, particularly in relation to education and schooling. Indeed, digital technologies play, and will continue to play, a role in educational change and innovation, yet too often the eulogy to educational change through digital technologies is presented without acknowledging the connection to established pedagogical approaches or without engaging with the public mission of schooling or accessibility/equity issues (but see Reich and Ito 2017). Third, the study of the digital literacy practices and experiences of young children is immersed in broader changes and debates regarding how children are placed within research. Some would argue that the move in social research that calls for actors, young people and children, to have an active voice in the research process simply mirrors transformations precipitated/facilitated by the collaborative ethos of digital culture (e.g. Jenkins et al. 2009; Estalella, Rocha and Lafuente 2013). Regardless of debates around what came first in the chain “technology – paradigms of social life – research approaches around childhood”, there is a clear sense that research relationships must change to understand how young children engage with digital technologies. More so, this change seems to be particularly necessary if we want to move research questions and concerns beyond the limiting ways in which research is framed in the public debates and public policy concerns outlined above. Within this context, in this chapter I review and discuss a selection of critical and emergent issues in the area of research on young children’s digital literacies and practices. Drawing from the starting premises discussed below as part of the review methodology, I focus on what I consider three key issues. First, the challenges, understood as obstacles to overcome, associated with observing young children’s digital literacies and practices. Second, the complexities (i.e. acknowledging that an issue requires considerable analytical detail and thought) tied to how young children’s digital practices are represented and conceptualized. Third, I discuss how research on young children’s literacies is responding to the socio-academic imperative to make research a collaborative endeavour. I close the chapter by considering how these critical questions connect to plausible future research scenarios.

Review methodology My engagement with the literature shares aspects with narrative reviews (Baumeister and Leary 1997) but has some additional peculiarities. First, it pays particular attention to existing literature reviews, especially methodological overviews, in the study of early childhood literacies and research on digital childhoods. Within these reviews, the publications generated by the DigiLitEY COST Action (http://digilitey.eu) are a particularly important source of information, as these reviews: (a) have broken down research in the digital and multimodal literacies of young children into different key areas; (b) are committed to providing an international and comparative overview of existing research. Second, particular attention is paid to works that have a methodologically reflexive orientation and explicitly discuss how researchers have adapted existing approaches or created new tools to study early childhood digital practices. Third, the literature review and synthesis is assisted by the DigiLitEY Research Methodology Database,1 a collaborative reference tool populated by researchers that facilitates generating quick overviews of methodological trends in the study of the digital literacies and practices of children between 0 and 8 years of age. Research on the digital literacy practices of young children is an area where still further research is needed, yet a synthesis of existing reviews suggests distinct patterns and changes over the last decade. These trends are briefly discussed here as they help situate the themes discussed in this chapter: 46

Researching digital literacy practices

1 Existing research draws from a variety of methodological approaches, including both qualitative (Kumpulainen and Gillen 2017; Kontovourki et  al. 2017) and quantitative (Kurcikova et  al. 2017; Marsh et  al. 2017a). Yet most of the current literature is rather homogeneous in terms of the populations under study, as most studies focus on culturally dominant, middle-class, able children (Miller et  al. 2017; Marsh et  al. 2017a; Paciga and Donohue 2017) – a trend that might contrast with an earlier research interest on digital technologies and young children from “special populations” (cf. Lankshear and Knobel 2003). 2 Within this methodological diversity, over the last decade, qualitative and observational studies of young children’s digital literacy practices, occupy a privileged position (FaulstichOrellana and Peer 2013; Miller et al. 2017). In comparison to existing earlier reviews it is not clear if this position reflects a shift (or in what direction) over the last ten years (cf. Burnett 2010). 3 Calls for methodological innovation and exploration are embedded in several of these reviews. This forward-looking approach draws from a combination of interrelated factors including: the methodological possibilities of emerging digital technologies; changes in the epistemological lens through which children and literacy practices are understood; and transformations in the relevant research and policy contexts (Ergler et al. 2016; Kurcikova et al. 2017; Marsh et al. 2017a; Miller et al. 2017). This portrait provides the foundation and justifies the foregrounding of the research issues I discuss in the remainder of the chapter, showcasing the alternatives and solutions that researchers have developed as they delve into the complex task of documenting the digital literacy practices of young children.

The challenges of observing children’s ‘everyday’ digital literacies The observation of young children and infants is historically the first and one of the most important methods in the study of human development (Bradley 1989) and yet has a contentious position within contemporary studies of childhood. As developmental psychology became the dominant perspective in the study of childhood, experimental and quantitative methods were privileged (Mayall 2013). In contrast, within anthropology the interest in children and education was approached through ethnographic methods and participant observation (Lancy 2008). Subsequently, these divergent traditions met in complex ways as childhood studies emerged as an interdisciplinary field and the methodological and theoretical legacies of each discipline were revisited (Corsaro 2005). Many current research questions related to the digital literacies and practices of young children are formulated in such a way that research designs would seem to lean toward observational methods as the preferred approach to document children’s engagement with digital technologies (Aarsand 2016). Yet this “inclination” is hedged by at least three difficulties that shape how observational methods have been reworked to study children’s digital experiences successfully: (1) observation, particularly when it aims to provide contextualized and socio-culturally situated accounts, is a labour-intensive method; (2) documenting young children’s behaviour – particularly young children’s digital experiences across a variety of devices – requires significant attention to detail beyond overt verbalizations; (3) the contexts that most contribute to the diversity of children’s digital experiences are out-of-school, family and intimate contexts that are difficult to access. Very few studies have been designed as continuous longitudinal ethnographic projects (Corsaro 1996) of the digital media practices and literacies of young children – while a number of ethnographic studies with adolescents and youth do exist (e.g. Lange 2014; Livingstone and 47

David Poveda

Sefton-Green 2016). Some ethnographic studies of children in a variety of contexts might have “stumbled upon” children’s engagement with digital media and technologies as part of their daily practices, communicative repertoires or leisure experiences and have examined these in the context of broader research questions (e.g. Duran 2017). Yet, when the focus turns specifically to digital literacies and practices, researchers must find a balance between various trade-offs. In this case, research designs tend to favour reducing the number of observations that could be gathered through extended ethnographic fieldwork but use recording procedures alongside other data-collection techniques that maximize the detail available in the collected data and the combination of different data-collection techniques. In turn, this has facilitated developing comparative and longer-range longitudinal research projects. For example, Noppari, Uusitalo and Kupiainen (2017) present a sequential study that tracks the digital experiences of different cohorts of children between 5 and 14 years of age. Data collection on participants takes place every three years involving 50–60 children in each datacollection cycle and includes home visits with observations of children’s rooms and home-tours alongside a battery of other techniques such as questionnaires, surveys, media diaries, media depictions through photograph or drawing and media toys with younger children. The policyoriented study supported by the EU Joint Research Centre on “Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology” also adopted a methodological approach focused on concentrated visits to children’s homes to conduct interviews with parents and children, examine perceptions around media through visual materials and conduct digital home-tours (Chaudron 2015). This was a comparative project, involving 21 European countries with at least ten families participating per country. In addition, a shortened version of these home-visit protocols was conducted a year later with the same families from seven European countries allowing for a one-year longitudinal follow-up of some families (Chaudron, Di Gioia and Gemo 2018). However, this approach to home visits/observations has some limitations. As Noppari, Uusitalo and Kupiainen (2017) point out, it still draws on spoken and written language as the main sources of information. This inclination might raise ontological concerns in terms of what communicative modes and forms of evidence are privileged. It also has limitations in the case of less verbal children and younger pre-verbal children. In addition, while home visits and observations increase ecological validity in terms of documenting children’s daily settings, it could also be argued that this approach favours documenting young children’s digital practices and skills as they are “showcased” for researchers during these visits, rather than documenting them as part of children’s “natural” on-going activities and projects (cf. Silverman 2013). One approach to respond to these critiques is to intensify the observational component documenting (through a variety of audiovisual recording devices) children’s sustained daily activities and engagement with digital technologies. The trade-off of adopting such a microscopic and exhaustive perspective is that research designs are most often framed as case studies – which, subsequently, may be organised comparatively. More generally, as Danby (2017) points out, naturalistic observation (i.e. video recordings) and analysis of children’s interactions with, through and around digital technologies would be the preferred approach of micro-interactional and conversational analytic studies. From this perspective the main sources of data are recordings and detailed transcripts of on-going action and interaction and the main analytical work centres on unpacking these interactions – without necessarily relying on verbal retrospective accounts from participants, reflective discourse during interviews, etc., or other sources of evidence outside the interactional order (Clemente 2013). In the following section, I return to this approach as I discuss issues of representation and transcription. Here I want to situate this ethnomethodological approach alongside other ways of understanding detailed observational methods. 48

Researching digital literacy practices

One way in which observation, particularly of very young children (0–3 years of age), has been successfully developed is through the “Day in the Life” methodology (Gillen and Cameron 2010). At the heart of this approach is the continuous video-recording of the activity of a child during a full day (or, minimally six hours of the day), observing the context and other participants surrounding the focal child. This day of recording is followed by a second iterative encounter in which parents are interviewed and invited to discuss a summary video of key moments of the recording. The approach has facilitated transnational comparisons, as it can be replicated and adapted with relative ease in a variety of settings, and has contributed to an ecological-cultural (Tudge and Hogan 2005) detailed look into child development and family life. More recently, the methodology has been adapted to “A Day in the Digital Lives of Children Aged 0–3” (Gillen et al. 2018) adopting a comparative perspective across several countries and with an iterative focus on those moments of the day in which there is a presence or child engagement with digital technologies. In addition, there is an acknowledgement that the video-recorded materials can be examined and interpreted from a variety of analytical perspectives (cf. Mills 2016). Another way of conducting detailed observations is by shadowing (Quinlan 2008) children as they engage in digital activities. In this approach the researcher is in close proximity to the child as he/she engages in digital activities and documents in detail (through field-notes, photography, audio-video recordings) participants’ actions and productions. This approach also allows for conversations around activity (requesting clarifications, interpretations, etc.) to take place as the activity unfolds. In contrast to the observational approaches discussed so far, studying the digital literacies of young children in this way usually requires pre-specifying the objects and questions under study – rather than extracting them afterwards from a broader data set of the child in action. It is also a much more idiographic approach centred on the characteristics and particular interests of individual children, making it a difficult approach to use in comparative studies. However, shadowing is well suited to documenting and tracking the complexities and multidimensionality of digital practices that involve a variety of artefacts, screens, devices and communicative modes, and develop over different spaces (physical and virtual) and temporalities (synchronous or asynchronous communication, projects unfolding over days, etc.). For example, Winters and Vratulis (2013) followed a single six-year-old child over the course of three weeks as he constructed a variety of projects via a virtual play platform, taking fieldnotes, screenshots, video recordings and conversing with the child as he played. This allowed the researchers to track and document the multimodal texts and artefacts he created through the platform, and the intimate connection of these productions with the social relations, dynamics and experiences taking place in his family and school. As said, the approaches discussed so far tend to favour an ideographic look and a microanalytical perspective oriented to unpacking the details of daily life and practice. However, other observational approaches and research questions may be more oriented to tracking recurrent patterns across daily routines. This orientation to observation typically requires extensive and repeated observations and is more concerned with sampling issues, yet is still constrained by the challenges presented at the opening of this section. One way to circumvent the difficulties is through a proxy approach; that is, extending Plowman’s (2017) use of the term, by setting up a research process in which the documentation task is delegated to carers or even children. These generate artefacts (often a visual record) that capture their daily events. Often, the generated materials are later re-examined with participants through conversations around the collected artefacts (Reavey and Prosser 2012; Torre and Murphy 2015). Plowman (2015) in her study of young children’s experiences with technology at home, combined a small set of home visits and direct observations with a procedure that unfolded over 49

David Poveda

months in which parents were asked to send digital photographs to researchers through their mobile phones, along with brief descriptions of the activity when prompted by researchers via text-messages. As the author states, these images “had ethnographic value, enabling us to gain access to the intimate setting of the home without being disruptive or invasive” (Plowman 2017: 6). However, as Aarsand (2012) points out in his discussion of a research project where parents were asked to video-record their children’s activities at home, handing data collection to adults surrounding the child raises issues both in terms of the identities and social relations that come into play during data collection (e.g. parent/co-researcher, child/participant) and the nature of the collected data and recordings (e.g. more variability regarding what is recorded and when or how data is collected is introduced by the idiosyncratic decisions of each parent) – see Chapter 4 for a discussion of the ethical dimensions of this methodological choice. This proxy approach, particularly when supported by visual data (photographs and/or video) recorded through increasingly affordable and user-friendly digital devices, has facilitated involving young children in the research process (Thomson 2009; Clark 2010; Yamada-Rice 2017). In addition, allowing children to document their daily practices and interests might help better situate the place of digital technologies in their lives. For example, drawing from various studies conducted before the emergence of tablet digital devices, Poveda, Morgade and GonzálezPatiño (2012) asked children and their families to photograph their daily routines for a week and later interviewed the children about these photographic sets. This helped understand diversity in children’s experiences with media and digital technologies and how, at a time when digital devices were not that portable, domestic spaces were reconfigured through digital and media devices in some homes. Underlying this discussion of the challenges tied to observing the digital practices of young children there are at least two additional themes. First, the multimodal and multidimensional nature of the data generated through observation, audiovisual recordings and visual artefacts, raises critical questions regarding how the data is encoded and represented. Second, as children and relevant adults are given active roles in data collection, broader questions in relation to the place of participants in the research process emerge. In the following sections I address each of these themes.

The complexities of representing children’s digital practices and literacies In this section, I discuss the complexities involved in representing and communicating data, understanding this as an issue that transverses the whole research process and is not just related to a “technical” decision located at either the early transcription/coding step or the final publication/communication moment. Working through data inevitably involves selection and simplification but recent concerns have turned to how these steps also “flatten” experience. That is, how conventional data transcription/coding and reporting practices make invisible multimodal, sensorial and embodied aspects of human experience – including young children’s digital practices (e.g. Flewitt 2006; Pink 2011) – in favour of talk, language and what can be rendered easily in a conventional academic written text. Thus, calls have been made to “unflatten” representations (Vasudevan and Rodriguez Kerr 2016) and develop ways that inscribe and make analytically more visible children’s experiences and practices – or, at the very least, are more methodologically reflexive about the implications of representing data in one of several possible ways (Bucholtz 2000; Bezemer and Mavers 2011; Cowan 2014; Anderson, Stewart and Aziz 2016). This section reviews some of the complexities of representation, drawing from the insights developed in discussions around transcription (and recording), but adopting a broader 50

Researching digital literacy practices

perspective regarding what it means to portray children’s digital literacy practices. I discuss two issues: (1) how (and why) are digital practices and artefacts represented and singled out within children’s on-going actions; (2) how children’s agency is made (in)visible through different means of representation. The first question might seem out of place given the topical interest of this Handbook and most of the literature reviewed in this chapter. However, it might help to take a step back and rethink why and how digital technologies, among the variety of artefacts, experiences, relations and conditions that configure children’s daily lives and experiences, are construed as particularly relevant and indicative of broader social changes in children’s lives and literacies (cf. Buckingham 2007; Sefton-Green et al. 2016). To do so, consider Figures 3.1 and 3.2. The transcript excerpt in Figure 3.1 is from a study on storytelling in an early childhood classroom in Sweden. The teacher, as seems to be usual in this classroom, is reading to the children from an iPad and the researcher’s focus is on the multimodal and embodied enactment of affect and aesthetic experience during literary storytelling. Cekaite’s preliminary discussion (personal communication, January 2018) of this segment focuses on how the teacher displays a (sad) emotional stance while monitoring children’s reactions and involvement in the storytelling event. However, nothing in particular is discussed about the digital materiality of this image and Cekaite even suggests that a similar sequence could unfold if the teacher was focusing on a print book page (cf. Takacs, Swart and Bus 2015; Aliagas and Margallo 2017). The image in Figure 3.2 was collected in a family home in Spain as part of the “Day in the Digital Lives of Children Aged 0–3” study (Gillen et  al. 2018) discussed above. The videocapture reflects one of the moments selected by the researchers in which digital technologies are present but not being used. This analytical choice was made by researchers despite the fact that mother and child are reading from a print book and that, through conversations and interviews, the parents positioned themselves explicitly as not interested in promoting or facilitating their daughter’s early engagement with digital technologies. The point of the comparison is not to establish which analysis is “correct” or better grounded. The goal is to contrast the two scenes to illustrate how different analytical perspectives may background or foreground digital technologies in the discussion. Cekaite and Bjork’s research interests lie outside digital technologies. They are interested in social interaction in early childhood settings and, in this case, storytelling and the aesthetics of literary events. Thus, it is perfectly reasonable to expect that they do not put the analytical focus on the tablet device used by the teacher for storytelling. Yet, there might be two additional considerations to make with respect to how the digital artefact is rendered relatively invisible in this discussion. First, the authors take a microanalytical approach (e.g. Danby 2017; Cekaite 2018), with a strong grounding

Figure 3.1  Storytelling in an early childhood classroom.2 51

David Poveda

Figure 3.2  Two-year-old and mother book reading at home.

in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (EMCA). These theoretical traditions take an orthodox stance regarding how to analyse what participants signal and bring out as relevant in interaction – rather than “bringing into” the analysis categories and issues that reflect researchers’ agendas (e.g. ten Have 1999; Schegloff et al. 2002). From this perspective, if there is little interactional evidence that participants are orienting themselves to “the digital” as a feature of the device or the event, then there might not be (from an EMCA perspective) grounds to bring this aspect into the analysis – which is not to say that EMCA cannot be applied productively to understand children’s digital literacies (e.g. Aarsand and Melander 2016; Danby 2017). This raises a second relevant issue: could it be that as digital technologies become an ordinary feature of children’s lives and become transparent to participants they tend to be made invisible in the analysis? Arguably, in the example in Figure 3.1 (from a prosperous and technologically advanced country and schooling system), this might be the case: by now probably at least two generations of young children have experienced digital tablets and handheld devices as an ordinary feature of their lives. In other words, given that saliency for participants is a strong criterion to define the direction of the analysis (even if one does not work from an orthodox EMCA perspective), it might be that our understanding of digital technologies as a developmental influence is primed to examine situations in which one of two “extraordinary” developmental circumstances occur (cf. Keller and Kärtner 2013): (1) when digital technologies introduce some type of technological-interactional novelty, pushing research to constantly explore the “latest” technological move; (2) when there is some type of disjuncture that helps foreground “the digital” (e.g. in terms of socio-economic conditions, ideologies and discourses around digital technology, policy and research concerns, etc.). The example in Figure 3.2 is also extracted from a recording of naturally occurring interaction and illustrates how a different analytical logic is applied to the initial interpretation of the episode. As said, the parents in this family construe the scene as a non-digital literacy event and are explicitly committed to reading children’s print books, visiting the local library and providing their daughter regular contact with print literacy. Yet, the research team considered this episode as an example of the child’s digital life. Working from an ecocultural perspective (Tudge 2008; Plowman and Stevenson 2013; Galera, Matsumoto and Poveda 2016), we considered the digital artefacts and practices that are part of the child’s daily life and mediate how routines and interactions are structured in her home (Rogoff, Mejía-Arauz and Correa-Chávez 2015). Further, this 52

Researching digital literacy practices

stipulated role for digital technologies emerges independently from how digital technologies are construed by participants. In this sense, Figure 3.2 shows a two-year-old engaged with a print book but her interactional ecology (Erickson 2004) includes a turned-on laptop computer and a touch-screen smartphone on the table, both of which have the potential to become relevant to the episode. Yet, the analytical decision here, contrary to a strict microanalytical perspective and drawing from a broader socio-cultural approach, is to consider the laptop relevant even before it is ostensibly brought into interaction by participants. From a socio-cultural perspective the digital device is relevant as it is actively present in the child’s broader daily routine, is used by her parents throughout the day and, especially, gains particular meanings in the context of parental ideologies around digital technology. How data is represented also has implications for how children’s agency is methodologically and analytically approached. As Bloome et al. (2013: 606) discuss, research paradigms in the study of children’s literacies contain methodological grammars that construct children in different ways (Mayall 2013). Building on this, here I discuss how methodological decisions highlight or obscure children’s actions around digital technologies and children’s voices within activities. One way of approaching this issue is by re-examining some of the methodological alternatives discussed so far. For example, a proxy approach in which data collection is delegated to a parent, or even situations in which parents scaffold their young children during interviews (Holloway and Stevenson 2017) has the advantage of providing access to situations that are difficult to reach. Yet, without access to the particular circumstances under which the information was gathered, or careful reflexive monitoring in the analysis, arguably, the data could unintentionally reflect parental agendas and adult perspectives more than children’s experiences. When research turns to young children’s interactions, the claim is that recordings of embodied action and material productions provide more generative data to understand children’s meaning making, rather than other types of “manufactured” data (Silverman 2013). Yet, again, this assumption intertwines with concerns about how data is represented and about how children’s agency is captured in the analysis. Cowan’s (2014) methodological discussion of different transcription approaches, in which the same episode is transcribed and represented through different conventions, illustrates this point well. Different approaches might simply “erase” children’s actions as they are (not) encoded within a transcription format and its particular assumptions about what is and is not relevant in interaction. More obviously, analytical approaches focused on verbal action and talk easily disregard the critical role of embodied and non-verbal action in young children’s interactions and social agency (cf. Kidwell and Zimmerman 2006; Goodwin, Cekaite and Goodwin 2012). Yet, even when the coding/transcription approach is committed to capturing non-verbal and embodied action and an array of modalities, representational choices involve ontological decisions about the organization of the social world (and of children within it) (Ochs 1979). For example, as Cowan (2014) illustrates, EMCA transcription approaches are increasingly paying attention to a large set of paralinguistic features and embodied actions, but are particularly oriented to highlighting sequentiality and the temporal unfolding of interaction. Other multimodal approaches (more tabular and non-sequential in how they present data) might obscure temporarily but unpack with more clarity how different modes and meaning-making resources are deployed by the child. Further, each alternative may be inclined to see and locate child agency in particular ways: an EMCA approach might put the focus on how children orchestrate interaction with participants while a multimodal approach might put the focus more on the semiotic repertoire displayed by the child. Transferring responsibilities to children in the data-gathering process, in itself, construes children as agentive (e.g. Greene and Hill 2005; Clark 2010). However, building this assumption into the research process does not necessarily solve the issue of how children and their digital 53

David Poveda

(and non-digital) practices are represented. Two recent research examples help illustrate this complication. Hilppö et al. (2017) discuss how young children engage with visual materials as mediational tools. In their project, among other tasks, children were asked to take digital photographs of their “moments of joy” in pre-school and then discuss a selection of these images with their class peers. Wargo (2017) focuses on group sonic compositions recorded through digital media in a first grade classroom. Neither project is framed as having a specific focus on digital technologies or media but both focus on semiotic modes that are captured, stored, manipulated and shared in digital format. Thus, the two studies also provide an interesting indirect window into how young children engage with different types of digital media within broader activities. Hilppö et al. (2017) identified two ways in which images acted as mediational means for children to discuss their daily experiences. In one of the approaches children shifted away from the photographs which “functioned as backgrounds or canvases for reprising the original events” (Hilppö et al. 2017: 364). Yet in both cases, children emerged as active meaning-makers who draw from a digital device and a (visual) semiotic artefact among various elements in their environment to construct and share reports of their school experiences. Wargo’s (2017) case study focuses on classroom activities and the literacy curriculum around sound created by a first grade teacher. In this curriculum, a digital audio recorder became a “character in the classroom” (p. 400) – an actant in Latour’s (1996) terms – that structured and mediated how the children in the class documented the sonic compositions generated during the curricular experience. However, the study also shows how children can extend and alter the curriculum, either by “interrupting” the compositions with non-sanctioned interventions or assembling objects that unsettle some of the explicit and implicit distinctions and identities that the teacher and curriculum set-up (writer vs. reader, sound composer vs. silent listener). Attending to how children draw from digital technologies to construct meaning and ongoing action and, especially, how this is facilitated within a research project points to the broader issue of children’s participation and collaboration in research. The following section delves into emergent issues when participatory/collaborative research focuses on digital experiences and/or draws from digital technologies.

The imperatives of collaborative research with/around/on young children’s digital practices Over the past couple of decades, collaborative and participatory research have gained a visible place within academic research, policy and funding in applied settings (Lassiter 2005; Rabinow 2011) and have influenced how children and childhood are reconstructed in research (Veale 2005; Mayall 2013). Digital technologies and devices occupy an interesting place within these debates, and have been presented as potentially fruitful tools to facilitate and mediate collaborative work and research (Estalella and Sánchez-Criado 2015), especially with children (cf. Ergler et al. 2016). Research projects topically interested in children’s engagement with digital technologies have incorporated participatory/collaborative aspects into their design and implementation. These two trends intersect in new childhood socialization settings, such as “makerspaces” (Marsh et  al. 2017b) or collaborative design efforts aimed at transforming various childhood contexts (e.g. parks, playgrounds and schools). In these contemporary childhood settings, digital tools and experimentation are put to work to develop children’s creativity and/or capacity to act upon their daily contexts. This section engages with some of the research imperatives that stem from different collaborative structures, and is organized in two parts. First, I briefly review debates regarding how collaboration/participation is defined and problematized in research. Second, I draw from these debates to showcase how the dual focus on young children and digital 54

Researching digital literacy practices

literacies intersects in three research scenarios: (a) child collaborative/participatory research that draws on digital technologies/devices; (b) participatory/collaborative research focused on children’s digital capacities; (c) the place of contemporary “digital culture” in the development of collaborative design projects with children. Current debates around participation/collaboration, particularly in European Social Anthropology and ethnographic-oriented research, seem to cluster around two vocabularies – that of Participatory Action Research (PAR) (e.g. Clark 2010; Aguirre, Moliner and Traver 2017) and that of Experimental Collaboration (XCOL) (e.g. Kullman 2013; Sánchez-Criado and Estalella 2018). In part, these differences stem from the intellectual traditions on which each approach is built. PAR has well-grounded roots in critical social theory (Lassiter 2005; Cammarota 2011), Freirean pedagogy (Veale 2005) and, within policy-oriented research, is presented as aligned with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Pascal and Bertram 2014). XCOL has closer roots to Science and Technology Studies (Kullman 2013; Ruppert, Law and Savage 2013) and contemporary collaborative forms of mobilization, and civic and economic organization (Estalella, Rocha and Lafuente 2013). Both converge around the need to dismantle asymmetrical relationships between researchers/scientific knowledge and participants/everyday knowledge. Yet, in the case of PAR this is more often understood as subverting larger processes of socio-political domination through research (e.g. Irby and Drame 2016), while the impetus of XCOL is more often on how research can trouble the practical consequences built around the distinction between expert discourses and lay-people (Estalella and Sánchez-Criado 2015). More importantly, for the purposes of this discussion PAR and XCOL construe in different ways how the various dimensions of a research endeavour are negotiated and redistributed among all the parties involved in a research experience. Figure 3.3 visualizes how research responsibilities are reworked in a participatory/collaborative experience. The starting assumption might be that redistributing research work is a one-dimensional displacement of responsibility (along a continuum of possibilities) from researchers to participants (Figure 3.3A). However, more accurately, research should be seen as a complex process that unfolds into multiple tasks/ dimensions, each of which can be negotiated independently and redistributed in distinct ways for each project (Figure 3.3B). As a result, a wide range of idiosyncratic research arrangements are possible in each individual project.

Figure 3.3  Redistribution of work in collaborative/participatory research. 55

David Poveda

In conventional research approaches all decisions rest on researchers. Participants’ engagement is limited to consenting to be a part of a research project and to be “subjected” to the various requirements/tasks the study involves. PAR/XCOL approaches open up participants’ decisionmaking and control to each of the different aspects that make up the research process. In research with young children, at the very least, a participatory approach will give some control over data collection to children (Clark 2010). More ambitious efforts also understand the formulation of research questions/problems as a co-constructed process and might even move on to contemplate different forms of dissemination/communication of findings in which child participants play a visible role (e.g. Morgade and Mendoza 2017). A possible difference emerges in how PAR and XCOL understand research design. PAR research designs (i.e. the combination of data-collection techniques, the temporal organization of a study, considerations about scope and breadth, etc.) tends to orient participatory projects toward more easily recognizable research paradigms/designs (e.g. an ethnographic project, a case study, a multi-sited project, a comparative project, etc.). Consequently, PAR projects tend to give academic researchers more oversight over research design issues. XCOL tends to have a more open view of research design and might see it as an element that is open to negotiation and emerges as a co-constructed assemblage (Kullman 2015). Children’s mobilities is an area that illustrates well how a turn to digital technologies for research and considerations about children’s participation in research intersect to generate/contribute to emerging topics of interest. A line of research drawing from sensorial and multimodal perspectives focuses on how participants understand and experience their social worlds as they engage with and move about their daily environments (Pink 2008). A variety of digital tools (e.g. geo-localization and mapping technologies, digital cameras and audio/video recorders, etc.) have facilitated developing this line of research but this does not necessarily mean that they are implemented from a participatory perspective or that they provide more insight into children’s perspectives. Yet, technologies such as user-friendly wearable video-cameras have been pointed out as digital tools that: (a) give much more control over data collection and documentation to children; (b) provide access to a distinct “first-person” perspective and sensuous experience that adult researchers would probably not be able to grasp through other adult-controlled audiovisual data-collection instruments. Green (2016) discusses methodological issues involved in using wearable cameras in a project on pre-school children’s experiences in nature. She details how wearable cameras provide data that is much closer to “walking in the shoes of the child” (p. 282), including a sense of scale from children’s perspectives regarding the natural environment and children’s relations with adults. Yet, as control of the wearable cameras is given to the children and incorporated into their ongoing social relations and activities, they also become enmeshed in the dynamics of peer relations (including conflict and exclusion), or may be creatively used for purposes not foreseen by researchers (e.g. playing “wearable camera ‘bull fights’”). An interesting area of collaborative research on children’s digital skills is the implementation of robotics in education (Benitti 2012; Toh et  al. 2016). Projects that engage students in the design and construction of robots, most often using commercially available play robot construction kits, such as those designed by LEGO, are structured around the iterative stages of the engineering design process (Bers et  al. 2014). Robot construction experiences have also been developed for early childhood settings and early primary education, and published studies provide some sense of how teachers and students have to plan, discuss, design, build, test and revise the robots they work on in class. Noticeably, research in this area – often led by scholars with an engineering background – follows quantitative and semi-experimental approaches3 and, thus, published reports are often “thin” in the information they provide 56

Researching digital literacy practices

regarding classroom dynamics or how the robotics/engineering experience is mediated by larger educational-institutional processes. An example in which a robotics program is incorporated into a well-established early childhood curriculum is the case study by Elkin, Sullivan and Bers (2014) discussing the implementation of a robotics curriculum in a Montessori early childhood classroom. Building on a pedagogical tradition that places manipulation, experimentation and collaboration at the centre of the curriculum, the study shows how the teacher was able to incorporate robotics and robot construction into her classroom within a wider narrative theme that structured children’s projects and final presentations. Finally, collaborative design projects are more oriented to the co-creation and redesign of objects, spaces or processes to have a “real” impact on the lives and experiences of the participants involved in the collaborative experience (e.g. Sánchez-Criado, Rodríguez-Giralt and Mencaroni 2016; Pink et al. 2017). In addition, particularly in the case of work with children, this approach to collaboration often involves alliances between researchers (inside and outside academia), civic organizations (e.g. NGOs, public centres, educational consultants, etc.) and the “target” institutions/spaces of the participating children (e.g. a school, a neighbourhood, etc.). In these networked set-ups, an array of digital technologies (computers, audio/video recorders, 3D printers, social media, digital repositories, etc.), which are seen as the tools of contemporary collaborative digital culture, are put to work in the service of the project. An example of this action research approach is provided by González-Patiño, Esteban-Guitart and San Gregorio (2017) describing the collaboration between a school in Madrid, a municipal cultural organization centred on digital culture and civic participation (Medialab-Prado Madrid) and a diverse team of researchers aimed at helping primary school children redesign spaces and furniture in their school. The research involved creating a “digital hub” (González-Patiño, Esteban-Guitart and San Gregorio 2017: 143) for this community, child-led workshops in the municipal organization, collaborative design and decision-making work inside and outside the school, and the prototyping of alternative desks, chairs and storage facilities for the school with the material resources of Medialab-Prado. In short, a collaborative approach in many ways encapsulates some of the ideals of contemporary research with young children: it responds to calls to make academic research socially relevant, it is respectful of children’s voices and is aligned with current conceptualizations of childhood and, finally, it is gaining momentum within policy and funding. However, there are important challenges to collaborative research worth pointing out to close this section. First, sustainability can become a major issue. The more complex the collaborative device/ assemblage – in this respect, the three scenarios discussed above are increasingly complex – the more vulnerable the project is to the unstable material conditions of the organizations involved or actors’ real possibilities to sustain commitment with a collaborative project. Second, from the perspective of academic researchers, collaborative research can also raise ethical issues regarding authorship and dissemination of information (Elisenda Árdevol, personal communication, 14 November 2017), particularly when the time-frames of researchers and participants/other organizations are not well aligned.

Conclusions This methodological review has discussed a number of emerging and more established issues in relation to research in the area of young children’s digital literacies and practices. The discussion is very much skewed toward qualitative and interpretive research traditions (Erickson 1986) – but see Marsh et al. (2017a) on the importance of large-scale survey research and Messer and 57

David Poveda

Kucirkova (2016) for a discussion of experimental and quantitative approaches to children’s engagement with digital technologies. As argued in the introduction, this choice reflects both the current prevalence of qualitative research approaches in this area and, more importantly, the reflexive nature of current qualitative research committed to methodological innovation/ experimentation and critical self-appraisal of the research process. It also reflects the preferences and expertise of the author of this review, so it is perfectly possible that other reviewers would provide alternative portraits of current research. In addition, a review centred on digital technologies both as object of study and a research tool within childhood studies runs the risk of becoming quickly dated. Digital technologies change rapidly and innovations are soon appropriated by children and researchers; thus the social realities and practices captured in this review might be very different in, for example, a decade. In this scenario, I would like to think that the focus of the discussion has not been on presenting the latest technological device/solution but on the emerging analytical and epistemic issues that need addressing as research practices are transformed. These substantial questions have more durability or, at the very least, how they are currently addressed may provide a template regarding how to reflexively engage with future research scenarios. One way of thinking about how changing digital technologies affect research is by considering whether the transformation can be understood primarily as tied to “efficiency” or might have a more qualitative/ontological impact. Digital technologies and the digitalization of multiple tasks makes processes much more effective: reducing time, simplifying/eliminating issues of storage, increasingly reducing technological costs, augmenting exponentially computational and analytical capabilities, etc. Yet, the more relevant questions might be tied to how these transformations impact on our understanding of children’s social realities and practices, and the sorts of research questions we formulate. For example, returning to the discussion around observation, the use of wearable cameras in the history of video-based interactional research (Erickson 2011) might not just solve issues of accessibility and cost. It could be seen as providing data that reconstrues more substantially how we understand the interactional order by giving access to sensorial and embodied experiences that are very difficult to grasp through researcher-held or static video-cameras (however complex the recording set-up is). Other transformations in how digital technologies can be used in research (not discussed at length in this chapter) may also raise substantive questions. The digitalization of information and content provides researchers and other analysts with insurmountable quantities of information (big data), raising questions about how and why this data is scrutinized (e.g. Reyes 2014). These issues are shaped in particular ways in the case of contemporary children, who are born with a digital footprint that will develop and grow throughout their lives, opening up opportunities for new research questions as well as important ethical and policy concerns (e.g. Livingstone, Carr and Byrne 2016; Currie 2013). In another area, the development of Virtual Reality applications might allow researchers to create experimental environments for children with a degree of control and sophistication that involves a truly qualitative leap regarding what is currently possible within a laboratory setting. Yet, doing so requires addressing a number of design and safety concerns in relation to how immersive technologies are used with/by young children (Yamada-Rice et al. 2017). To conclude, I should note it is impossible to be completely comprehensive. A methodological review that attempts to move beyond describing the frequency with which different research designs/techniques are used will necessarily be selective. Hopefully, I have provided some food for thought regarding key questions qualitative researchers interested in the digital literacies, practices and experiences of young children must confront when setting up their research projects. 58

Researching digital literacy practices

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Rosie Flewitt very much for her careful editorial feedback, as well as the anonymous reviewer for the detailed comments made to earlier versions of this chapter.

Notes 1 This database is a collaborative review and research tool in which authors and researchers can input the reference to their works and provide extended details of methodological aspects of their studies. In addition, the database is public, with raw data that can be embedded across a variety of platforms and extracted for analysis by any user. Access the Database Input Form at: https://docs.google.com/ forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeUi2-SNXPsAiHlKj6Oq--V2x6rqoSggQOtUH-ctGXBpkfZJw/viewform. For an example of how the form can be embedded and examined see: www.infanciacontemporanea. com/2016/02/25/rmdbsearchtool/ 2 Transcript and images kindly provided by the authors (Bjork-Willen and Cekaite 2017) from a currently unpublished analysis and used with permission for this chapter. 3 In fact, one systematic literature review on robotics and schooling uses as exclusion criteria for the review that the “Article does not provide a quantitative assessment of learning” (Benitti 2012: 979).

References Aarsand, P. (2012). Family members as co-researchers: reflections on practice-reported data. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 7(3): 186–203. Aarsand, P. (2016). Children’s media practices: challenges and dilemmas for the qualitative researcher. Journal of Children and Media, 10(1): 90–97. Aarsand, P., and Melander, H. (2016). Appropriation through guided participation: media literacy in children’s everyday lives. Discourse, Context & Media, 12: 20–31. Aguirre, A., Moliner, L., and Traver, J. (2017). La pedagogía social, la animación sociocultural y la educación no formal en el tiempo libre y de ocio de la ciudadanía. Papers infancia_c, 17: 1–20. Aliagas, C., and Margallo, A. M. (2017). Children’s responses to the interactivity of storybook apps in family shared reading events involving the iPad. Literacy, 51(1): 44–52. Anderson, K., Stewart, O., and Abdul Aziz, M. (2016). Writing ourselves in: researcher reflexivity in ethnographic and multimodal methods for understanding what counts, to whom, and how we know. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 47(4): 385–401. Baumeister, Roy, and Leary, M. (1997). Writing narrative literature reviews. Review of General Psychology, 1(3): 311–320. Benitti, F. B. V. (2012). Exploring the educational potential of robotics in schools: a systematic review. Computers & Education, 58(3): 978–988. Bers, M., Flannery, L., Kazakoff, E., and Sullivan, A. (2014). Computational thinking and tinkering: exploration of an early childhood robotics curriculum. Computers & Education, 72: 145–157. Bezemer, J., and Mavers, D. (2011). Multimodal transcription as academic practice: a social semiotic perspective. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 14(3): 191–206. Bjork-Willen, P., and Cekaite, A. (2017). Multimodality and affectivity in adults’ storytelling for children. Paper presented at the 15th International Pragmatics Conference, Belfast, 16–21 July. Bloome, D., Katz, L., Hong, H., May-Woods, P., and Wilson, M. (2013). Methodologies in research on young children and literacy. In: J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 605–632). London: Sage. Bradley, B. (1989). Visions of Infancy: A Critical Introduction to Child Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell. Bucholtz, M. (2000). The politics of transcription. Journal of Pragmatics, 32(10): 1439–1465. Buckingham, D. (2007). Selling childhood? Children and consumer culture. Journal of Children and Media, 1(1): 15–24. Burnett, C. (2010). Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings: a review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(3): 247–270. Cammarota, J. (2011). A sociohistorical perspective for participatory action research and youth ethnography in social justice education. In: B. Levinson and M. Pollock (eds.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Education (pp. 517–529). New York: Wiley. 59

David Poveda

Cekaite, A. (2018). Microgenesis of language creativity: Innovation, conformity and incongruence in children’s language play. Language Sciences, 65: 26–36. Chaudron, S. (2015). Young children (0–8) and digital technology: A qualitative exploratory study across seven countries. Ispra/Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union/EU-Joint Research Centre. Chaudron, S., Di Gioia, R., and Gemo, M. (2018). Young children (0–8) and digital technology: A qualitative study across Europe. Ispra/Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union/EU-Joint Research Centre. Clark, A. (2010). Young children as protagonists and the role of participatory, visual methods in engaging multiple perspectives. American Journal of Community Psychology, 46(1–2): 115–123. Clemente, I. (2013). Conversation analysis and anthropology. In: J. Snidell and T. Stivers (eds.), The Handbook of Conversation Analysis (pp. 687–700). Oxford: Blackwell. Corsaro, W. (1996). Transitions in early childhood: the promise of comparative, longitudinal ethnography. In: R. Jessor, A. Colby and R. Shweder (eds.), Ethnography and Human Development (pp. 419–456). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Corsaro, W. (2005). The Sociology of Childhood, 2nd ed. London: Pine Forge Press. Cowan, K. (2014). Multimodal transcription of video: examining interaction in Early Years classrooms. Classroom Discourse, 5(1): 6–21. Currie, J. (2013). “Big data” versus “big brother”: on the appropriate use of large-scale data collections in pediatrics. Pediatrics, 131(Supplement 2): 127–132. Danby, S. (2017). Social interactional understandings in investigating family practices of digital media use. In: A. Lahikainen, T. Mälkiä and K. Repo (eds.), Media, Family Interaction and the Digitalization of Childhood (pp. 29–48). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Duran, C. S. (2017). “You not die yet”: Karenni refugee children’s language socialization in a video gaming community. Linguistics and Education, 42: 1–9. Elkin, M., Sullivan, A., and Bers, M. (2014). Implementing a robotics curriculum in an early childhood Montessori classroom. Journal of Information Technology Education: Innovations in Practice, 13: 153–169. Ergler, C., Kearns, R., Witten, K., and Porter, G. (2016). Digital methodologies and practices in children’s geographies. Children’s Geographies, 14(2): 129–140. Erickson, F. (1986). Qualitative methods in research on teaching. In: M. Wittrock (ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (pp. 119–161). New York: Macmillan. Erickson, F. (2004). Talk and Social Theory: Ecologies of Speaking and Listening in Everyday Life. Oxford: Polity. Erickson, F. (2011). Uses of video in social research: a brief history. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 14(3): 179–189. Estalella, A., and Sánchez-Criado, T. (2015). Experimental collaborations: an invocation for the redistribution of social research. Convergence, 21(3): 301–305. Estalella, A., Rocha, J., and Lafuente, A. (2013). Laboratorios de procomún: experimentación, recursividad y activismo. Revista Teknokultura, 10(1): 21–48. Faulstich-Orellana, M., and Peer, K. (2013). Methodologies of early childhood research. In: J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 633–652). London: Sage. Flewitt, R. (2006). Using video to investigate preschool classroom interaction: education research assumptions and methodological practices. Visual Communication, 5(1): 25–50. Galera, N., Matsumoto, M., and Poveda, D. (2016). The place of digital devices in the home and family routines of young children (3–7) in Madrid. Media Education: Studi, Ricerche, Buone Pratiche, 7(2): 303–319. Gillen, J., and Cameron, C. A. (eds.) (2010). International Perspectives on Early Childhood Research: A Day in the Life. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gillen, J. et al. (2018). A day in the digital lives of children aged 0–3: Summary report by DigiLitEY COST Action IS1410 Working Group 1. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 16 July 2018). González-Patiño, J., Esteban-Guitart, M., and San Gregorio, S. (2017). Participación infantil en la transformación de sus espacios de aprendizaje: Democratizando la creación mediante un proyecto de fabricación digital en un fablab. Revista Internacional de Educación para la Justicia Social, 6(1): 137–154. Goodwin, M., Cekaite, A., and Goodwin, C. (2012). Emotion as stance. In: A. Peräkylä and M.-L. Sorjönen (eds.), Emotion in Interaction (pp. 16–63). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Green, C. (2016). Sensory tours as a method for engaging children as active researchers: exploring the use of wearable cameras in early childhood research. International Journal of Early Childhood, 48(3): 277–294. Greene, S., and Hill, M. (2005). Researching children’s experiences: methods and methodological issues. In: S. Greene and D. Hogan (eds.), Researching Children’s Experience: Approaches and Methods (pp. 1–21). London: Sage. 60

Researching digital literacy practices

Hilppö, J., Lipponen, L., Kumpulainen, K., and Rajala, A. (2017). Visual tools as mediational means: a methodological investigation. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 15(4): 359–373. Holloway, D., and Stevenson, K. (2017). Parent as field collaborator when interviewing the pre-verbal and early verbal child. Posted at digilitey.wordpress.com, 24 January, 2017. Irby, D., and Drame, E. (2016). Introduction: black bridges, troubled waters, and the search for solid ground: The people, the problems, and educational justice. In: E. Drame and D. Irby (eds.), Black Participatory Research: Power, Identity and the Struggle for Justice in Education (pp. 1–19). New York: Macmillan. Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Weigel, C., Clinton, K., and Robison, A. (2009). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Keller, H., and Kärtner, J. (2013). The cultural solution of universal developmental tasks. In: M. Gelfand, C.-Y. Chiu, and Y.-Y. Hong (eds.), Advances in Culture and Psychology, vol. 3 (pp. 63–116). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kidwell, M., and Zimmerman, D. (2006). “Observability” in the interactions of very young children. Communication Monographs, 73(1): 1–28. Kontovourki, S., Garoufallou, E., Ivarsson, L., Klein, M., Korkeamaki, R. L., Koutsomiha, D., et  al. (2017). Digital literacy in the early years: Practices in formal settings, teacher education, and the role of informal learning spaces: A review of the literature. COST Action IS1410 Report. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 24 January 2018). Kumpulainen, K., and Gillen, J. (2017). Young children’s digital literacy practices in the home: A review of the literature. COST Action IS1410 Report. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 24 January 2018). Kucirkova, N., Wells Rowe, D., Oliver, L., and Piestrzynski, L. (2017). Children’s writing with and on screen(s): A narrative literature review. COST Action IS1410 Report. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 24 January 2018). Kullman, K. (2013). Geographies of experiment/experimental geographies: a rough guide. Geography Compass, 7(12): 879–894. Kullman, K. (2015). Pedagogical assemblages: rearranging children’s traffic education. Social & Cultural Geography, 16(3): 255–275. Kumpulainen, K., and Gillen, J. (2017). Young children’s digital literacy practices in the home: A review of the literature. COST Action IS1410 Report. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 24 January 2018). Lancy, D. (2008). The Anthropology of Childhood: Cherubs, Chattel, Changelings. New York: Cambridge University Press. Lange, P. (2014). Kids on YouTube: Technical Identities and Digital Literacies. New York: Left Coast Press. Lankshear, C., and Knobel, M. (2003). New technologies in early childhood literacy research: a review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 3(1): 59–82. Lassiter, L. (2005). The Chicago Guide to Collaborative Ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Latour, B. (1996). On actor-network theory: a few clarifications. Soziale Welt, 47(4): 369–381. Livingstone, S., and Sefton-Green, J. (2016). The Class: Living and Learning in the Digital Age. New York: New York University Press. Livingstone, S., Carr, J., and Byrne, J. (2016). One in Three: Internet Governance and Children’s Rights. Florence: UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti. Livingstone, S., and Blum-Ross, A. (2017). Researching children and childhood in the digital age. In: P. Christensen and A. James (eds.), Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices, 3rd ed. (pp. 54–70). London: Routledge. Marsh, J., Mascheroni, G., Carrington, V., Árnadóttir, H., Brito, R., Dias, R., et al. (2017a). The online and offline digital literacy practices of young children: A review of the literature. COST Action IS1410 Report. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 24 January 2018). Marsh, J., Kumpulainen, K., Nisha, B., Velicu, A., Blum-Ross, A., Hyatt, D., et al. (2017b). Makerspaces in the Early Years: A Literature Review. University of Sheffield: MakEY Project. Mayall, B. (2013). A History of the Sociology of Childhood. London: Institute of Education Press. Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2016). Digital and new technologies: research tools and questions. In: J. Prior and J. Van Herwegen (eds.), Practical Research with Children (pp. 264–284). Abingdon: Routledge. Miller, J. L., Paciga, K. A., Danby, S., Beaudoin-Ryan, L., and Kaldor, T. (2017). Looking beyond swiping and tapping: review of design and methodologies for researching young children’s use of digital technologies. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 11(3), article 6. https:// dx.doi.org/10.5817/CP2017-3-6 (accessed 24 January 2018). 61

David Poveda

Mills, K. (2016). Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material and Sensory Lenses. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Morgade, M., and Mendoza, K. (2017). ¡Bienvenido al desorden! Arte-factos para investigar con jóvenes: Talleres como dispositivos de investigación. Encuentro virtual ATLAS.ti – Qualitative Data Analysis, 6 October 2017. Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=11&v=ZG-Z0IMCYRQ (accessed 1 April 2019). Noppari, E., Uusitalo, N., and Kupiainen, R. (2017). Talk to me! Possibilities of constructing children’s voices in the domestic research context. Childhood, 24(1): 68–83. Ochs, E. (1979). Transcription as theory. In: E. Ochs and B. Schieffelin (eds.), Developmental Pragmatics (pp. 43–72). New York: Academic Press. Paciga, K., and Donohue, C. (2017). Technology and Interactive Media for Young Children: A Whole Child Approach Connecting the Vision of Fred Rogers with Research and Practice. Latrobe, PA: Fred Rogers Center for Early Learning and Children’s Media at Saint Vincent College. Pascal, C., and Bertram, T. (2014). Transformative dialogues: the impact of participatory research on practice. In: A. Clark, R. Flewitt, M. Hammersley and M. Robb (eds.), Understanding Research with Children and Young People (pp. 269–284). Milton Keynes: Open University Press. Pink, S. (2008). An urban tour: the sensory sociality of ethnographic place-making. Ethnography, 9(2): 175–196. Pink, S. (2011). Multimodality, multisensoriality and ethnographic knowing: social semiotics and the phenomenology of perception. Qualitative Research, 11(3): 261–276. Pink, S., Mackley, K. L., Morosanu, R., Mitchell, V., and Bhamra, T. (2017). Making Homes: Ethnography and Design. London: Bloomsbury. Plowman, L. (2015). Researching young children’s everyday uses of technology in the family home. Interacting with Computers, 27(1): 36–46. Plowman, L. (2017). Revisiting ethnography by proxy. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 20(5): 443–454. Plowman, L. and Stevenson, O. (2013). Exploring the quotidian in young children’s lives at home. Home Cultures, 10(3): 329–347. Poveda, D., Morgade, M., and González-Patiño, J. (2012). Children at home in Madrid. ETNIA-E: Cuadernos de Investigación Etnográfica sobre Infancia, Adolescencia y Educación del IMA/FMEN, 4: 1–15. Quinlan, E. (2008). Conspicuous invisibility: shadowing as a data collection strategy. Qualitative Inquiry, 14(8): 1480–1499. Rabinow, P. (2011). The Accompaniment: Assembling the Contemporary. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Reavey, P., and Prosser, J. (2012). Visual research in psychology. In: H. Cooper (ed.), APA Handbook of Research Methods in Psychology, vol. 2: Quantitative, Qualitative, Neuropsychological and Biological (pp. 185–207). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Reich, J., and Ito, M. (2017). From Good Intentions to Real Outcomes: Equity by Design in Learning Technologies. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. Reyes, A. (2014). Linguistic anthropology in 2013: Super-New-Big. American Anthropologist, 116(2): 366–378. Rogoff, B., Mejía-Arauz, R., and Correa-Chávez, M. (2015). A cultural paradigm: learning by observing and pitching in. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 49: 1–22. Ruppert, E., Law, J., and Savage, M. (2013). Reassembling social science methods: the challenge of digital devices. Theory, Culture and Society, 30(4): 22–46. Sánchez-Criado, T., and Estalella, A. (2018). Introduction: experimental collaborations. In: A. Estalella and T. Sánchez-Criado (eds.), Experimental Collaborations: Ethnography through Fieldwork Devices (pp. 1–30). Oxford: Berghahn Books. Sánchez-Criado, T., Rodríguez-Giralt, I., and Mencaroni, A. (2016). Care in the (critical) making: open prototyping, or the radicalisation of independent-living politics. ALTER-European Journal of Disability Research/Revue Européenne de Recherche sur le Handicap, 10(1): 24–39. Sánchez-Criado, T., and Estalella, A. (2018). Introduction: Experimental collaborations. In: A. Estalella and T. Sánchez-Criado (eds.), Experimental Collaborations: Ethnography through Fieldwork Devices. Oxford: Berghahn Books. Schegloff, E., Koshik, I., Jacoby, S., and Olsher, D. (2002). Conversation analysis and applied linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22: 3–31.

62

Researching digital literacy practices

Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., and Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a research agenda for the digital literacy practices of young children: A white paper for COST Action IS1410. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 24 January 2018). Silverman, D. (2013). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. London: Sage. Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., and Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a research agenda for the digital literacy practices of young children: A white paper for COST Action IS1410. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 24 January 2018). Takacs, Z., Swart, E., and Bus, A. (2015). Benefits and pitfalls of multimedia and interactive features in technology-enhanced storybooks: a meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 85(4): 698–739. ten Have, P. (1999). Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide. London: Sage. Thomson, P. (ed.) (2009). Doing Visual Research with Children and Young People. London: Routledge. Toh, L., Causo, A., Tzuo, P., Chen, I., and Yeo, S. (2016). A review on the use of robots in education and young children. Educational Technology and Society, 19(2): 148–163. Torre, D., and Murphy, J. (2015). A different lens: using photo-elicitation interviews in education research. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(111) http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/ (accessed 25 January 2018). Tudge, J. (2008). The Everyday Lives of Young Children: Culture, Class, and Child Rearing in Diverse Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tudge, J., and Hogan, D. (2005). An ecological approach to observations of children’s everyday lives. In: S. Greene and D. Hogan (eds.), Researching Children’s Experience: Approaches and Methods (pp. 102–121). London: Sage. Vasudevan, L., and Rodriguez Kerr, K. (2016). “Unflattening” our ways of seeing, reading, and writing. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 60(1): 103–105. Veale, A. (2005). Creative methodologies in participatory research with children. In: S. Greene and D. Hogan (eds.), Researching Children’s Experience: Approaches and Methods (pp. 253–272). London: Sage. Wargo, J. M. (2017). Rhythmic rituals and emergent listening: intra-activity, sonic sounds and digital composing with young children. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3): 392–408. Winters, K.-L., and Vratulis, V. (2013). Authored assemblages in a digital world: illustrations of a child’s online social, critical and semiotic meaning-making. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 13(4): 529–554. Yamada-Rice, D. (2017). Using visual research methods with young children. In: P. Christensen and A. James (eds.), Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices, 3rd ed. (pp. 71–86). London: Routledge. Yamada-Rice; D., Mushtaq, F., Woodgate, A., Bosmans, D., Douthwaite, A., Douthwaite, I., et  al. (2017). Children and virtual reality: Emergent possibilities and challenges. COST Action IS1410 Report. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 24 January 2018).

63

4 Ethics and researching young children’s digital literacy practices Rosie Flewitt

Introduction This chapter considers the ethics of doing research about young children’s offline and online digital literacy practices. It looks to three places to understand the complexity of factors that bring to bear on research ethics in this field: to the past, present and imagined future of digital technologies in social life and in social research. It briefly revisits the genealogy of universal research ethics codes and reflects on their usefulness when planning, carrying out and disseminating research about young children’s digital practices, focusing on the familiar concepts of voluntary informed consent, confidentiality, privacy and anonymity, potential benefits and harm, and research integrity and quality. The chapter problematizes the growing influence of institutional research ethics governance on research practice and proposes a reflective, situated and dialogic ethics framework to guide future development in this field.

The influence of universal ethics codes What do the Hippocratic Oath and contemporary research into young children’s digital practices have in common? Surprisingly, quite a lot. Although it might seem unlikely, there are many aspects of research in digital environments that are informed by the principles of longestablished, medical research ethics dating back to the fifth century bc. The principles enshrined in the Hippocratic Oath, including avoiding harm and ensuring confidentiality, have remained central to ethics codes across time and academic disciplines, most notably through the watershed Nuremberg Code (1947), European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1953), Declaration of Helsinki (1964), the development of bioethics in 1970s USA (Alderson 2013), and the US Belmont Report (DHEW 1979). This latter, highly influential report established three enduring principles for biomedical and behavioural research with human subjects: respect for persons (including autonomy, informed consent and truthfulness); beneficence (maximizing benefit and minimizing harm for participants); and justice (non-exploitative, well-considered and fair procedures). These guiding principles subsequently became enshrined in ethics review boards in higher education institutions, including Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) in the USA and Research Ethics Committees (RECs) in UK universities. 64

Ethics and researching digital literacies

Although specific ethics guidance is available for social scientists (e.g. ASA 2018), there remains an ethics ‘hierarchy’ with biomedical principles at the top, even though these may “make little or no sense to social scientists” (Israel and Hay 2006: 1). Many research funding bodies have also developed their own ethics guidance, to ensure that their funded projects adhere to high ethics standards (e.g. ESRC 2015). It has been argued that this growth in institutionalized ethics governance represents a “step change in the politics of social research” (Kushner 2006: 9) that implies an unprecedented and unwarranted lack of trust in social science researchers (Hammersley 2009). Although ethics principles are distinct from rules in that they leave room for judgement in specific cases, they can inform the development of policy (Beauchamp and Childress 2008), and there has been an increased tendency for institutional ethics review boards to be legalistic in their objectives, sometimes requesting changes that are “not grounded in knowledge of a researcher’s field, and may even prevent research entirely” (Harger and Quintela 2017: 12). Hence there can be tensions between legal and ethical requirements, where the former might be more stringent than the latter – or vice versa. Since the 1990s, universal ethics principles have informed the growth of Internet Research Ethics (IRE) (e.g. AIOR 2012), including research with young children. Yet in this emerging area of investigation there are multiple layers of difference in ethics approaches across disciplines and methodologies, and across national and international laws and policies. However, this situation is changing: data protection regulation across the European Union (EU) (GDPR 2018) has changed from the status of a directive to the legal protection of personal data, including in commercial internet services such as social networking, with stricter conditions on how personal data are stored and shared, and heavy fines enforced on organizations that do not comply. Importantly, GDPR defines personal data as “any information relating to an identified or identifiable person”, and gives all EU citizens the right to know how and why their personal data is being stored and used, and who can access it. Researchers must therefore: have explicit permission to disclose personal information to third parties; keep a record of all disclosures; ensure that data are kept securely; and ensure that any publications do not lead to a breach of agreed confidentiality or anonymity. GDPR also requires the use of secure computer networks, password protection, data encryption and secure electronic transfer when moving data; data storage on secure premises; avoiding portable data storage devices such as laptops and USB sticks; anonymizing records; and ensuring that any third-party users of data adhere to a data-sharing agreement with the same assurances for the protection of data. Hence it is advisable to avoid sharing data via email or other media that are vulnerable to hacking. Beyond GDPR, individual nations have responded variously regarding ethics and children’s use of online media, in accordance with national law. For example, in Germany, the Ministry for Education and Research worked with children’s charities and parent and media organizations to create clear guidance for the general public on the ethical use of online media (see www.klicksafe.de). In France, the Gendarmerie warned parents that posting their young children’s photographs online could infringe the strict French privacy laws, and make parents liable for high fines or even a prison sentence if their children choose to take action against them in later years (Nicolet 2016). These information-giving initiatives are helpful, but clear principles that specifically address digital research with children do not yet feature systematically in ethics guidelines (see European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights 2016), and, apart from issues covered in GDPR, the legal stance toward children’s and adults’ online rights continues to vary from country to country. While universal ethics codes and requirements have, without doubt, helped to set internationally agreed benchmarks for ethical conduct in research, they have been critiqued as 65

Rosie Flewitt

culturally bound, inadequate in scope and open to misinterpretation (Kopelman 1997; Shore 2006), where the goal is to discipline researchers to adhere to a prescribed ‘norm’ rather than to be reflective and responsive to what may be perceived as ethical conduct in specific research settings (Dahlberg and Moss 2005). Universal ethics codes have also been critiqued for being insensitive to the values, dignity and diversity of non-Western, minority groups and indigenous peoples (Urban and Swadener 2016), and social researchers have often struggled to apply invariant ethics principles to specific social research environments, including digital environments. All enquiry, by its very nature and the tools and criteria used to help us enquire, is affected by culturally bound philosophical assumptions (Thayer-Bacon 2003), and ‘one-size-fits-all’ ethics codes need to be interpreted sensitively in local contexts. When researching young children’s lives, international ethics codes should therefore be considered not only in light of legal requirements, local ethics practices and cultures of childhood, but also in dialogue with local beliefs about early education and parenting.

Ethics as situated, dialogic and relational The increasing tendency in social research toward valuing children of all ages as competent communicators and active researchers who are equal to adults (Alanen 1988; Prout and James 1997) has led researchers to question the authority of adult-oriented ethics guidance (Parsons, Sherwood and Abbott 2016) and to redefine what children’s participation means in terms of ethics (Gallacher and Gallagher 2008; Flewitt et  al. 2017). Writing about young children’s participation in digital forms of pedagogical documentation, Lindgren (2012) suggests that one way for researchers to reach a more equitable sharing of power and knowledge between adults and children is to regard child participation “as a process where complete and incomplete adults and children meet” (p. 339). If the goal of research with children is to enable the youngest members of society to express their own views equitably, then children have the right to be given control over ethical decision-making, rather than have normative, adult ethical standards and values imposed upon them. According to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) foundational principle that children’s views must be heard and respected in all matters concerning their rights, children must be informed about the nature and purpose of a study, and share the same rights as adults to voice their own opinions on ethics issues. Many early childhood researchers have therefore joined the already vociferous call in qualitative social research for ethics to be more respectful of participants’ perspectives – to be viewed as situated and dialogic, where child and adult participants’ perspectives are integral to all phases of the research process (Simons and Usher 2000). In contrast to the ethics procedures implied by universal codes (where ethics can be viewed as a box-ticking procedure completed primarily at the beginning of a study and subsequently born somewhat distantly in mind) a situated, dialogic and reflective ethics approach is fundamental to the epistemological stance of a study, and involves a process of continuous, moment-by-moment reflection and responses to participant ‘comfort zones’. This does not exclude the relevance of general ethics principles, but provides an adaptive framework that can accommodate conflicts between formal ethics codes and “localized ethics” (Whiteman 2012: 7). While the initial design of a study might be guided by principles enshrined in universal ethics codes, institutional ethics requirements and disciplinary norms, researchers still have to make in-the-moment decisions in sensitive response to issues as they emerge in the research field, to draw on their own subjectivity and knowledge of the research context and participant preferences to inform their ethics decision-making (Flewitt and Ang 2020). In this vein, Thayer-Bacon (2003) argues for a relational ethical approach, where 66

Ethics and researching digital literacies

knowledge gained through the relationship between the researcher and the research participant becomes integral to ethical decision-making. There are many unresolved issues regarding the relevance of existing ethics frameworks to research about young children’s digital practices, and we need to step back to consider how ethics with and about digital technologies are different to established ethics practices. For example, are online communities private or public spaces? How can informed consent be gained in online communities? Can online participants’ identity, age and vulnerability be verified? How can participants’ written and visual digital texts be meaningfully represented in research? There are also questions around the ethical complexities of research about and with mobile devices, given the immediacy with which mobile technologies connect to social media and expose data to unsolicited virtual access (Andrews, Dyson and Wishart 2015). With so many new questions arising in digital and online research, it is little wonder that Buchanan (2006) suggests “many researchers fall short of fulfilling their ethical responsibilities in online environments, not due to intentional malfeasance but to ignorance” (p. 14). Research in the burgeoning field of young children’s digital literacy practices poses further methodological and ethical challenges, where scholarship is needed to inform new ethical research responses to new challenges. Here, I begin to address some of these challenges by reviewing ethics approaches in recent research into young children’s offline and online digital literacy practices, paying particular attention to the familiar dimensions of voluntary informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity, potential benefits and harm for participants, and research integrity and quality.

Ensuring voluntary informed consent throughout the research process Participatory research methods over recent decades have highlighted the multiple ethical challenges and benefits of involving children in research, and have contributed to the development of creative and flexible approaches to negotiating young children’s ‘voluntary informed consent’ to participate through ongoing dialogue (Flewitt 2005). However, the bureaucratization of ethics governance at institutional level has led to particular expectations for participant consent to be gained through paper-based processes involving information leaflets and signed consent forms that protect institutions from possible future litigation. As discussed, this regulatory framing derives from biomedical research practices, where discrete, time-limited interventions are typical, and is often incompatible with exploratory or longitudinal research, where research outcomes are unknown and consent may be renegotiated over time through dialogue between the researcher and participants. Furthermore, institutional ethics often suggest that written information and signed consent forms should be used, which might be inappropriate for research with young children, in non-literate societies, or in cultures where personal oral agreements are considered more reliable than written documentation (Lin 2016). Here, I outline potential solutions to negotiating voluntary informed consent when researching young children’s digital literacy practices that reflect on these issues, focusing on two central tenets of consent: whether participants truly feel free to ‘volunteer’ or decline to participate in research; and how young participants and their parents/carers can be informed about the potential consequences of participating in research about and with digital media. For consent to be valid, it must be given freely, yet very little guidance is offered in ethics codes regarding how to gain children’s independent and voluntary consent. There is clearer guidance regarding the legal requirements for parental consent, albeit with variation in child age. For example, parental consent for participation in research is usually required for children aged up to 18 years in some EU member states (Bulgaria, Cyprus, Republic of Ireland, 67

Rosie Flewitt

Portugal, Spain and mainland Greece for research in schools), up to 15 or 16 years in others (e.g. Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Sweden and the UK) or 14 years (e.g. Croatia, Czech Republic and Poland) (see FRA 2016). GDPR (2018) recognizes that the age threshold for obtaining parental consent varies between 13 and 16 years, depending on the age established in each EU Member State. The practice of securing proxy consent from young children’s parents as ‘gatekeepers’ does not respect children’s right to be involved in decisions about their own lives and breaches UNCRC requirements (Dockett, Perry and Kearney 2013). Ethics guidance on gaining children’s consent often refers to researchers’ assessment of children’s ‘competence’ to give consent, that is, whether children have the capacity to understand, to feel free to make an independent decision, to have a view on how much information about themselves can be disclosed and to understand the consequences of their decisions (Danby and Farrell 2004). In both qualitative (Harcourt and Conroy 2005) and quantitative research (Miller, Drotar and Kodish 2004) the term ‘assent’ is often used to signal that children are involved in decision-making processes about their participation but do not provide legally valid authorization, as required from a parent or legal guardian, and many IRBs and RECs specify that both children’s ‘assent’ and parents’ ‘consent’ are required. However, Gray and Winter (2011) argue that by making this distinction, researchers are labelling the child’s agreement as less important, which increases the power differential between adults and children. Inferring assent rather than obtaining consent has therefore been critiqued for inadvertently or intentionally denying children their right to express their views on matters that affect them. When seeking young children’s consent to participate (or indeed participants of any age), researchers can never be sure if they understand what taking part in research will mean in practice. It can be helpful, therefore, to consider children’s agreement to participate as provisional upon the research unfolding in line with their expectations, and to revisit and renegotiate children’s consent through different phases of research (Flewitt 2005). For example, researchers might regularly ask questions such as “I have my video camera/audio recorder with me today. Is it ok if I use it?”, and take time to answer any questions a child might have, to negotiate when the child might prefer not to be recorded or to let a child try using the recording equipment. This can help to reduce anxiety by demystifying the technological paraphernalia that is typical in digital research, and to rebalance control between the researcher and child participant(s), particularly if children make their own recordings. Harcourt and Conroy (2005, 2011) discuss the importance of creating sustained opportunities for children to ‘play’ with the idea of participating, and to listen to children’s ideas about what taking part in research might mean. It can, therefore, be helpful to plan for a period of negotiation for children’s initial consent, to allow young participants time to reflect upon the information they are given, to ask questions on multiple occasions, to weigh up the pros and cons in their own time, and to renegotiate consent through different phases of research (Dockett and Perry 2011; Flewitt and Ang 2019). Time enables researchers to become familiar with individual children’s ways of expressing themselves, to become alert to children’s non-verbal cues as well as to what they might express in words, and to respect children’s silence, lack of engagement or dissent as withdrawal of consent (Lewis 2010; Bourke and Loveridge 2014). Time also allows researchers to build trusting relationships with children, so they feel free to express their opinions and ask questions (Parsons, Sherwood and Abbott 2016). Offering children multiple opportunities to talk about their participation can help to reduce the risk of children feeling obliged to comply with adult researchers’ preferences, particularly in educational settings, where children are used to complying with adult decisionmaking. Similarly, in domestic contexts, the power imbalances in parent–child relationships may constrain the voluntary nature of children’s consent (Noppari, Uusitalo and Kupiainen 2016). 68

Ethics and researching digital literacies

On the other hand, offering multiple opportunities for children to withdraw or continue to participate risks projecting that children might not be capable of sustaining their involvement in longer term studies – so all such processes require situated and responsive decision-making through observation, dialogue and professional researcher judgement. As well as being voluntary, consent can only be considered valid if participants are given adequate information about the research and potential consequences of their participation, yet future consequences are often difficult to anticipate. Regardless of the care that researchers might take in their accounts of a study, they have no control over how findings might be interpreted by readers or (mis)represented in print or digital media – Twitter feeds have a notorious reputation for attracting uninformed debate alongside more earnest comment. Murphy and Dingwall (2007) suggest that information for exploratory studies can be carefully and truthfully worded to allow research teams to develop unanticipated lines of analysis, and to avoid building participants’ expectations of research outcomes. Informing participants about the likely consequences of participation also requires the information to be in a format that participants will understand, and this is now a GDPR requirement in the EU, so the methods used to gain consent are vital in research involving young children. Unlike with adults, using written information letters might not be suitable for child participants who are not yet confident readers. It is, therefore, important to use ways of communicating information that they are familiar with and find interesting, so their approval or denial of consent can be expressed meaningfully. In this vein, researchers have found that using multimedia, with sound and visual elements, can enable information-sharing with young children (Synnot et  al. 2014). Similarly, using storyboards (Kumpunen et  al. 2012), cartoon images (Dockett, Perry and Kearney 2013) and participatory visual methods (Ruiz-Casares and Thompson 2016) have enabled children to relate information about research to their own lives. Mayne, Howitt and Rennie (2016) propose an “interactive narrative approach” to meaningful early childhood informed consent. Working with small groups of three- to eight-year-old children about what their participation might involve, Mayne and colleagues developed a storybook to present the research context, purpose and rules of participation, with research-related photographs of real people, places and events. They then shared this research story with children in interactive storytelling and re-telling sessions, with dialogic reading and sustained shared thinking to provide diverse opportunities for children to be informed about the planned research before consenting to take part (or not). Researchers can adapt these participatory, visual and narrative approaches to reflect the ways that many children now access, create, re-purpose and share information via digital media (Rideout, Foehr and Roberts 2010). Parsons (2015) argues that digital technologies offer the potential to engage children’s interest in research participation, and provide cognitive and sensory scaffolding for children’s understanding, yet “have been significantly underexplored in relation to informed consent procedures with children” (p. 59). Nonetheless, work is emerging in this field. In their study of how iPads can promote 3–5-year-old children’s creativity, Arnott, Grogan and Duncan (2016) found that the children’s intense interest in using the iPads led them to ask many questions. Through their questioning, the children created opportunities for the researchers to explain the project and research process, to check the children were happy to continue to take part and for the researchers to write about their creativity. However, some have cautioned that using technology rather than the flow of human interaction might undermine the reliability and authenticity of consent, offering disarming incentives to motivate children’s participation: “people get too hooked on the methods . . . ideas about authenticity get sidelined in finding these new methods and so it [consent] can be a little bit illusory” (Parsons, Sherwood and Abbott 2016: 137). 69

Rosie Flewitt

Seeking informed consent is further complicated when research is conducted in public rather than private settings, as is often the case in online research. The nature of interaction in online public spaces such as virtual games is typically fluid and complex, making informed and voluntary consent impractical, and in some cases impossible, as researchers might not be able to verify the identity of all online participants (AOIR 2012). However, this does not mean that all internet-based research carries high ethical risk in a world where “the boundaries of technology and culture mean that ‘offline’ and ‘online’ have become less meaningful distinctions” (OrtonJohnson 2010: para. 2.3).

Confidentiality, anonymity and privacy in digital research with young children Confidentiality, anonymity and privacy fuel debates about ethical practice when researching young children’s digital practices. There is a risk in online spaces that children and adults might view their online interaction as private to an intimate community of friendships, and expect all members of that community to respect their privacy. To some extent, these issues reflect the paradoxes of conducting research with young children in the home environment, where the confidential atmosphere might contribute to children (and parents) disclosing details of their private lives that have no place in the research enquiry. Whether working in digital or nondigital environments, researchers are faced with ethical dilemmas that require immediate, situated decisions to be taken, for example, whether to metaphorically, virtually or physically step outside the research space, to turn off any recording equipment or decide to erase private data after leaving the research site (Flewitt 2005). Alternatively, researchers have found that adopting a participatory approach to data collection, where adults and children collect data, allows participants to choose what to share and what to keep private, and reduces the invasive nature of home-based data collection. For example, Plowman (2015) asked parents to take photographs of their child’s media use at home using their mobile phones, and to send the images to researchers, with short descriptions of the activities they photographed. Yet as Aarsand (2012) discusses, handing over responsibility for data collection to parents not only prioritizes parental perspectives over child perspectives, but also means that the researcher is unable to gain a rich understanding of the contexts of the observations. Furthermore, if the researcher is not present then the ethical conduct of a project could be compromised. Whereas a researcher might decide to stop recording when a child resists, a parent might not, and this creates a tension for social researchers between ensuring high ethics standards and working with adult co-researchers in research about young children (Aarsand 2012). In some online research, such as digital ethnography where childhood cultures are studied by observing online discourses and practices, the presence of the researcher might be unknown and invisible to participants (Murthy 2008). Leander and McKim (2003) argue that the boundaries between online and physical presence are unclear in online ethnography and it is important to capture how children’s virtual activity is integrated in the rest of their lives. However, maintaining a covert position in online research is justified in some disciplinary guidelines, where information posted in online forums and social media is viewed as ‘intentionally public’, and is therefore open to be used without the need for consent. Most online data cannot be classified into such binary categories of public or private, but lies within a spectrum between these extremes (Markham and Buchanan 2012, 2015) and a researcher’s definition of what is public or private might not match participants’ expectations of a site. As Orton-Johnson (2010) argues,

70

Ethics and researching digital literacies

neither the public nor the intentional nature of any communication can be assumed, but must always be critically examined in the specific context of each study. Alternatively, research ethics can be designed and developed as dialogic, where researchers and participants share in decision-making and co-construct an ethical framework through the social process of conducting research. For example, in their study of older children’s online interaction, Mallan, Singh and Giardina (2010) encouraged participants to protect their identity by using their own ‘invented’ usernames. However, participants were reluctant to take part in these conditions, so through dialogue the issue was resolved by creating an online space that was clearly attributed to research, with one part ‘open to the public’, and a separate, passwordprotected part dedicated to participant interaction. The public-facing webpages were used to publicize the project and research outcomes, with biographies and contact details of the project team members, while the online secure area hosted participant interaction and data collection, and was accessed via unique usernames and passwords. These were issued to individual participants on special ID cards, which in themselves carried a certain kudos in their peer groups. Although more successful in terms of prompting participation, the authors caution that despite their efforts, not all the young participants were enthusiastic about participating in researchdesigned online activity, and that an alternative avenue for future research could be to enable young participants to design their own online research sites to suit their own purposes and preferred ways of interacting online. Researchers also need to give careful thought to issues of privacy that might be infringed by the digital footprints young participants leave behind through their participation in online research. While some guidance for children’s online safety is available (GDPR 2018; NSPCC 2018; Chapter 9, this volume), further work is needed to identify and address ethics issues in young children’s internet use and online presence. This includes children under the age of two and children in utero, particularly given the increasing trend for expectant parents to post online photographic scans of their as yet unborn children (Marsh 2010; Holloway, Green and Livingstone 2013; Marsh et al. 2017). This leads to further tensions between protecting participant privacy and ensuring confidentiality when working with visual digital research data, where simply changing participant names does little to safeguard participant identity. Visual data tends to be particularly prevalent in participatory research with young children, where task-centred, visual methods are often favoured over more conventional talk-based methods of enquiry. For example, in attempts to subvert the adult–child power differentials in research, young participants might be encouraged to handle and use a range of digital devices to collect their own image-based data, such as digital still or video cameras, yet it is not always possible to anticipate who will see the produced images in the short and long term (Bragg 2011). In their study of Portuguese children’s uses and representations of digital media in domestic and school contexts, Nunes de Almeida, Carvalho and Delicado (2017) asked child participants to take photos at home of their computers, where they used them, their favourite places and objects. The resultant images revealed previously undocumented gendered differences in technology use and choices, yet also captured intimate and private spaces that the children treasured, including screen shots, framed photographs, pets, holiday memories and bedside paraphernalia. Faced with myriad ethical dilemmas regarding privacy and anonymity, the research team made case-by-case decisions about what was shared or omitted from their research reports, rather than agree and impose blunt rules across the entire data set. They conclude that crossing private–public borders is demanding and risky, and that scientific principles are not enough to guide the researcher. Rather, researchers need to use their social and improvisation skills to

71

Rosie Flewitt

face unforeseeable events as they unfold in the research field and to reach “always fragile and questionable decisions and dilemmas” (p. 371).

Avoiding harm and promoting benefit from research about young children’s digital practices Ethical concepts such as harm, risk and beneficence are core to any research enquiry, yet they are relative and ambiguous terms. Researchers have a duty to safeguard the welfare of the children they work with, and to avoid harm arising from children’s involvement in research. This includes reflecting on potential harm, risk and benefit at the outset of a project, and adopting an ethically reflective attitude throughout all phases of the research process, so the possible effects on the child, and the child’s family, are borne constantly in mind. If researching a potentially sensitive topic, researchers should recognize the limits of their own expertise, and anticipate any potentially negative outcomes by putting plans in place to help the children they are working with to access appropriate professional help or support rather than attempt to provide counselling themselves, should the need arise (NCB 2011). If children unwittingly reveal highly personal details about their private lives during online research interaction, then a guiding principle is that children’s right to privacy is more important than any research agenda. It might be appropriate for researchers to gently draw any indiscretions to children’s attention, or if there is a risk that a child might have disclosed information that could put them in danger, to inform a responsible adult: “when it comes to matters of child protection, there is clearly a duty to ensure the safety of CYP over our responsibility as researchers to guarantee confidentiality” (NCB 2011: 33) If the topic of research is sensitive or might cause embarrassment to a child, then it is particularly important to choose appropriate research methods. For example, some children might feel uncomfortable expressing their views in a group, or with a teacher or figure of authority present. Even seemingly innocuous questions, such as “What digital screens do you use outside school?” can cause discomfort or distress to a child who has limited access to technology in the home environment. Similarly, intervening in children’s lives by introducing them to new technology that they have not previously used can reveal their inexperience to their peers, and/or lead children to expect to have access to that technology on a regular basis. Here, there is further risk of causing embarrassment to parents/guardians who might feel pressured to engage in technology because they want their child to have the same opportunities as other children, yet not all parents have the skills or resources to provide the latest digital devices. If observing technology use in an early education setting, then researchers should be mindful of educators’ vulnerability to criticism about their practice. In short, research can be potentially harmful or beneficial in unanticipated ways, and there is a balance to be found in “the application of practical judgment attentive to the specific context” (AIOR 2012: 5). For example, research that uses respondents’ own videos or blogs in data collection might risk disclosing private aspects of participants’ lives, but can be ethically empowering by demarginalizing participants’ perspectives. Online questionnaires might engage respondents who would not be comfortable participating in face-to-face research, yet they tend to have lower participation rates (Orton-Johnson 2010). Elwick and colleagues (Elwick and Sumsion 2013; Elwick, Bradley and Sumsion 2014) reflect on the methodological challenges they encountered in a participatory study where the aim was to investigate what life is like for infants in Australian early education and care settings. In an attempt to gain the infants’ perspectives, they used ‘baby cams’, that is, small head-mounted cameras worn by the infants whose lives they were investigating, as well as fixed cameras on tripods. This study was underpinned by respect for infants 72

Ethics and researching digital literacies

and their right to contribute to what is known about their lives. However, the research team encountered many ethical challenges in how to interpret the infants’ non-verbal behaviours with accuracy, and despite all their efforts, concluded that it is not possible to know if researchers’ constructions of infants’ perspectives truly align with infants’ experiences. Furthermore, the team was troubled by the invasive nature of the technology. As Clark, McQuail and Moss (2003) suggest: “there is an irony that the more imaginative the methods become for listening to young children, the greater the possibility of invading their private worlds” (p. 44). For practitioners involved in video-based observational studies, viewing the recordings can have a potentially negative effect, and lead participants to be self-critical. Yet through dialogue and reflection with researchers, the research experience can lead to positive change in a setting, as reported by Elwick (2015) regarding a practitioner’s positive reflections on viewing videos of her practice: I have been really conscious of how I interact with the children, particularly infants. I keep thinking about what I might look like to them and how important it is for me to get closer to their level. I’ve been talking with senior personnel about it and they are very excited . . . I’m really excited. (p. 333) When conducting research about young children’s digital practices, adults often ask researchers to give advice on how to mediate young children’s technology use, but as Elwick (2015) illustrates, acting as a catalyst and support for adult participants’ reflection on their own beliefs and values is more productive than offering one’s own inevitably value-laden guidance. Some aspects to prompt discussion could include: questions around children’s technology use as a 21st-century human right; adult responsibility as gatekeepers for children’s access to technology; and inclusive approaches to technology use by all rather than by the few. In the same vein, researchers might engage actively with education policy and the technology industry, opening up links and dialogue to ensure early childhood research has a positive impact on children’s uses of technology, the resources they have access to and support they receive in using them. Exemplary work in this field includes the EU-funded study “Makerspaces in the early years: Enhancing digital literacy and creativity” (MakEY) (see http://makeyproject.eu). In MakEY, researchers, early years practitioners and industry partners collaborated in knowledge exchange, co-creating new pedagogies and learning environments that include the creative use of digital solutions in specially designed ‘makerspaces’. That is, spaces that enable young children (aged 3–8) to create a range of artefacts using specialist tools and resources, such as electronics, laser cutters and 3D printers. Multidisciplinary research of this nature brings benefits by ensuring that technology use and innovation is research-informed rather than exclusively market-driven. When faced with dilemmas around potential harm, risk and benefit, different judgements are always possible, and researchers can often feel uncertain about which course of action to take. Whatever ethics guidelines are followed, ambiguity and uncertainty are an inevitable part of the process, and decisions about potential harm or benefit are usually best made in dialogue with participants, as part of a case-based, inductive process.

Ensuring research integrity and quality through dialogue Integrity and quality are key components of most universal ethics codes and research governance, as research that lacks integrity could result in misleading findings, which not only wastes time and money but is highly disrespectful to research participants. Yet judgements about 73

Rosie Flewitt

quality and integrity are inevitably subjective, and often reflect disciplinary norms. As argued throughout the chapter, if research ethics are planned as dialogic between researcher(s), participants and other stakeholders, then an ethics narrative can be mutually constructed as part of the interactive process of doing research. The aim is not to minimize the presence of the researcher, but to recognize and value research as a social and dialogic process. Through dialogue with participants and research funders, researchers can feel confident of the integrity and quality of their work. Integrity and quality begin in the earliest planning phases, for example, researchers must carefully plan what financial and staffing resources are needed to conduct research to a high standard, and ensure that the plans for research outputs are realistic. Sometimes, funders have their own agenda which might compromise the independence of research, and have implications for intellectual property. A key issue here is the validity and quality of the questions being asked – are they new, and what original contribution will they make to knowledge? As mentioned throughout this chapter, research ethics should be integral to a study’s epistemological, ontological and methodological framing, so in the early stages of research design it is important to reflect on how feasible the proposed methods are, and where possible, to consult with participants to ensure they are comfortable with the research plans, and make reasonable adjustments to the design and conduct of the research, to accommodate and adapt to participant viewpoints. Research conducted in this dialogic manner is more likely to reap benefits for participants. If working in a research team, it is important to recognize the skills each team member brings, and identify when skills might need developing through training, and this is also the case when working as a lone researcher. Establishing a dialogic approach with research participants, regardless of their age, can be crucial to ensure that the research unfolds to a high standard that is within, or exceeds, participant expectations.

Concluding thoughts This chapter began by arguing that looking to the past and to established research ethics codes and principles can help to inform ethical decision-making in contemporary research with and about young children’s digital literacy practices. However, simply following universal ethics guidance is not enough. Early childhood researchers of digital practices can learn from established practices in non-digital participatory research, and from emerging approaches in digital research. Looking to the future, the early childhood research community must anticipate the social and cultural implications of digital, online and mobile technologies for research ethics by building clear principles for ethical research with and about young children’s digital practices. The chapter has argued that one way for researchers to achieve this is by adopting a critically reflective, dialogic and relational approach to ethics that is in tune with the epistemological stance of their work, and is woven into every thread of the research process, from research design and methodological choices to final outputs and dissemination. The chapter has discussed ‘voluntary informed consent’ as problematic in research, particularly when possible future outputs are not yet known, or in digital research environments where fastchanging technology is constantly creating new platforms for research dissemination. Children’s consent is also dependent on culture, context, their perception of free choice, and the manner in which ethics information is provided. Social researchers have begun to find creative solutions to navigating these tensions through the innovatory use of technology to provide information to young children prior to their research participation, through activity and digital-based formats to provide information, and through the co-creation of research information. Issues of privacy and confidentiality pose further ethical challenges, particularly if visual methods are used for data 74

Ethics and researching digital literacies

collection, or if digital footprints are created through children’s involvement in online research. Even if datasets are anonymized, they might still contain enough personal information for individuals to be identified by those who know them and/or the setting. In this regard, researchers must, as far as possible, take into account the rapidly developing nature of new technological research environments and methods, with a view to minimizing potential future harm. Throughout the chapter, I have argued that ethics issues are best understood in the situated context of individual research projects, and ethics decisions best taken in response to participants’ perspectives as established through dialogue. I conclude by suggesting some key questions that researchers might ask themselves throughout the research process, to ensure the highest ethical standards for research in the digital era: • • • • • • • • •

Does this research respect the rights and dignity of individual participants and groups or communities? Have local and wider cultural norms, beliefs and practices been taken into account? Is the research design culturally ‘sound’ and respectful of local values and practices? What measures have been taken to ensure that children’s and adults’ participation is voluntary and informed? What can be learnt from creative and interactive approaches to informing participants, including the use of digital media? How are participant confidentiality, anonymity and privacy respected? What might be the implications for future dissemination, particularly regarding online dissemination? What specific measures have been taken to maximize benefit for participants and wider society as a result of this research? Have participants been involved in anticipating what the benefits might be? What steps have been taken to minimize risk and harm to participants of all ages, and to the research team? Have participants been involved in anticipating what the short- and longterm risks might be? What steps have been taken to ensure all phases of the research process are conducted with integrity and transparency? To what extent have young participants been involved in constructing the study’s ethical framework? Are lines of responsibility and accountability clearly defined in the research team? Is the research independent? Are there any potential conflicts of interest, and have these been made explicit?

Acknowledgement I would like to thank Professor David Poveda, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, for his thoughtful feedback on an earlier draft of this chapter.

References Aarsand, P. (2012). Family members as co-researchers: reflections on practice-reported data. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 7(3): 186–203. Alanen, L. (1988). Rethinking childhood. Acta Sociologica, 31(1): 53–67. Alderson, P. (2013). Ethics. In: A. Clark, R. Flewitt, M. Hammersley and M. Robb (eds.), Understanding Research with Children and Young People (pp. 136–153). London: Sage Publications. American Sociological Association (ASA) (2018). Code of Ethics. Available at: www.asanet.org/sites/ default/files/asa_code_of_ethics-june2018.pdf (accessed 15 June 2018). Andrews, T., Dyson, L., and Wishart, J. (2015). Advancing ethics frameworks and scenario-based learning to support educational research into mobile learning. International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 38(3): 320–334. 75

Rosie Flewitt

Arnott, L., Grogan, D., and Duncan, P. (2016). Lessons from using iPads to understand young children’s creativity. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17(2): 157–173. Association of Internet Researchers (AOIR) (2012). Ethical Decision-Making and Internet Research. Available at https://aoir.org/reports/ethics2.pdf (accessed 15 June 2018). Beauchamp, T., and Childress, J. (2008). Principles of Biomedical Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press. Bourke, R., and Loveridge, J. (2014). Exploring informed consent and dissent through children’s participation in educational research. International Journal of Research and Method in Education, 37: 151–165. Bragg, S. (2011). ‘Now it’s up to us to interpret it’: youth voice and visual methods in creative learning and research. In: P. Thomson and J. Sefton-Green (eds.), Researching Creative Learning: Methods and Issues (pp. 88–103). London: Routledge. Buchanan, E. (2006). Internet research ethics at a critical juncture. Journal of Information Ethics, 15(2): 14–17. Clark, A., McQuail, S., and Moss, P. (2003). Exploring the Field of Listening to and Consulting with Young Children. (No. RR445). London: Department for Education and Skills. Dahlberg, G., and Moss, P. (2005). Ethics and Politics in Early Childhood Education. London and New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Danby, S., and Farrell, A. (2004). Accounting for young children’s competence in educational research: new perspectives on research ethics. Australian Educational Researcher, 31(3): 35–50. Department of Health, Education & Welfare (DHEW)/National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1979). The Belmont Report. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. Dockett, S., and Perry, B. (2011). Researching with young children: seeking assent. Child Indicators Research, 4(2): 231–247. Dockett, S., Perry, B., and Kearney, E. (2013). Promoting children’s informed assent in research participation. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(7): 802–828. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC/UKRI). (2015). Framework for Research Ethics. Available at: https://esrc.ukri.org/files/funding/guidance-for-applicants/esrc-framework-for-research-ethics2015/ (accessed 15 June 2018). Elwick, S. (2015). ‘Baby-cam’ and researching with infants: viewer, image and (not) knowing. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 16(4): 322–338. Elwick, S., and Sumsion, J. (2013). Moving beyond utilitarian perspectives of infant participation in participatory research: film-mediated research encounters. International Journal of Early Years Education, 21(4): 336–347. Elwick, S., Bradley, B., and Sumsion, J. (2014). Infants as Others: uncertainties, difficulties and (im)possibilities in researching infants’ lives. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27(2): 196–213. European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) (2016). Child participation in research. http://fra. europa.eu/en/theme/rights-child/child-participation-in-research (accessed 15 June 2018). Flewitt, R. S. (2005). Conducting research with young children: some ethical considerations. Early Child Development and Care, 175(6): 553–565. Flewitt, R. S., and Ang, L. (2019). Research Methods for Early Childhood Education. NCRM Research Methods Series, Series Editor Prof. Melanie Nind. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Flewitt, R. S., Jones, P., Potter, J., Domingo, M., Collins, P., Munday, E., and Stenning, K. (2017). “I enjoyed it because . . . you could do whatever you wanted and be creative”: three principles for participatory research and pedagogy. International Journal of Research & Method in Education. OnlineFirst 25 November 2017. Gallacher, L.-A., and Gallagher, M. (2008). Methodological immaturity in childhood research? Thinking through ‘participatory methods’. Childhood, 5(4): 499–516. General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (2018). Available at www.eugdpr.org/ (accessed 15 June 2018). Gray, C., and Winter, E. (2011). The ethics of participatory research involving young children with special needs. In: D. Harcourt, B. Perry and T. Waller (eds.), Researching Young Children’s Perspectives: Debating the Ethics and Dilemmas of Educational Research with Children (pp. 26–37). Hoboken, NJ: Routledge. Hammersley, M. (2009). Against the ethicists: on the evils of ethical regulation. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 12(3): 217–218. Harcourt, D., and Conroy, H. (2005). Informed assent: ethics and processes when researching with young children. Early Child Development and Care, 175(6): 567–577. Harcourt, D., and Conroy, H. (2011). Informed consent. In: D. Harcourt, B. Perry and T. Waller (eds.), Researching Young Children’s Perspectives: Debating the Ethics and Dilemmas of Educational Research with Children (pp. 38–51). London and New York: Routledge. 76

Ethics and researching digital literacies

Harger, B., and Quintela, M. (2017). The IRB as gatekeeper: effects on research with children and youth. In: I. E. Castro, M. Swauger and B. Harger (eds.), Researching Children and Youth: Methodological Issues, Strategies, and Innovations (pp. 11–33). Published online: 13 March 2017. Holloway, D., Green, L., and Livingstone, S. (2013). Zero to Eight: Young Children and Their Internet Use. London: LSE, EU Kids Online. Israel, M., and Hay, I. (2006). Research Ethics for Social Scientists. London: Sage. Kopelman, L. (1997). The best-interests standard as threshold, ideal and standard of reasonableness. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy, 22(3): 271–289. Kumpunen, S., Shipway, L., Taylor, R. M., Aldiss, S., and Gibson, F. (2012). Practical approaches to seeking assent from children. Nurse Researcher, 19(2): 23–27. Kushner, S. (2006). A lament for the ESRC. Research Intelligence, 94, February, 9–11. Leander, K. M., and McKim, K. K. (2003). Tracing the everyday ‘sitings’ of adolescents on the internet: a strategic adaptation of ethnography across online and offline spaces. Education, Communication & Information, 3(2): 211–240. Lewis, A. (2010). Silence in the context of ‘child voice’. Children and Society, 24(1): 14–23. Lin, K. (2016). Integrating ethical guidelines and situated ethics for researching social- media-based interactions. Journal of Information Ethics, 25(1): 114–131. Lindgren, A.-L. (2012). Ethical issues in pedagogical documentation: representations of children through digital technology. International Journal of Early Childhood, 44(3): 327–340. Mallan, K. M., Singh, P., and Giardina, N. (2010). The challenges of participatory research with ‘techsavvy’ youth. Journal of Youth Studies, 13(2): 255–272. Markham, A., and Buchanan, E. (2012). Ethical decision-making and internet research: recommendations from the AOIR ethics working committee (Version 2.0). Available at http://aoir.org/reports/ethics2. pdf. (accessed 15 June 2018). Markham, A., and Buchanan, E. (2015). Internet research: ethical concerns. In: J. Wright (ed.), International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences 2nd ed. (pp. 606–613). New York: Elsevier. Marsh, J. (2010). Young children’s play in online virtual worlds. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 8(1): 23–39. Marsh, J., Hannon, P., Lewis, M., and Ritchie, L. (2017). Young children’s initiation into family literacy practices in the digital age. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 15(1): 47–60. Mayne, F., Howitt, C., and Rennie, L. (2016). Meaningful informed consent with young children: looking forward through an interactive narrative approach. Early Child Development and Care, 186(5): 673–687. Miller, V. A., Drotar, D., and Kodish, E. (2004). Children’s competence for assent and consent: a review of empirical findings. Ethics and Behaviour, 14(3): 255–295. Murphy, E., and Dingwall, R. (2007). Informed consent, anticipatory regulation and ethnographic practice. Social Science & Medicine, 65: 2223–2234. Murthy, D. (2008). Digital ethnography: an examination of the use of new technologies for social research. Sociology, 42(5): 837–855. National Children’s Bureau (2011). Guidelines for Research with Children and Young People. London: National Children’s Bureau. Available at www.nfer.ac.uk/nfer/schools/developingyoung-researchers/ NCBguidelines.pdf (accessed 15 June 2018). National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) (2018). Online Safety. Available at: www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing-abuse/keeping-children-safe/online-safety (accessed 15 June 2018). Nicolet, H. (2016). Poster des photos de ses enfants sur Facebook n’est pas sans danger. Le Figaro. Available at: http://madame.lefigaro.fr/societe/pourquoi-il-faut-cesser-de-poster-des-photos-de-ses-enfants-mineurssur-facebook-011215 (accessed 15 June 2018). Noppari, E., Uusitalo, N., and Kupiainen, R. (2016). Talk to me! Possibilities of constructing children’s voices in the domestic research context. Childhood, 24(1): 68–83. Nunes de Almeida, A., Carvalho, D., and Delicado, A. (2017). Accessing children’s digital practices at home through visual methods: innovations and challenges. In: I. E. Castro, M. Swauger and B. Harger (eds.), Researching Children and Youth: Methodological Issues, Strategies, and Innovations (pp. 349–374). Published online, 13 March 2017. Orton-Johnson, K. (2010). Ethics in online research: evaluating the ESRC Framework for Research Ethics categorisation of risk. Sociological Research Online, 15(4). Available at: www.socresonline.org. uk/15/4/13.html (accessed 15 March 2018). Parsons, S. (2015). The potential of digital technologies for transforming informed consent practices with children and young people in social research. Social Inclusion, 3(6): 56–68. 77

Rosie Flewitt

Parsons, S., Sherwood, G., and Abbott, C. (2016). Informed consent with children and young people in social research: is there scope for innovation? Children and Society, 30(2): 132–145. Plowman, L. (2015). Researching young children’s everyday uses of technology in the family home. Interacting with Computers, 27(1): 36–46. Prout, A., and James, A. (1997). A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? In: A. James and A. Prout (eds.), Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood 2nd ed. (pp. 7–33). London: Falmer Press. Rideout, M. A., Foehr, U. G., and Roberts, D. F. (2010). Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8-to-18-YearOlds. A Kaiser Family Foundation Study. Available at https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED527859.pdf (accessed 15 June 2018). Ruiz-Casares, M., and Thompson, J. (2016). Obtaining meaningful informed consent: preliminary results of a study to develop visual informed consent forms with children. Children’s Geographies, 14(1): 35–45. Shore, N. (2006). Re-conceptualizing the Belmont Report: a community-based participatory research perspective. Journal of Community Practice, 14(4): 5–26. Simons, H., and Usher, R. (2000). Situated Ethics in Educational Research. London: Routledge/Falmer. Synnot, A., Ryan, R., Prictor, M., Fetherstonhaugh, D., and Parker, B. (2014). Audio-visual presentation of information for informed consent for participation in clinical trials. The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 5 (CD003717). Thayer-Bacon, B. (2003). Pragmatism and feminism as qualified relativism. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 22(6): 417–438. Urban, M., and Swadener, B. B. (2016). Democratic accountability and contextualised systemic evaluation. International Critical Childhood Policy Studies, 5(1). Available at: http://journals.sfu.ca/iccps/index. php/childhoods/article/view/71/pdf (accessed 15 June 2018). Whiteman, N. (2012). Undoing Ethics: Rethinking Practice in Online Research. New York: Springer.

78

5 Comparative global knowledge about the use of digital technologies for learning among young children Sonia Livingstone, Sun Sun Lim, Anulekha Nandi and Becky Pham

Global trends in young children’s access to digital technologies Remarkably little is known of young children’s access to digital technologies around the world, let alone the learning and literacy practices that might result. This is remarkable since children – especially the youngest children increasingly born into an already-digital world – are the focus of considerable public and policy interest regarding their supposed “natural” affinity for all things digital. There is considerable speculation about how this could open up new educational and participatory opportunities as well as expose them to new sources of vulnerability and risks of harm (Holloway, Green and Livingstone 2013; Livingstone et al. 2017b). With speculation rife that the pace of global internet and mobile adoption continually outstrips the capacity of parents, educators or governments to provide for children’s wellbeing in the digital environment, the paucity of sound research is problematic. In this chapter we take on the challenge of examining the conditions and consequences of young children’s digital technology practices with a global focus. By far the majority of the available research derives from the world’s wealthier countries, but it is in the global South that the majority of children – including child internet users already live and, notably, where the majority of future users will live (Livingstone, Carr and Byrne 2015). Our task is eased a little by the fact that the world’s leading children’s organization, UNICEF, focused its annual investigation into The State of the World’s Children at the end of 2017 on “Children in a digital world” (UNICEF 2017), together with a companion report reflecting the voices of children themselves as they call especially for internet access as of a right, complain about the digital access barriers they face, and muse over technology’s excitements, horrors and absurdities (Third et al. 2017). But while this is a helpful overview of the evidence for older children and teenagers, to understand the situation for younger children we had to conduct our own targeted literature search, combining the results with country case studies to explore contrasting contexts in greater depth. Since most countries worldwide report on individual and household internet use to the United Nations’ (UN) International Telecommunications Union (ITU), we start by examining 79

Livingstone, Lim, Nandi and Pham

their latest statistics (see Figure 5.1). It is significant that to construct this graph we did not select the countries included from a larger set because none exists; despite widespread use of terms such as “internet users” or “the population” or “digital natives”, for the most part countries only collect data for those aged 14+ or 16+. Thus Figure 5.1 includes the only countries that report comparable statistics to the ITU for children aged under nine. We found no international sources of data for other digital technologies, so focus in this section on internet access. What does the graph tell us? First, it is clear that children from the world’s poorer countries use the internet the least. Then, supporting the notion that youth (aged 15–24) are the early internet adopters, in every country where data are available, more 15- to 24-year-olds use the internet than either younger children or older adults. The situation for those younger than 15, however, is more variable (and, possibly, the data less reliable). Interestingly, in some countries, albeit to a lesser degree than among youth, children use the internet more than the adult population (in Belarus, Columbia, Ecuador, Georgia, Mexico, Thailand and Venezuela). But this is not the case in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Oman, Ukraine or Zimbabwe – though this may yet change. The former countries are generally wealthier, suggesting internet access, often through rising mobile device ownership among the growing middle class and a proliferating market in connectivity and services targeted at (or at least used by) children. However, the inclusion of Japan and Oman together with some of the world’s poorest countries is puzzling, suggesting that the cultural position of children in society also influences the extent to which they are included in the digital world. In many parts of the world, these are still early days when it comes to the use of digital technologies for learning and literacy. For example, a systematic review of the past decade’s research in Southeast Asia, conducted to inform the ASEAN ICT Master Plan, noted that Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam only began to invest in digital infrastructures in recent years, though Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore have

Figure 5.1  Internet use, by age and country. Source: International Telecommunications Union, 2017. ICT indicators database. Available at: www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/ Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx

80

Comparative global knowledge

already developed ICT projects in education (Prajaknate 2017). By contrast, literature reviews focused mainly on Europe and North America reflect an already-lively and well-advanced debate among scholars and practitioners regarding the nature, framing and potential of digital and multimodal literacies. The importance of connecting sites of learning – particularly across home and school – is often emphasized, since “everyday cultural resources that originate outside school offer possibilities for multimodal creativity and identity play, as children consume, transform and produce multimodal texts” (Kontovourki et al. 2017: 40; for related research on older children, see Ito et al. 2013). As children under eight years old still heavily depend on and are subject to adults’ supervision, their access to and adoption of digital technologies are strongly monitored by their parents/ caregivers and teachers. But in countries where school provision is uneven, or where children more often use the internet outside the home than in it, research is needed to understand their contexts of access and use, and the range of mediators (beyond parents and teachers) that may shape the resulting opportunities and risks (Banaji et al. 2018). Indeed, a study conducted by TheAsianparent Insights (2014) on Southeast Asian parents with children aged 3–8 found that the children’s digital device usage took place mostly at home, sometimes in restaurants, while travelling, at friends’ places, and the least at school because the inclusion of digital technologies into the Asian school curriculum was at a nascent stage. However, our review of existing literature shows that most studies on young children’s use of digital technologies beyond the West focus on two settings: the school and the home and still neglect other contexts. Another recent research review focused on older children in low- and middle-income countries revealed that girls are subject to restrictions, responsibilities and exclusions that impede their use of digital technologies – not only from parents or caregivers and teachers but also from community access providers and older boys – and sometimes to gender-based violence when they do seek to use them in community or public spaces (Livingstone et al. 2017b). In what follows, we invert the more usual tendency of scholarship published in English to focus on teenagers in Western contexts, by examining what is known about young children’s use of digital technologies in East Asia and the global South, drawing some comparisons with the West when informative, and with a specific focus on digital literacies and learning, as befits the focus of this volume.

Enablers and barriers to children’s digital literacy around the world At school Most of the research we found was concerned with how teachers are incorporating digital technologies within the pedagogic process at school or with practices of parental mediation of digital technologies by young children at home. Little of this research addresses children’s digital literacy directly, rarely debating definitions or engaging in conceptual debates. Rather, the focus is predominantly on digital provision, instrumental uses, rules and immediate educational or behavioural outcomes. Little research, too, has addressed children’s lives holistically by connecting their digital literacy and learning across domestic, informal and formal settings or over time as children develop. However, there are intriguing signs of experimentation with digital learning around the world, some of it deploying advanced technologies. For example, working in a typical Chinese kindergarten in Hong Kong, Huang, Li and Fong (2016) found that augmented reality technologies could enhance four- and five-year-olds’ art education activities, generating considerable enthusiasm from the children, parents and teachers. Yilmaz (2016) adds 81

Livingstone, Lim, Nandi and Pham

from experiences in a Turkish class of five- to six-year-olds, while “poor interaction designs cause ineffective learning, leading to disorientation and cognitive overload”, augmented reality toys can be made to work well for children since, “while they are pointing (at) toys, responding to teachers and turning toys, they can describe what they see in detail. In addition, the more they comment and question, the more extensively they describe” (p. 246). At home, too, Cheng and Tsai (2014) explored the potential of Taiwanese parents reading an augmented reality picture book with their young children, finding that most learning occurred when the parent–child relationship was cooperative or even tipped in favour of child agency. Less ambitious in technological innovation but perhaps more applicable in practice, Wang et al. (2016) experimented with the relative benefit of learning via touchscreen devices, finding that for Chinese five- and six-year-olds the interactivity this afforded improved children’s learning to tell the time in a way that also transferred to other contexts (such as using a toy clock or a paper drawing of a clock). For many more practical suggestions designed to inspire educators everywhere, one might refer to Rogow’s (2015) guidance on “inquiry-based technology integration” to facilitate critical thinking among five-year-olds. Indeed, touchscreen devices are particularly accessible for children still too young to competently manage either pen and paper or a computer keyboard and mouse (Seo and Lee 2017; Wang, Towey and Jong 2016). Also important for very young children, as Noorhidawati, Ghalebandi and Hajar (2015) revealed in their study of Malaysian preschoolers, is that mobile apps engage children through sensory and psychomotor skills (touching, looking, listening, gesturing) as well as emotional expression (facial expressions and noises) and verbal expression. In this way, they can also help teachers and parents visualize, externalize and so engage in children’s learning, supporting what Siraj-Blatchford (2007) calls “sustained shared thinking” and thereby, parental activities of brokering and scaffolding learning through technology use (Barron et al. 2009). Enthusiasm and motivation, interactivity with toys and devices, cooperation among peers, parents and teachers – all of these explain why digital technologies can serve as a “catalytic change agent” (Roberts-Holmes 2014) for very young children. Cheung and Xu (2016) suggest that media literacy education can offer a distinctively child-centred, reflective and agentic mode of learning that connects school with the rest of children’s lives and contrasts markedly with previous pedagogic traditions. The barriers to such initiatives are considerable, however, including first-order barriers (namely those external to teachers, such as lack of access to hardware and software, lack of time, support, teacher training); second-order barriers (those internal to teachers, such as their willingness, beliefs, competences, classroom practices); and third-order barriers (defined as preparedness to improve the current situation and create what is desired) (Liu and Pange 2015; see also Blackwell et al. 2013). For example, the Kenyan community-based initiative, Open Space Literacy, has worked in partnership with Plan International to develop children’s digital literacy within the traditional primary school curriculum (Nethope Solutions Center 2015). But as with many such initiatives, it was open to the critique that “simply adding ICTs to traditional curricula with no re-thinking of these curricula, no questioning of received teacher-centred methods, nor any questioning of the content or curriculum goals, has now been shown to have mixed and not necessarily positive results in relation to children’s learning and motivation” (Livingstone et  al. 2017b: 29). Other initiatives appear more successful but on a relatively small scale – for example, Najja7ni, an “m-learning” initiative for under-served populations in Tunisia (GSMA 2014) – raising questions about whether and how the different levels of barrier can be overcome so as to reach more substantial proportions of the population in a sustainable way.

82

Comparative global knowledge

At home Barriers also arise at home. One is that parents’ concerns about the risks of technological devices tends to outweigh their optimism about the benefits, so many restrict children’s access (Lim 2016). Focusing on families in Singapore with children aged seven and below, Ebbeck et al.’s (2016) survey of parents and caregivers found that they recognized that touchscreen devices could benefit their children’s physical development by enhancing their motor, psychomotor and sensory skills, that they could enhance their intellectual development in the form of improved academic outcomes and creative and interactive learning, and that they could also nourish their emotional and artistic side. However, they were also concerned about the negative impact including damage to eyesight and inculcating an inactive lifestyle, device addiction and overdependence, exposure to undesirable content, and stunted social and communication skills. Similarly, a study set in South Korea found that parents were concerned about the adverse impact of touchscreen devices on their children, including developing an unhealthy obsession, negatively impacting socio-emotional development, impeding the child’s creativity or liveliness, and even physical damage to their eyesight and posture. However, their beliefs were not grounded in scientific knowledge (Seo and Lee 2017). Due to their reservations, parents practise restrictive mediation as many feel that touchscreens do not lend themselves well to co-using the devices with their children, though this might also restrict children’s learning opportunities. At the same time, parents often continue to grant their children access to touchscreens because they see it as a way to reward their children, and consequently this dissonance instils in these parents feelings of guilt (Seo and Lee 2017), itself reflecting an international discourse regarding “screen time harms” (Blum-Ross and Livingstone 2016). Another is socio-economic inequalities. Although parents’ rapid learning about and experience with digital media encourage them to mediate and support children’s learning outcomes (see also Plowman, McPake and Stephen (2010) and Livingstone et al. (2015), working with UK families with three- to four-year-olds), Shin and Li (2017) show how this differentiates among children, adding digital to other forms of social and economic advantage and disadvantage. For example, in the Thai government’s “One Tablet Per Child” initiative, first grade students at urban schools gained more than those in rural schools because they came from homes already better equipped with digital technologies, and so were both more familiar with and less anxious about this opportunity (Pruet, Ang and Farzin 2016; see also Prajaknate 2017). Advice from trusted authorities is also seldom mentioned by either parents or researchers, suggesting the presence of an expertise gap that only adds to parents’ confusion and possible frustration. This has led to parents engaging in their own instinctive reasoning to assess the benefits and harms of these newer media technologies for their children, influencing their mediation approach and reinforcing pre-existing inequalities. Yet parents’ concerns about mobile media devices also need to be seen in the context of perceived advantages. The user-friendly interface, coupled with the wide variety of ostensibly age-appropriate and educational content, seem to persuade parents of the benefits of new media technologies, despite their uncertainties over just what these might be (Blum-Ross and Livingstone 2016). It can be surmised that the growing pervasiveness of new digital technologies at home, school and elsewhere is providing young children with new opportunities for learning and literacy. But in consequence, parents gain the additional burden of optimizing their children’s use of these devices as well as the challenge of negotiating and mediating the problems this might give rise to in the home. Looking forward, researchers at the Sesame Workshop recommend that community initiatives should (i) take stock of family engagement and offerings and

83

Livingstone, Lim, Nandi and Pham

online connectivity with an eye toward equity and diversity; (ii) develop professional learning programmes that train media mentors; (iii) invest in physical infrastructure that promotes connectivity and meaningful participation; and (iv) create a continuous cycle of improvement using research and evaluation (Guernsey and Levine 2017).

Cultural contexts in focus Given the considerable diversity of cultural, economic and political contexts in which young children are using digital media at home and school around the world, we offer three contrasting country/region case studies of emerging markets for digital technologies to illustrate the importance of contextualization and care in comparing across or generalizing about children’s experiences. Each serves to illustrate the tensions between efforts to “modernize” a country or region through the adoption of digital technologies, promoting their role in educating the young generation, while negotiating the cultural and ethical consequences for childhood, pedagogy and family life. Each also raises questions about the societal infrastructure required to proactively harness the benefits of digital technologies for children rather than catch up with technology adoption patterns or market trends, requiring innovators and policy makers to look far beyond the individual child–device interaction to consider teacher training and curriculum development, internet governance and digital safety strategies, and parental/care-giver awareness-raising and guidance. They also provide insight into layers of mediation between the State and the unit of family as well as how State policy and infrastructural affordances structure access and parental aspirations that influence the role that digital media plays in the lives of children belonging to this age group.

Middle East and North Africa There were 365 million unique mobile subscribers across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) by mid-2017, accounting for 63% of the population (GSMA 2017), which makes the MENA region the second least connected region in the world. However, huge variation exists between countries across the region. As measured by digital consumer adoption, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar and Bahrain are the top countries in the world with regard to smartphone penetration rates (over 100%) and social media adoption (over 70%), outstripping even the United States (Benni et  al. 2016). The MENA region is migrating toward mobile broadband with 3G coverage expanding in the area, an expected 20% 4G coverage by 2020, and UAE and Qatar will be among the first countries in the world to receive 5G in 2019 and 2020, respectively (GSMA 2017). Lagging diffusion, uptake and adoption of digital technologies are a result of political instability in the region, with national media policies being reflective of the dominant religious identity in each country or the socio-political specificities. Though data on young children’s access to digital media in the region are sparse (The World Bank 2014), Samaha and Hawi (2016) found that 59% of 6- to 11-year-old Lebanese children, especially boys, spent over two hours per day on digital screens. In his study on barriers to the use of technology in Jordanian preschools, Ihmeideh (2009) found that lack of funds, software and skills were the major barriers. The results also revealed that though preschool teachers saw the value in using technology in the learning process, principals were not certain about its benefits for children, and were concerned about the attendant risks (UNICEF 2016). Sakr (2017) found that in the absence of locally produced content for children, international content is heavily censored by the State in line with cultural-religious norms (for example, removing romantic content, Christian references, swearing, family conflict, etc.) rather than, as in many countries, leaving such decisions to parents. 84

Comparative global knowledge

China: local technology, local adoption, emerging social scaffolding After the reforms in 1978 to become a market-based economy, China has enjoyed the fastest sustained expansion by any major economy in history. The country now has 1.3 billion people and is the second largest economy in the world (The World Bank 2017a). China’s mobile electronics market quickly thrived, with smartphone and tablet penetration rates at 79% and 17% in 2017 (We Are Social Singapore 2017). At the end of 2017, 91% of China’s smartphone market was dominated by the top five companies – Huawei, Xiaomi, Apple, Vivo and Oppo – four of which are China-based, while South Korea’s smartphone giant Samsung only accounted for 2.2% (Savov 2017). Chinese smartphone brands even went beyond China to rapidly acquire more shares in Southeast Asia (Kotani 2017). Strongly influenced by Confucianism, Chinese children are traditionally expected to respect parents’ authority, while Chinese parents are responsible for their children’s moral development. The implementation of the one-child policy in 1978 may have caused child-rearing in China to become more Westernized, overprotective and child-centred (Xu, Zhang and Hee 2014). Research on and social scaffolding for digital media use by young children in China are now emerging, with the focus thus far on ICT integration or promoting media literacy education in preschools and primary schools (see Cheung and Xu 2016; Liu and Pange 2015; Zhang, Zhu and Sang 2014). Notably, the Children’s Media Literacy Education Research Centre of the China National Youth Palace Association was founded in 2013 (Children’s Media Literacy Education n.d.). Since then, the Centre has conducted various research projects on children and media, and organized activities related to children’s online safety, such as training courses for teachers and the Children’s Internet Summit of China 2016 (Safer Internet Day n.d.).

Vietnam: foreign technology, local adoption, inefficient social scaffolding Since its Đổi Mới economic reforms in 1986, Vietnam has experienced rapid economic growth with its status transformed from being one of the world’s poorest countries to a lower middleincome country (The World Bank 2017b). Vietnam’s mobile electronics market has grown, making tablets and smartphones an electronic staple in the urban Vietnamese household. In the first half of 2015, 582,000 tablets were sold, 76% of which cost less than US$300 (Nguoi Dong Hanh 2015). In 2016, 14 million smartphones were sold to a population of 92 million (Minh Do and Anh Duy 2017; The World Bank Data n.d.). Yet this rise in the number of electronic devices is largely driven by foreign manufacturers, with 60% of Vietnam’s market dominated by South Korea’s Samsung, China’s Oppo and the US’s Apple (Minh Do and Anh Duy 2017). The traditional Vietnamese family is highly Confucian and patriarchal. Education is emphasized as a key household priority. Parents make sacrifices for children’s education by, for example, spending household income to send children to private tutoring classes, or “học thêm” (Mestechkina, Nguyen and Shin 2014; Tuoi Tre News 2014). However, scientific research on digital media use by young children in Vietnam is sorely lacking. For instance, thus far the Vietnam Paediatric Association has received limited media coverage, and it focuses on nutritionrelated initiatives (see VnExpress 2016). In 2016, Pham and Lim (2017) conducted fieldwork in the South of Vietnam and found that Vietnamese parents of preschoolers strongly regard tablets and smartphones as home-based learning tools that give their children a distinct edge in education by complementing or replacing private tutoring classes. However, they hold some misconceptions about the benefits and risks of touchscreen devices, such as believing that the devices have very strong educational value, or that they emit harmful radiation that harms the child’s development. Yet they receive very little to no official guidance from local schools or social 85

Livingstone, Lim, Nandi and Pham

scaffolding from the relevant government agencies regarding children’s media use in general, and tablet use in particular.

The global business of young children’s digital literacy Children’s digital literacy has emerged as a crucial frontier for commercial interests as the trend toward intensive parenting grows (Faircloth 2014), and the ranks of the middle class begin to swell in developed and even developing parts of the world. With the growing incorporation of digital media into the classroom, children’s digital literacy is seen as a critical skill to be fostered if children are to perform well academically, and to keep up with, if not exceed, their peers. Parents who are anxious to equip their children for such a competitive academic landscape, therefore, buy into commercial entreaties that trumpet the virtues of acquiring digital literacy skills early and extensively. A wide range of products and services has since emerged to capitalize on the anxieties of such parents, including dedicated educational toys, also referred to as “electronic learning aids” (Shuler 2007) or “smart toys” that are internet-connected and teach children digital skills ranging from robotics to programming to storytelling (Berriman and Mascheroni 2018). In addition to such hardware is an expanding market of apps, e-books and digital games designed to be used on the proliferating number of mobile devices such as smartphones, phablets and tablets (Vaala, Ly and Levine 2015). For example, over 80% of topgrossing paid apps in the “education” category of the Apple App Store target children, of which 72% target preschool children specifically (Shuler 2012). Another key market sector is that of services in the form of courses that aim to provide young children with digital literacy skills such as robotics, coding and animation. Across the range of products, apps and services, therefore, several notable threads in the commercial discourse can be discerned in terms of the “hooks” that are used to appeal to parents around the world. Prior research has found that the purported educational value of these products and services is a common selling point that commercial entities seek to exploit. Be they educational toys, apps, software or virtual worlds, the language used to describe them centres round the fun and exciting learning experiences on offer, their interactivity and rich multi-media content, the inculcation of digital and literacy competencies, the development of school and homework skills, feedback provision and performance monitoring, and so on (Shuler 2007). Besides merely offering informative and engaging content, therefore, these products and services are pitched as having the ability to enhance the child’s learning capabilities in general, as well as their digital skills in particular. However, in the absence of voluntary or third-party regulatory standards for what constitutes an educational product, it is difficult for parents to make well-informed, independent judgements on the educational value of the products being marketed to them and their children (Marsh et al. 2015). Indeed, consumer advocates in the US have sought tighter government regulation of the companies that tout their apps for babies as having educational value, even though such claims are unsubstantiated by independent evidence (CCFC 2013). It would appear that businesses selling digital products and services address parents as anxious and highly aspirational, arguably prioritizing individualized and competitive child-rearing – as is common in wealthy countries – over established or alternative ethics of childhood socialization and learning. This raises pressing cultural and political questions about what digital literacy is for, and whose goals are thereby advanced. As our three regional case studies illustrate, the consequences of technology diffusion, whether promoted by business or government or both, risk generating cultural tensions in relation to long-established teaching and family practices. On the one hand, the growing availability of digital technologies and the emphasis on children’s 86

Comparative global knowledge

agency, interest-led learning and playful experimentation may be argued to promote children’s best interests in the digital age. On the other hand, the new opportunities bring costs in terms of cultural traditions and values, and if not carefully thought through, hoped-for benefits especially for girls, poor or marginalized groups might not result, quite the contrary.

Conclusions The internet was designed for adults, but it is increasingly used by children and young people – and digital technology increasingly affects their lives and futures. So digital policies, practices, and products should better reflect children’s needs, children’s perspectives and children’s voices. (Anthony Lake, until recently the Executive Director of UNICEF, quoted in Third et al. 2017: 18) With smartphone and tablet penetration along with broadband connectivity rapidly rising in many parts of the world from West to East and including developing countries in South and Southeast Asia, as well as a proliferation of educational and entertainment apps, digital technology use by very young children is on a sharp ascent. However, this chapter has revealed a lack of evidence regarding even the most basic facts and figures on young children’s access to digital technologies in low- and middle-income countries, as well as early indications from qualitative research of considerable diversity in the values and practices that shape how young children are using digital media in different parts of the world. It has also found that the excitement over and hopes for digital literacy among young children are accompanied by persistent anxieties about the risk of harm, particularly among parents; while such concerns can be very practical, their widespread nature could also be seen as one way that deeper cultural and ethical anxieties about social change are expressed in a society. Does it matter that children are going online at very young ages, often before the adults around them? How does the mode of access, i.e. mobile only (exclusively via mobile devices) or mobile first (via a range of devices but principally via mobile) translate into different patterns of use and parental supervision? To answer these questions, we need to know much more about the contexts, purposes and outcomes of children’s access to digital technologies (Livingstone et al. 2017a; Banaji et al. 2018). UNICEF (2017) draws attention to the stark contrast between the high hopes held out for children’s opportunities, wellbeing and rights in a digital world, and the persistent digital inequalities that mirror or even exacerbate established inequalities in region, income, gender and language. Both sides of this equation are crucial, since ever more pervasive, complex, commercial and personalized digital technologies are becoming “embedded, embodied and everyday” (Hine 2015), actively promoted by global business interests and by states and international bodies now that digital technologies are included in the delivery of the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals and mapped onto children’s rights (Wernham 2016). Despite the diversity in digital literacy experiences, and the considerable gaps in existing research, several common factors emerge. These include the ways in which socio-economic inequalities generate digital inequalities, and the determined struggles of parents and teachers to overcome these and other cultural, conceptual and practical difficulties as they experiment with facilitating children’s opportunities in a very fast-changing digital environment. As a result, the predominant trend, especially but not only in East Asia and parts of the global South, is of a highly instrumental orientation to learning outcomes and risk minimization at home and school, with little evidence of ambitious steps toward participatory, critical, creative or child-centred 87

Livingstone, Lim, Nandi and Pham

conceptions of digital literacy (Banaji et al. 2018). This may be understandably pragmatic. But at the same time, this instrumental orientation can be reductive in effect, tending to prioritize the convenient delivery of narrowly conceived pedagogic goals yet undermining the deeper potential for children to enjoy distinct, meaningful and context-appropriate opportunities in the digital age. It is further important that such similarities across cultures do not legitimate the ungrounded conclusion that the “rest” of the world will follow norms and practices already emergent in the generally privileged West. A child-rights approach would consider more holistically how the deployment of digital technologies at the regional, national and individual levels, are beginning to shape children’s rights to provision, protection and participation within the particular contexts of economic development and socio-political privileges, priorities and stability that shape the regions in which they live (Livingstone et  al. 2015; UNICEF 2017). To advance this agenda, it will be important for research, policy development and practical interventions that, in the future, government statistical offices collect data on children’s engagement with digital technologies in ways that encompass the divisions and fractures both within and across countries. Equally important is that researchers henceforth conduct qualitative and ethnographic work to explore the meanings, dynamics and inequalities within families, communities and learning sites, to understand why everyday domestic meanings, values and practices complicate and reconfigure seemingly simple matters of “access”, often inflecting children’s experiences in ways strongly marked by generation, class, gender and culture.

References Banaji, S., Livingstone, S., Nandi, A., and Stoilova, M. (2018). Instrumentalising the digital: findings from a rapid evidence review of development interventions to support adolescents’ engagement with ICTs in low and middle income countries. Development in Practice, 28(3): 432–443. doi: https://doi.org/10. 1080/09614524.2018.1438366 Barron, B., Martin, C. K., Takeuchi, L., and Fithian, R. (2009). Parents as learning partners in the development of technological fluency. IJLM.net, 1(2), 55–77. Available at: http://life-slc.org/docs/barronparentsaslearningpartners.pdf (accessed 4 February 2018). Benni, E., Elmasry, T., Patel, J., and aus dem Moore, J. P. (2016). Digital Middle East: Transforming the Region into a Leading Digital Economy. McKinsey & Company. Available at: www.mckinsey.com/ global-themes/middle-east-and-africa/digital-middle-east-transforming-the-region-into-a-leadingdigital-economy (accessed 29 January 2018). Berriman, L., and Mascheroni, G. (2018). Exploring the affordances of smart toys and connected play in practice. New Media & Society, 21(4): 797–814. doi:10.1177/1461444818807119 Blackwell, C. K., Lauricella, A. R., Wartella, E., and Robb, M. (2013). Adoption and use of technology in early education: the interplay of extrinsic barriers and teacher attitudes. Computers and Education, 39: 310–319. Blum-Ross, A., and Livingstone, S. (2016). Families and screen time: Current advice and emerging research (Media Policy Brief 17). London: Media Policy Project, London School of Economics and Political Science. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/66927/1/Policy%20Brief%2017-%20Families%20%20 Screen%20Time.pdf (accessed 4 February 2018). CCFC (Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood) (2013). Advocates urge FTC to stop deceptive marketing of “educational” baby apps. 7 August 2013. Available at: www.commercialfreechildhood.org/advocatesurge-ftc-stop-deceptive-marketing-educational-baby-apps (accessed 29 January 2018). Cheng, K. H., and Tsai, C. C. (2014). Children and parents’ reading of an augmented reality picture book: analyses of behavioral patterns and cognitive attainment. Computers & Education, 72: 302–312. Cheung, C., and Xu, W. (2016). Integrating media literacy education into the school curriculum in China: a case study of a primary school. In: C. Cheung (ed.), Media Literacy Education in China (pp. 133–146). Singapore: Springer. Children’s Media Literacy Education, no date. About us. Available at: http://en.abmjsy.com/about/index.jhtml 88

Comparative global knowledge

Ebbeck, M., Yim, H. Y. B., Chan, Y., and Goh, M. (2016). Singaporean parents’ views of their young children’s access and use of technological devices. Early Childhood Education Journal, 44(2): 127–134. Faircloth, C. (2014). Intensive parenting and the expansion of parenting. In: E. Lee, J. Bristow, C. Faircloth and J. Macvarish (eds.), Parenting Culture Studies (pp. 25–50). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. Family Online Safety Institute (2017). Connected families: How parents think & feel about wearables, toys, and the internet of things. Available at: www.fosi.org/documents/231/HartReport_d7_full_report_WEB.pdf (accessed 5 April 2019). GSMA (2014). Najja7ni: Mobile learning services for improving education, English language skills and employment opportunities in Tunisia. Available at: www.gsma.com/connectedliving/wp-content/ uploads/2014/02/2013-2014-Q4-Tunisiana-Najja7ni-services.pdf (accessed 29 January 2018). GSMA (2017). The mobile economy: Middle East and North Africa 2017. Available at: www.gsmaintelligence. com/research/?file=84935f5774975f3d35c8ed9a41b9c1a4&download (accessed 29 January 2018). Guernsey, L., and Levine, M. H. (2017). How to bring early learning and family engagement into the digital age: An action agenda for city and community leaders. New America and the Joan Ganz Coony Center at Sesame Workshop. Hine, C. (2015). Ethnography for the Internet: Embedded, Embodied and Everyday. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Holloway, D., Green, L., and Livingstone, S. (2013). Zero to Eight: Young Children and Their Internet Use. LSE, London: EU Kids Online. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/52630/1/Zero_to_eight.pdf (accessed 20 May 2017). Huang, Y., Li, H., and Fong, R. (2016). Using Augmented Reality in early art education: a case study in Hong Kong kindergarten. Early Child Development and Care, 186(6): 879–894. Ihmeideh, F. M. (2009). Barriers to the use of technology in Jordanian pre-school settings. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 18(3): 325–341. Ito, M., Gutiérrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J., Salen, K., et al. (2013). Connected learning: An agenda for research and design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. Available at: dmlhub.net/wp-content/uploads/files/Connected_Learning_report.pdf (accessed 29 January 2018). Kontovourki, S., Garoufallou, E., Ivasson, L., Klein, M., Korkeamaki, R., Koutsomiha, D., et al. (2017). Digital Literacy in the Early Years: Practices in Formal Settings, Teacher Education, and the Role of Informal Learning Spaces: A Review of the Literature. COST ACTION IS1410. Kotani, H. (2017). Chinese makers offer Asia what Apple doesn’t: affordability. Nikkei Asian Review. 21 September 2017. Available at: https://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20170921/Business/10yearoldiPhone-gives-way-to-Chinese-smartphones-in-Southeast-Asia (accessed 29 January 2018). Lim, S. S. (2016). Through the tablet glass: transcendent parenting in an era of mobile media and cloud computing. Journal of Children and Media, 10(1): 21–29. doi:10.1080/17482798.2015.1121896 Liu, X., and Pange, J. (2015). Early childhood teachers’ perceived barriers to ICT integration in teaching: a survey study in Mainland China. Journal of Computers in Education, 2(1): 61–75. Livingstone, S., Carr, J., and Byrne, J. (2015). One in three: the task for global internet governance in addressing children’s rights. Global Commission on Internet Governance: Paper Series. CIGI and Chatham House, London. Available at: www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/no22_2.pdf (accessed 4 February 2018). Livingstone, S., Mascheroni, G., Dreier, M., Chaudron, S., and Lagae, K. (2015). How parents of young children manage digital devices at home: The role of income, education and parental style. London: EU Kids Online, LSE. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/63378 (accessed 4 February 2018). Livingstone, S., Lemish, D., Lim, S. S., Bulger, M., Cabello, P., Claro, M., et al. (2017a). Global perspectives on children’s digital opportunities: an emerging research and policy agenda. Pediatrics, 140(Supplement 2): S137–S141. doi:10.1542/peds.2016-1758S Livingstone, S., Nandi, A., Banaji, S., and Stoilova, M. (2017b). Young adolescents and digital media: uses, risks and opportunities in low- and middle-income countries. Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE). Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/83753/ (accessed 5 April 2019). Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J. C., Lahmar, J., Scott, F., et al. (2015). Exploring play and creativity in pre-schoolers’ use of apps. Technology and Play. Available at: http://techandplay.org/tapmedia-pack.pdf (accessed 29 January 2018). Mestechkina, T., Nguyen, D. C., and Shin, J. Y. (2014). Parenting in Vietnam. In: H. Selin (ed.), Parenting across Cultures: Childrearing, Motherhood and Fatherhood in non-Western Cultures (pp. 47–57). Dordrecht: Springer. Minh Do, and Anh Duy (2017). Eyes on the smartphone prize. Vietnam Economic Times. Available at: http:// vneconomictimes.com/article/business/eyes-on-the-smartphone-prize (accessed 29 January 2018). 89

Livingstone, Lim, Nandi and Pham

Nethope Solutions Center (2015). Open Space Literacy initiative: Using ICT to enhance education and improve literacy. Available at: http://solutionscenter.nethope.org/case_studies/view/open-space-literacy-initiativeusing-ict-to-enhance-education-improve-liter (accessed 28 October 2016). Nguoi Dong Hanh (2015). Gia may tinh bang tai Viet Nam da giam 30%, co con giam tiep? [The price of tablets in Vietnam decreased by 30%, will this continue?]. 8 July 2015. Available at: http://ndh.vn/ gia-may-tinh-bang-tai-viet-nam-da-giam-30-co-con-giam-tiep--20150707045836975p126c137.news (accessed 5 April 2019). Noorhidawati, A., Ghalebandi, S. G., and Hajar, R. S. (2015). How do young children engage with mobile apps? Cognitive, psychomotor, and affective perspective. Computers & Education, 87: 385–395. Pham, B., and Lim, S. S. (2017). Vietnamese pre-schoolers’ tablet use and early childhood learning: an ecological investigation. Paper presented at the Digitising Early Childhood Conference, Perth, Australia. Plowman, L., McPake, J., and Stephen, C. (2010). The technologisation of childhood? Young children and technology in the home. Children & Society, 24(1): 63–74. Prajaknate, P. (2017). Information Communication Technologies (ICT) for education projects in ASEAN: can we close the digital divide? In: J. Servaes (ed.), Sustainable Development Goals in the Asian Context: Communication, Culture and Change in Asia 2 (pp. 107–133). Singapore: Springer Nature Singapore. Pruet, P., Ang, C. S., and Farzin, D. (2016). Understanding tablet computer usage among primary school students in underdeveloped areas: students’ technology experience, learning styles and attitudes. Computers in Human Behavior, 55: 1131–1144. Roberts-Holmes, G. (2014). Playful and creative ICT pedagogical framing: a nursery school case study. Early Child Development and Care, 184(1): 1–14. Rogow, F. (2015). Media literacy in early childhood education: inquiry-based technology integration. In: C. Donohue (ed.), Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years: Tools for Teaching and Learning, Chapter 7. New York and Washington, DC: Routledge. Available at: http://teccenter.erikson.edu/ wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Rogow_MediaLiteracyREV-copy.pdf (accessed 29 January 2018). Safer Internet Day (no date). Updated for SID 2018: China Safer Internet Day Committee – Children’s Media Literacy Education Research Centre of the China National Youth Palace. Available at: www.saferinternetday. org/web/china/sid (accessed 29 January 2018). Sakr, N. (2017). Provision, protection or participation? Approaches to regulating children’s television in Arab countries. Media International Australia, 63(1): 31–41. Samaha, M., and Hawi, N. S. (2016). Associations between screen media parenting practices and children’s screen time in Lebanon. Telematics and Informatics, 34(2017): 351–358. Savov, V. (2017). China’s phone market is now dominated by five companies, none of which is Samsung. The Verge. 6 December 2017. Available at: www.theverge.com/2017/12/6/16741142/chinasmartphone-market-stats-android-oem-2017 (accessed 29 January 2018). Seo, H., and Lee, C. S. (2017). Emotion matters: what happens between young children and parents in a touch screen world. International Journal of Communication, 11: 20. Shin, W., and Li, B. (2017). Parental mediation of children’s digital technology use in Singapore. Journal of Children and Media, 11(1): 1–19. Shuler, C. (2007). D is for Digital: An Analysis of the Children’s Interactive Media Environment with a Focus on Mass Marketed Products that Promote Learning. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Shuler, C. (2012). iLearn II: An Analysis of the Education Category of the iTunes App Store. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2007). Creativity, communication and collaboration: the identification of pedagogic progression in sustained shared thinking. Asia Pacific Journal of Research in Early Childhood Education, 1(2): 3–23. The Asianparent Insights (2014). Mobile Device Usage among Young Kids: A Southeast Asia Study [Online]. Available at: https://s3-ap-southeast-1.amazonaws.com/tap-sg-media/theAsianparent+Insights+Devic e+Usage+A+Southeast+Asia+Study+November+2014.pdf (accessed 13 June 2018). The World Bank (2014). Broadband networks in the Middle East and North Africa: Accelerating high-speed internet access. Washington DC: The World Bank. Available at: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/ 10986/16680 (accessed 29 January 2018). The World Bank (2017a). China: Overview [Online]. Available at: www.worldbank.org/en/country/ china/overview (accessed 29 January 2018). The World Bank (2017b). Vietnam: Overview [Online]. Available at: www.worldbank.org/en/country/ vietnam/overview (accessed 29 January 2018). 90

Comparative global knowledge

The World Bank Data (no date). Data: Vietnam [Online]. Available at: https://data.worldbank.org/country/ vietnam (accessed 29 January 2018). Third, A., Bellerose, D., de Oliveira, J. D., Lala, G., and Theakstone, G. (2017). Young and Online: Children’s Perspectives on Life in the Digital Age. Sydney, NSW: Western Sydney University. Available at: www.unicef.org/publications/index_102310.html (accessed 29 January 2018). Tuoi Tre News (2014). Heavy 1st-grade curricula stress students, teachers and parents in Vietnam. 16 October 2014. Available at: http://tuoitrenews.vn/education/23312/heavy-1st-grade-curricula-tortures-students-teachersand-parents-in-vietnam (accessed 29 January 2018). UNICEF (2016). Child online protection in the MENA Region. Available at: www.unicef.org/mena/Final_ Regional_Report_070816.pdf (accessed 29 January 2018). UNICEF (2017). Children in a digital world. New York: UNICEF. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/ publications/files/SOWC_2017_ENG_WEB.pdf (accessed 4 February 2018). Vaala, S., Ly, A., and Levine, M. H. (2015). Getting a read on the app stores: A market scan and analysis of children’s literacy apps. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. VnExpress (2016). Hon 800 bac si du hoi nghi nhi khoa toan quoc [More than 800 doctors attended the national paediatric conference]. 14 November 2016. Available at: https://suckhoe.vnexpress.net/tin-tuc/dinhduong/hon-800-bac-si-du-hoi-nghi-nhi-khoa-toan-quoc-3495223.html (accessed 29 January 2018). Wang, F., Xie, H., Wang, Y., Hao, Y., and An, J. (2016). Using touchscreen tablets to help young children learn to tell time. Frontiers in psychology, 7. Wang, T., Towey, D., and Jong, M. S. (2016). Exploring young students’ learning experiences with the iPad: a comparative study in Hong Kong international primary schools. Universal Access in the Information Society, 15(3): 359–367. We Are Social Singapore (2017). Digital in 2017: Eastern Asia [Online]. Available at: www.slideshare.net/ wearesocialsg/digital-in-2017-eastern-asia (accessed 29 January 2018). Wernham, M. (2016). Mapping the global goals for sustainable development and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. UNICEF [Online]. Available at: www.unicef.org/agenda2030/files/SDG-CRC_ mapping_FINAL.pdf (accessed 28 October 2016). Xu, Y., Zhang, L., and Hee, P. (2014). Parenting practices and shyness in Chinese children. In: H. Selin (ed.), Parenting across Cultures: Childrearing, Motherhood and Fatherhood in non-Western Cultures (pp. 47–57). Dordrecht: Springer. Yilmaz, R. M. (2016). Educational magic toys developed with augmented reality technology for early childhood education. Computers in Human Behaviour, 54(2016): 240–248. Zhang, H., Zhu, C., and Sang, G. (2014). Teachers’ stages of concern for media literacy education and the integration of MLE in Chinese primary schools. Asia Pacific Education Review, 15(3): 459–471.

91

Part II

Young children’s digital literacy practices in homes, communities and informal learning spaces

6 Young children’s digital literacy practices in the home Past, present and future research directions Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen

Introduction The changing nature of childhood in the digital age is currently attracting major attention among researchers, educators, health care professionals, parents and policy-makers (Livingstone et al. 2017). Public media is also increasingly occupied by various and, at times, less harmonious discourses about the opportunities and risks of the digitalized society for children’s healthy development, learning and wellbeing. Often, the focus is strongly or solely directed toward the potential harm of exposure to aggressive, sexual and commercial media content, while at the same time children’s rights to provision, protection and participation in the digital age are inadequately addressed (Livingstone 2016). The need to summarize existing research is therefore vital to consolidate knowledge of contemporary childhood and what the prevalence of digital technologies may entail for children’s everyday life, learning and wellbeing as well as for parenting and education. We also need a sufficient evidence base to guide policy and practice in the field. Our chapter responds to the urgency in today’s rapidly changing world to conduct and in turn review research that has investigated children’s digital literacy practices in the home. We approach the notion of children’s digital literacy practices broadly, and define it to include all research studies that deal with young children’s (aged 0–8 years) engagement with digital technologies and media in the home. The work we report in this chapter builds on our previously published open access literature review (Kumpulainen and Gillen 2017) hosted on the DigiLitEY website (http://digilitey.eu). In that review, we analysed 33 articles and reports published between 2005 and 2015 in order to summarize current research knowledge in the area of young children’s digital literacy practices in the home. In this present chapter we will discuss the key findings of our earlier research in the context of our most recent review to illuminate how the research field is developing. In sum, the work reported in this chapter has two aims. First, we aim to summarize how research published in 2016 and 2017 has added to the findings of our earlier review of literature. Second, in order to develop a conceptual picture of the latest studies in the field in terms of how these have addressed and approached young children’s digital literacy practices in the home, we have applied Green’s (1988) 3D model, focusing on three interrelated dimensions of literacy, namely the operational, cultural and critical (Green 1988: 160). Via this conceptual analysis, we 95

Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen

hope to identify recent research trends in the area, gaps in current research foci, and propose key research directions for future study.

Review methods Search procedure For this chapter we carried out several searches of databases to identify as many as possible salient journal papers and online reports dealing with young children’s (aged 0–8 years old) digital literacy practices in the home within the time span of 2016 and 2017. The research area of young children’s digital literacy practices in the home has attracted attention among researchers working in various fields, and a feature of this literature review is that it draws from several disciplines. We adjusted our queries, worked with various databases and set up database alerts. Reading abstracts led us to exclude some articles initially identified as irrelevant. In line with our earlier review, we did not include books or book chapters; therefore it is likely that our search has omitted some findings that ideally should have been included. We included research studies that were published in peer-reviewed journals and online reports, and written in English. The most productive single search query was of the Web of Science, “(TS=((“young child*” AND media) AND (home* OR family)))”. An important point to recognize is that research studies involving children’s digital literacy practices in the home sometimes prefer to locate themselves as concerning “media” rather than “literacy”. Hence, to search for studies that self-identify as “literacy” studies would be too limiting and lead to an exclusion of relevant research interested in, for example, parental influence on children’s media use, skills and learning. Nevertheless, it is striking that our earlier search for research published between 2005 and 2015, likely to be incomplete for similar reasons, nevertheless yielded 33 texts for our analysis. The searches carried out for this chapter, dealing just with publications of 2016 and 2017 (available by end November 2017) identified 42 articles and reports. Even if our search strategies are incomplete, this suggests a rapid increase in research attention over the last few years.

Analysis procedure Our analysis procedure of the selected 42 articles is informed by a descriptive and narrative approach (Dixon-Woods et al. 2006; Kavanagh et al. 2012) that strives for a comprehensive synthesis of different research designs and methodologies. Our analysis of the literature was guided by an understanding of three areas of significance in relation to researching young children’s digital literacy practices in the home as identified by our earlier work (Kumpulainen and Gillen 2017): parental mediation of children’s digital literacy practices in the home; children’s media engagement and literacy learning in the home; and home–school knowledge exchange of children’s digital literacy practices. (Note that we use the word “parent” to stand for children’s principle carers whoever these might be.) Next, in order to develop a conceptual picture of the reviewed studies in terms of how they addressed literacy practices, we also found it useful to apply Green’s (1988) 3D model of literacy. Green’s model holds that there are three “significantly interrelated dimensions” of literacy, namely the operational, cultural and critical (Green 1988: 160). In our work, we extend Green’s original formulation into the digital domain and suggest that in addition to more traditional literacy that focuses on the written language system and how it is handled, operational elements also include those skills needed to decode and encode digital texts and artefacts, in addition to 96

Children’s digital literacy in the home

being able to use digital software and hardware for reading, writing and communicating. The cultural dimension of literacy entails competency with regard to meaning-making systems. It includes understanding literacy, also digital literacy, as a cultural practice and being able to read the cultural signs embodied in acts of meaning-making. Learning hence involves being socialized into a culture. The third element of the model, the critical, emphasizes the need for critical engagement with literacies, including digital texts and artefacts of all kinds, the need to ask questions about power, about intended audience and about reception. The critical dimension is to do with the human capacity for active agency, and transformation and production of culture, rather than being understood as young children merely engaging in practices of socialization into existing surrounding cultural practices. In this respect the critical dimension also entails creativity. Taken together these three dimensions – operational, cultural and critical – are complementary to our understanding of literacy as “the increasingly proficient way in which children develop inner control over the complexity of meaning-making systems” (Wolfe and Flewitt 2010: 397), also emphasizing the nature of that complexity including relations involving power. Thus, we hold that considerations across all three dimensions are required if children are to navigate successfully in the twenty-first century’s digital climate.

Results We will now turn to the results of our review. We will begin by considering how our current review compares to our earlier findings on young children’s digital literacy practices in the home. Then, we will turn to the key findings of our conceptual analysis based on the 3D model of literacy, focusing on how recent studies in the field situate themselves in terms of understanding children’s digital literacy practices in the home.

A. Parental mediation of children’s digital literacy practices in the home About half the studies reviewed by Kumpulainen and Gillen (2017) focused on parental mediation of children’s digital literacy practices in the home, although in some research studies this theme intersected with a research interest in children’s media engagement and literacy learning. We now quote key findings, noting the relationship with the newer studies. Findings from Kumpulainen and Gillen (2017) are numbered and italicized, followed by findings from the more recent research. A1 Many parents see digital technologies and media as positive but challenging at the same time. Research evidence continues to suggest that the use of digital technologies is viewed by parents with ambivalence. O’Connor and Fotakopoulou (2016) refer to this tension as a “divisive issue” (p. 246). Likewise, in their article, Brito et al. (2017) who considered 14 national reports stemming from projects on young children and digital technologies, identified great diversity in parents’ perceptions, even sometimes within the same families. The advantages of their child’s media use among the UK parents of 0–3-year-olds were found to include the learning of new skills, keeping children occupied, exposing them to new knowledge, entertainment sources and the opportunities to be creative. However, a quarter of the parents were concerned that their children could become dependent (Brito et al. 2017). A case study by Yılmaz Genç and Fidan (2017) dealing with five families in Turkey found that parents considered tablet use as educational and also valued their children’s use of games. However, they expressed concerns that unless their young children’s interactions were properly regulated, use 97

Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen

of digital technologies and media could lead to anti-social behaviour and exposure to inappropriate content. Similarly, Teichert (2017) reports tensions felt by mothers in Canada with regard to allowing their children’s digital practices at home; all “expressed concerns that their children engaged in too much screen-time” while still “feeling there were positive learning experiences tied to digital tool use” (p. 73). The study points out how adults’ beliefs about the appropriateness of digital media for their children influence these children’s exposure to and interactions with digital tools. A2 Parents are not always aware of the range of children’s online activities and their skills According to our recent search results, it appears that research focusing on parents’ awareness of their young children’s online practices and related digital skills has not been greatly explored in the latest research. This might partially result from the fact that researching this topic demands a sophisticated methodology, including a multi-layered approach to data collection. In a US study, Vittrup et al. (2016) found out that only a minority of parents “could accurately identify their children’s proficiency with various technologies” (p. 48). Altogether, these findings from our review point out that research focusing on the operational dimension of children’s literacy learning with digital technologies and media is scant. A3 Benefits of children’s digital activities are less straightforward to parents than seeing the risks. Our current review reveals that although not exactly specified, parents tend to identify more opportunities in children’s digital activities than documented earlier. Yet concerns over risks are still present. For instance, Palaiologou (2016) conducted a mixed methods study in four European countries. She selected England and Luxembourg, which have relatively higher users of digital technologies, and Malta and Greece where there are lower levels of use. She found out that “in all four countries parents did not believe that their children were at risk with using technologies” and that they were convinced of the benefits of appropriate use (Palaiologou 2016: 15). In the US, the majority of parents studied by Vittrup et al. (2016) disagreed with the early recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Public Education, AAP (2001), which state that children under 2 years old should have no screen time. Their study showed that, in general, “these parents had very positive attitudes towards media and technology and believed it to be an important part of their children’s lives now and in the future” (Vittrup et al. 2016: 52). The AAP now acknowledges that the 2001 recommendation was prior to touch-screen and internet-enabled toys, so now they advise no more than two hours per day for children under 2 years of age and declare that content matters: “The quality of content is more important than the platform or time spent with media. Prioritize how your child spends his [sic] time rather than just setting a timer” (Brown et al. 2015: 1). An in-depth study of ten families in the Czech Republic with a child aged 7 to 8 revealed that parents hold a complex matrix of understandings of opportunities associated with use of digital technologies and media. Their perceptions of risks were more oriented to the unknown future than applicable to the present (Smahelova et al. 2017). At the same time, some studies have identified a greater concern of parents of young children over disadvantages and risks of interacting with new technologies than confidence in benefits. For example, an ethnographic study of parents of 2–6-year-olds in South Korea uncovered the guilt that parents commonly felt over what they considered to be their own failures in managing their children’s media use (Seo and Lee 2017). The parents’ negative perceptions included fears of psychological problems, physical effects and adverse influences on cognitive development. Likewise, Croatian parents of 3–7-year-olds studied by Miklelić Preradović et al. (2016) who had digital technologies in their homes, agreed that these could have educational benefits but 98

Children’s digital literacy in the home

were “anxious” and not always willing to allow their children to use them. Fewer than half of the parents in this study allowed their child to use a PC, tablet or smartphone. In a survey study of a highly technologized environment situated in Singapore, Ebbeck et al. (2016) reported that parents of young children were most concerned about vision deterioration and addiction in screen use. Top benefits identified were the capturing of children’s interest and the development of motor skills. As a conclusion, Ebbeck et al. (2016) caution: “It is important for parents to realise that a technological device is not a toy, but an adult’s tool” (p. 32). They recommend that children below the age of 2 should not engage with screens and that parents should be careful of the commercial motives of educational apps. A4 Parental mediation includes “co-use”, “active mediation”, “restrictive mediation”, “supervision”, “technical safety” and “guidance”. Parental mediation styles in relation to young children’s digital literacy practices in the home continue to attract researchers’ attention. As Lim (2016) argues, “The advent of pervasive, ubiquitous media has engendered the practice of ‘transcendent parenting’ which goes beyond traditional, physical concepts of parenting, to incorporate virtual and online parenting and how these all intersect” (p. 21). Similarly, Zaman et  al. (2016), discussing a qualitative, mixed-method study involving 24 Flemish parents and 36 children aged 3 to 9 in Belgium, point to the emergence of new manifestations of parental mediation with regard to children’s digital practices and provide evidence of their dynamic, often paradoxical nature. According to their study, insights on distant mediation, various buddy styles, and participatory learning, as well as the value of a wholeness approach for understanding children’s conditions for media engagement, suggest new prospects for parental mediation literature. Altogether, based on our review, and as agreed by the review conducted by Coyne et al. (2017) the nature of parental rules and restrictions for their children’s digital literacy practices, parental motivations for allowing their children’s media use as well as overall parental mediation patterns are currently among the key research foci in the reviewed studies. The review by Neumann and Neumann (2017) more specifically on tablet apps emphasizes the possibilities of parental support of emergent literacy development. According to most recent research evidence, parents typically set rules for their children’s digital literacy practices in the home. For instance, Palaiologou (2016) reports that 86% of the parents in the four European countries she studied applied rules to their young children’s use of digital technologies. The detailed study of a small number of families in the Czech Republic by Smahelova et al. (2017) also identified great complexity in parents’ mediation strategies in relation to space and time management. In their study, dealing with ethnographic interviews with 20 South Korean parents of 2–6-year-olds and observations of ten children during their media use and interaction with parents, Seo and Lee (2017) report that parents presumed that touchscreen media wielded a more negative than positive influence on their children. As a result, parents were found to engage in restrictive and technical mediation, though they often failed to effectively manage their children’s media use due to practical challenges. The failure of parental mediation made the parents feel guilty. As a result, the researchers propose a greater need to attend to the contexts and emotions in which parental mediation of children’s media use occurs. Current research has also directed its attention to the ways in which parental mediation interacts with children’s digital literacy practices, behaviour in general and health. Samaha and Hawi (2017) approached their study of parents in Lebanon (of children aged between 6 and 11) with an assumption derived from earlier research that for children to spend more than two hours a day with digital technologies can be harmful. They reported that “Children whose parents reward good achievement/behaviour by allowing screen time, punish bad achievement/behaviour by 99

Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen

prohibiting screen time, and allow screen time to keep them quiet are more likely to exceed the daily screen time recommendation of a maximum two hours” (p. 351). Thus, there was a positive association between higher use of digital technologies and parental strategies to regulate this use. Working with the same starting point, that over two hours a day is “excessive electronic media use”, Séguin and Klimek (2016) reported from their questionnaire study of parents in Eastern Canada that “there were strong significant positive correlations between the amount of television (TV) watched and hostile-aggressive, anxious-fearful and hyperactive-distractible behaviours and significant negative correlations between amount of sleep and computer use, video game console use and TV viewing” (p. 981). McDaniel and Coyne (2016) conceptualize and investigate “technology interference” in their study of how technology-mediated interruptions can disrupt co-parenting interactions and in some cases can be linked to depressive symptoms. In their survey, Bentley et al. (2016) identified a variety of motives as to why parents allow their children to interact with screens including: relaxation; rest; distraction; reward for good behaviour; valued educational opportunities; and the development of skills. Vittrup et al. (2016) found that 90% of parents of young children in their sample used digital technologies to distract their children. Interestingly, in a study of low-income parents of Mexican-American preschoolers, Thompson and Tschann (2016) reported that “[o]nly 49% of participants had ever thought about the impact of background TV” and that “[b]elieving that background TV is not harmful was associated with higher levels of background TV exposure” (p. 1835). In a Spanish study, Matsumoto et  al. (2016) found out that tablets and televisions were used by children relatively autonomously, albeit with some boundary setting, whereas the use of laptops and smartphones were more closely supervised. It can be concluded from current research that conceptualizing the nature of parental mediation has undergone some thoughtful reconsideration in recent years. For example, Troseth et al. (2016) discuss how the concept of “co-viewing”, useful in discussions of children and parents watching television together, needs modification in consideration of touch-screen technologies which have various kinds of contingency built into the medium. They conceptualize adult scaffolding as directing attention, providing cognitive support and social feedback. Similarly, van Kruistum, and van Steensel (2017) distinguish between three mediation styles – regulation, guidance and space – and discuss various types of values applied to parents’ decisions about mediation and regulation. Brito et al. (2017) characterized four parental mediation styles as authoritative, permissive, laissez-faire and authoritarian. These are listed in the order of commonality overall in their pan-European study, but the authors identify some countries as strong in each tendency relative to others. They also demonstrate how mediation styles can evolve over time. A few researchers have also pointed out the need to offer guidance to parents regarding how to interact with their children to support their literacy development. For instance, Radesky and Christakis (2016) reported that some researchers have suggested that parental interactions with children and e-books are impoverished as parents may focus on mechanical instructions; they contributed to advice that “Parents should . . . be instructed to interact with children during eBook reading, as they would a print book” (Radesky, Christakis, and Council on Communications and Media 2016: 2). A5 Parental mediation is linked with the number and nature of media devices in the home, and the parents’ gender, education, cultural/socioeconomic background, computer/internet skills and attitudes. Our current review of literature suggests that demographic correlations with children’s technology use are weakening in some areas. For example, in the USA a high level of activities with digital technologies is permeating across families as “the American society has become so 100

Children’s digital literacy in the home

media and technology saturated in general” (Vittrup et al. 2016: 50), a finding also supported by Radesky and Christakis (2016). Correlations in parents’ socioeconomic and/or cultural background and the nature of their children’s digital literacy practices exist in quite limited aspects. For example, in an extensive US study, McClure et al. (2017) reported associations of children’s app ownership and household income, with those on lower incomes having fewer. However, all families regardless of their demographics agreed as to the educational value of apps. Middle- and higher-income families tended to rely more on recommendations from people they knew, whereas those on lower incomes were more likely to use search boxes, app descriptions and reviews to find out more about educationally valued content for their children. In a Finnish study Määttä et al. (2017) found correlations between sedentary behaviours and parental SES. They suggested that sedentary behaviours were higher among lower SES and that reading time at home was greater if mothers had a higher level education. However, this research was based on two perhaps questionable assumptions: that use of screens implies sedentary behaviours and that reading does not occur on screen-based technologies. Broekman et al. (2016) studied parents’ mediation of app selection for children aged 3 to 7 and reported that parents valued the capacity of apps to supply independent entertainment. They propose a possible extension of demographic and other variations to investigate the arena of parenting styles. In a survey study of mothers of children aged between 1 and 4 years, Pempek and McDaniel (2016) reported that where families owned a tablet “child’s frequency of use was positively associated with child’s age and mother’s use, and negatively associated with mother’s relational wellbeing” (p. 2636). Within this strand of research, Beyens and Eggermont (2017) found a relationship between mothers’ working hours and children’s television watching time. A study by McDaniel and Coyne (2016) focusing on technology interference in the parenting of young children reported that many mothers perceived that technology interrupted co-parenting interactions, especially during unstructured parenting such as playtime. The study advises parents to critically examine and potentially regulate technology use during family interactions.

B. Children’s media engagement and literacy learning In our earlier review (Kumpulainen and Gillen 2017), slightly fewer than half the studies focused on issues dealing with children’s media engagement and/or literacy learning. Again, we present key findings together with explorations of how more recently published literature relates to these findings. B1 Children in Europe grow up in media-rich homes It has now become relatively commonplace to use labels, such as, “the touchscreen generation” (Kostyrka-Allchorne et al. 2017: 654) and indeed those researchers found “emerging evidence of concurrent multi-screen use among very young children” (Kostyrka-Allchorne et al. 2017: 654). Similarly, Palaiologou (2016) found that all families studied had access to television sets, computers and the internet and that all children were engaged in related activities. In the US too, use of digital technologies appears to be increasing year on year as the overwhelming majority of children aged under 2 have access to mobile devices (Radesky and Christakis 2016). Ninety-eight per cent of children in the US have at least one mobile device in the home as well as a TV (Rideout 2017). In their overview Sefton-Green et al. (2016) make the important point that whereas some families in Europe have access to multiple devices and unlimited broadband, for others access to technologies might depend on a shared smartphone with limited connectivity. However, by 101

Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen

the age of 2 most children are using a tablet or laptop, using them to access TV programmes and video clips, or to play games and use apps (Sefton-Green et al. 2016). B2 Digital technologies and media are an important (but not dominant) part of children’s lives. Research evidence on the dominance of digital technologies and media in children’s lives has become somewhat more mixed compared to the findings of our earlier review of research (Kumpulainen and Gillen 2017). Palaiologou’s (2016) study in four European countries identified that technologies did not dominate, but were an important part of, children’s everyday lives, confirming many earlier studies (Kumpulainen and Gillen 2017). However, a US study offers evidence to suggest that digital technologies may take a dominant place in family life, finding that parents spent seven hours of their time per day (outside work and sleep) and their young children almost five hours a day (Vittrup et al. 2016). A survey study of 33 families of 3–5-year-old preschoolers in a town in Midwest USA categorized their play as technology, non-technology and outside (Slutsky and DeShetler 2017). It was found that technology lay between the other two categories in terms of time spent. Also, in a study in Spain, digital devices were perceived by parents as “in competition against traditional forms of play and outdoor and physical activity” (Matsumoto et al. 2016: 5). In addition, Rideout’s (2017) study in the US found that children from lowerincome and/or lower-educated families spent most screen time, particularly because TV watching has declined in higher-income families. In a study of Australian 3–5-year-olds in their homes, Given et al. (2016) explored the multiple, complex ways in which children “used information technologies in their homes to orient themselves in daily life and to solve problems” (p. 344). B3 Children typically demonstrate agency over technology: digital activities interact and support children’s “offline” life interests as children use digital media as an enlargement of their activities. Research evidence continues to demonstrate that digital technologies and media can support and enlarge children’s everyday activities. In her study, Palaiologou (2016) reported that digital activities were integrated into children’s interactions with parents and personal explorations. Similarly, Given et  al. (2016) found evidence in an observational study that young children combine digital technologies with their social and dramatic play and their offline literacy and numeracy learning in the home. On the other hand, our review of the latest literature reveals that overall there are very few studies that have focused their attention on children’s agency or creative use of digital technologies and media in the home. This is a serious gap as also implicitly pointed out by Aliagas and Margallo (2017) who argue that Reader Response models used to understand children’s reading responses with storybooks need to be revised as interactive elements offered by digitalization increase the child’s autonomy, positioning a child “as a collaborator, storyteller, an author or an internal character in the fiction” (p 44). Marsh (2016) advocates for further research complexifying understandings of young children’s digital literacy practices in the home. In her study, she shows how repeated viewings at home of “unboxing” videos on YouTube co-constructed a 4-year-old child as “a cyberflâneur through dialogic practices that included [. . .] movements and sounds” (p. 377), facilitating global and instantaneous peer-to-peer creation and sharing of multimodal texts with a range of textual pleasures. B4 Children’s literacy learning with and from digital technologies and media is mediated by the social context. Children learn from parental and peer mediation as well as from observation and imitation; parents seem sometimes not to be aware of children mirroring their behaviour. 102

Children’s digital literacy in the home

Our present review reveals that little research attention has been directed to children’s literacy learning with and from digital technologies and media in the home. This same finding was also suggested by our earlier review in the research field. A study by Akhter (2016) of interactions involving a 7-year-old and his grandmother searching for Qur’anic resources on the internet, demonstrates that knowledge can flow both ways. The grandmother contributes religious knowledge and understanding of the Arabic script and the child ICT skills, English and understanding of digital search strategies. Learning and socialization in the social context created by the use of digital technologies and media can hence be bidirectional, as also argued by Smahelova et al. (2017). Similarly, another case study by Marsh et al. (2017) found that children’s digital literacy practices in the home “involved extensive engagement with other family members who scaffolded their learning and were delighted in the children’s technological capabilities” (p. 47). Current research also points out that although young children may be described as having learnt to use technologies on their own, this learning actually includes a lot of observations and close interactions with others (Matsumoto et al. 2016). A survey study in the Netherlands by Nikken (2017) confirms these findings and reports that children mirrored the amount of parents’ use of digital technologies in relative terms. B5 Using devices that are not configured for children’s use increases their risks of problematic experiences with pop ups which might have inappropriate content and in-app purchases. In our latest review, we did not find studies investigating children’s use of inappropriate content, whether accidentally encountered or otherwise. However, Vittrup et al. (2016) suggest that children’s increased unmonitored use of digital technologies, combined with parents’ over-estimation of children’s knowledge, has the potential to lead to such vulnerabilities. This is a concern also shared by Elias and Sulkin (2017) studying toddlers’ use of YouTube in Israel, as well as by Smahelova et al. (2017) investigating 7–8-year-olds in the Czech Republic. In their review of tablet use, Neumann and Neumann (2017) call for higher quality emergent literacy apps.

C. Home–school knowledge exchange on children’s digital literacy practices Since our earlier search (Kumpulainen and Gillen 2017) as well as our more recent searches have focused on studies of young children at home, it is particularly likely that we have not identified all research findings dealing with home–school knowledge exchange on children’s digital literacy practices. Nonetheless, it was striking that certain key arguments were made consistently across a few papers reviewed by Kumpulainen and Gillen (2017). These key arguments are now taken together and revisited in light of later literature. C1 Children and parents believe that educators have little knowledge of children’s media engagement and digital literacy at home. C2 Children report limited school work related to digital literacies. C3 Parents would welcome stronger and more collaborative relationships with ECE/school settings, with information-sharing and exchange of good practice. This key message of Kumpulainen and Gillen (2017) was strongly supported by Palaiologou’s (2016) findings in four European countries. Since digital technologies are a significant element of children’s everyday home lives, parents typically want more integration with their learning in 103

Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen

schools, and more attention and support from educators. The UK parents of children aged 0–3 studied by O’Connor and Fotakopoulou (2016) found that 81% used some digital technologies at home but believed that only 6% of children were using them at nursery or kindergarten. Similarly, 85% of Croatian parents studied by Miklelić Preradović et al. (2016) supported the idea of young children learning more about digital literacies in kindergarten and 75% were willing to participate in an educative workshop. Families in all income bands in the US study conducted by McClure et al. (2017) wanted more information and advice on choosing good apps. In this connection, Radesky and Christakis (2016) point to the potential role that pediatricians can play in offering good advice (see also Radesky, Christakis, and Council on Communications and Media 2016). However, Edwards et al. (2017) working from the findings of a mixed-method case study in Melbourne, argue against what they claim is a prevailing discourse of digital disconnect between home and preschool for a more complex notion of digital difference. Their empirical work reported on constant tensions, with both parents and educators in the study reporting “a constant negotiation within themselves and with their children regarding access to different technologies, influenced by a complex interplay of their values around the time, place, activity and forms of media” (Edwards et al. 2017: 12). In their study based on an ethnomethodological approach, Aarsand and Melander (2016) showed multiple connections between activities that involve children’s developing media literacy practices across home and school. They conclude: In sum, the appropriation of media literacy involves media technology competence but even more importantly it encompasses verbal, embodied and social competences that interact with and are integrated in the participant’s cultural knowledge about how to act in specific situations. (p. 30)

Conceptual analysis of the reviewed literature based on Green’s 3D model of literacy Our conceptual analysis of the reviewed literature based on Green’s (1988: 160) 3D model of literacy as operational, cultural and critical, as discussed above, reveals that the most dominant focus of existing research is the cultural dimension. Almost all research studies reviewed have addressed young children’s digital literacy as cultural practices. Here, parental mediation of children’s digital literacy practices has received the most extensive research attention. Research to date has illuminated various parental mediation styles, and how young children’s digital literacy practices are entangled with the socio-cultural context of the family, embedded in parents’ knowledge-base, values, rules and preferred ways of being and acting with digital technologies and media. Based on current research evidence, the nature of parental mediation is strongly interlinked with their beliefs concerning risks and opportunities. So parents wish to keep certain possibilities open for children to play, learn and socialize with digital literacies while limiting others. Interestingly, whereas the risks parents associate with children’s engagement with digital literacies and media are fairly well articulated in the research literature, opportunities regarding young children’s experiences with digital technologies remain under-specified, even vague. There is hence a need for future research to better address the kind of digital learning opportunities that are available for diverse parents and families in diverse situations. Another cultural dimension of literacy addressed by a number of studies in our review focuses on children’s everyday activities with digital technologies and media in the home. These studies 104

Children’s digital literacy in the home

range from viewing technologies as interference to children’s lives and healthy development, to those studies that illuminate how children’s digital literacy practices at home interact and occasionally extend their offline life and activities, including play, and interactions with parents and peers. At the same time, our review indicates that only a few studies have specifically focused their attention on children’s agency or creative use of digital technologies and media in the home; the critical dimension of literacy has received less attention in existing research. This is also to do with scant research on how children’s digital literacy practices can further their capacity to ask questions about power, about intended audience and about reception. In sum, these findings from our review call for more research studies with sophisticated research methodologies that are able to capture conditions and processes in which children’s agency, creativity and production of culture – as opposed to only consuming culture – can emerge in their digital literacy practices. Our conceptual analysis of literature also reveals that to date there is scant research focusing more directly on the operational dimension of children’s digital literacy practices in the home. It seems that whereas there are beliefs and hopes of children’s digital literacy learning in the home, as yet too little is understood about the ways children learn when they interact with diverse technologies in media in the home that are themselves very diverse. Assumptions that children learn on their own receive challenge from some studies and could merit further investigation. Furthermore, probing how children learn and what support parents can give them can potentially become more fruitful than the current leading focus on potential risks, potential problems and restrictions, even if for many reasons the latter area of work will and should continue. There is a clear opportunity here for early years education providers to take a more informed and supportive role in ensuring young children’s digital literacy practices in the home are beneficial.

Conclusions Our review reflects in nuanced and interdisciplinary ways recent research knowledge of young children’s digital literacy practices in the home. Overall, it can be concluded that research attention to this field has significantly grown in volume and partially also in focus in the past years. Yet, important areas of research await further attention. In particular, research attention deserves to be directed to increasing our understanding of children’s perspectives, agency, creativity and learning in relation to their digital literacy practices in the home. Further attention could also be paid to understanding children’s digital learning lives across the settings they inhabit, so researching how knowledge and practices gained in the home are valued and leveraged for example in early years education and by cultural institutions including libraries and museums (see e.g. Kumpulainen and Erstad 2017). Also, it needs to be recognized that new technologies and media are being constantly developed, permeating children’s homes and everyday lives in general. Examples of most recent developments are the Internet of Toys (more tangible) technologies as well as VR-technologies. At present, there is a dearth of research knowledge on children’s use of these technologies and their implications for their lives and learning in the home and beyond. More research efforts hence need to be directed to these technologies, extending research focuses from touch-screen to more tangible technologies. In sum, it can be concluded that the work reported on in this chapter supports the view of Livingstone et al. (2017) that internationally there are many opportunities to enable children to benefit from digital technologies; however, research into local values and practices remains important. Nevertheless, there are lessons to be learnt that have the potential to inform policy and practice in fruitful ways. 105

Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen

References Aarsand, P., and Melander, H. (2016). Appropriation through guided participation: media literacy in children’s everyday lives. Discourse, Context & Media, 12: 20–31. Akhter, P. (2016). A young child’s intergenerational practices through the use of visual screen-based multimodal communication to acquire Qur’anic literacy. Language and Education, 30(6): 500–518. Available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09500782.2016.1141935 (accessed 19 October 2017). Aliagas, C., and Margallo, A. M. (2017). Children’s responses to the interactivity of storybook apps in family shared reading events involving the iPad. Literacy, 51(1): 44–52. Available at: http://doi.wiley. com/10.1111/lit.12089 (accessed 18 February 2017). American Academy of Pediatrics. Committee on Public Education (2001). American Academy of Pediatrics: children, adolescents, and television. Pediatrics, 107(2): 423–426. Bentley, G. F., Turner, K. M., and Jago, R. (2016). Mothers’ views of their preschool child’s screen-viewing behaviour: a qualitative study. BMC Public Health, 16(1): 718. Available at: http://bmcpublichealth. biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12889-016-3440-z (accessed 19 October 2017). Beyens, I., and Eggermont, S. (2017). Understanding children’s television exposure from a life logistics perspective: a longitudinal study of the association between mothers’ working hours and young children’s television time. Communication Research, 44(5): 691–716. Available at: http://journals.sagepub. com/doi/10.1177/0093650215607600 (accessed 19 October 2017). Brito, R. et al. (2017). Family dynamics in digital homes: the role played by parental mediation in young children’s digital practices around 14 European countries. Contemporary Family Therapy, 39: 271–280. Broekman, F. L. et al. (2016). A parental perspective on apps for young children. Computers in Human Behavior, 63: 142–151. Available at: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0747563216303417 (accessed 18 October 2017). Brown, A., Shifrin, D. L., and Hill, D. L. (2015). Beyond “turn it off”: how to advise families on media use. AAP News, 36(10): 1–3. Available at: www.aappublications.org/content/36/10/54 (accessed 19 October 2017). Coyne, S. M. et al. (2017). Parenting and digital media. Pediatrics, 140(Supplement 2): S112–S116. Dixon-Woods, M. et  al. (2006). How can systematic reviews incorporate qualitative research? A critical perspective. Qualitative Research, 6(1): 27–44. Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/ doi/10.1177/1468794106058867 (accessed 11 September 2017). Ebbeck, M. et al. (2016). Singaporean parents’ views of their young children’s access and use of technological devices. Early Childhood Education Journal, 44(2): 127–134. Available at: http://link.springer. com/10.1007/s10643-015-0695-4 (accessed 19 October 2017). Edwards, S. et al. (2017). Digital disconnect or digital difference? A socio-ecological perspective on young children’s technology use in the home and the early childhood centre. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 26(1): 1–17. Available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1475939X.2016.1152291 (accessed 4 August 2018). Elias, N., and Sulkin, I. (2017). YouTube viewers in diapers: an exploration of factors associated with amount of toddlers’ online viewing. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 11(3). Available at: https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/view/8559/7739 (accessed 27 November 2017). Given, L. M. et al. (2016). Watching young children “play” with information technology: everyday life information seeking in the home. Library & Information Science Research, 38(4): 344–352. Green, B. (1988). Subject-specific literacy and school learning: a focus on writing. Australian Journal of Education, 32(2): 156–179. Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000494418803200203 (accessed 16 July 2017). Kavanagh, J. et al. (2012). Mixed methods synthesis: a worked example. In: K. Hannes and C. Lockwood (eds.), Synthesising Qualitative Research: Choosing the Right Approach (pp. 113–136). Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Kostyrka-Allchorne, K., Cooper, N. R., and Simpson, A. (2017). Touchscreen generation: children’s current media use, parental supervision methods and attitudes towards contemporary media. Acta Paediatrica, 106(4): 654–662. Available at: http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/apa.13707 (accessed 19 October 2017). Kumpulainen, K., and Erstad, O. (2017). (Re)searching learning across contexts: conceptual, methodological and empirical explorations. International Journal of Educational Research, 84: 55–57. Kumpulainen, K., and Gillen, J. (2017). A review of literature on young children’s digital literacy practices in the home. Available at: www.digilitey.eu.

106

Children’s digital literacy in the home

Lim, S. S. (2016). Through the tablet glass: transcendent parenting in an era of mobile media and cloud computing. Journal of Children and Media, 10(1): 21–29. Available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/1 0.1080/17482798.2015.1121896 (accessed 19 October 2017). Livingstone, S. (2016). Reframing media effects in terms of children’s rights in the digital age. Journal of Children and Media, 10(1): 4–12. Available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17482798.201 5.1123164 (accessed 19 October 2017). Livingstone, S. et  al. (2017). Global perspectives on children’s digital opportunities: an emerging research and policy agenda. Pediatrics, 140(Supplement 2): S137–S141. Available at: http://pediatrics. aappublications.org/lookup/doi/10.1542/peds.2016-1758S (accessed 6 January 2018). Määttä, S. et  al. (2017). Preschool children’s context-specific sedentary behaviours and parental socioeconomic status in Finland: a cross-sectional study. BMJ Open, 7(11): e016690. Available at: http:// bmjopen.bmj.com/lookup/doi/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016690 (accessed 4 August 2018). Marsh, J. (2016). “Unboxing” videos: co-construction of the child as cyberf lâneur. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 37(3): 369–380. Available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01 596306.2015.1041457 (accessed 17 July 2017). Marsh, J. et al. (2017). Young children’s initiation into family literacy practices in the digital age. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 15(1): 47–60. Matsumoto, M. et al. (2016). Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology. A qualitative exploratory study: National report of Spain. Available at: https://repositorio.uam.es/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10486/669336/ young_matsumoto_report_2015.pdf?sequence=5 (accessed 19 October 2017). McClure, E., Vaala, S., and Spiewak Toub, T. (2017). Discovering kids’ apps: do family strategies vary by income? Available at: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. McDaniel, B. T., and Coyne, S. M. (2016). Technology interference in the parenting of young children: implications for mothers’ perceptions of coparenting. Social Science Journal, 53(4): 435–443. Miklelić Preradović, N., Lesin, G., and Sagud, M. (2016). Investigating parents’ attitudes towards digital technology use in early childhood: a case study from Croatia. Informatics in Education, 15(1): 127–146. Neumann, M. M., and Neumann, D. L. (2017). The use of touch-screen tablets at home and pre-school to foster emergent literacy. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(2): 203–220. Nikken, P. (2017). Implications of low or high media use among parents for young children’s media use. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 11(3). Available at: https://cyberpsychology.eu/ article/view/8558/7710 (accessed 27 November 2017). O’Connor, J., and Fotakopoulou, O. (2016). A threat to childhood innocence or the future of learning? Parents’ perspectives on the use of touch-screen technology by 0–3 year-olds in the UK. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 17(2): 235–247. Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/ doi/10.1177/1463949116647290 (accessed 21 October 2017). Palaiologou, I. (2016). Children under five and digital technologies: implications for early years pedagogy. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 24(1): 5–24. Pempek, T., and McDaniel, B. T. (2016). Young children’s tablet use and associations with maternal wellbeing. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 25(8): 2636–2647. Radesky, J. S., and Christakis, D. (2016). Increased screen time: implications for early childhood development and behavior. Pediatric Clinics of North America, 63, 827–839. Radesky, J. S., Christakis, D., and Council on Communications and Media (2016). Media and young minds: Council on Communications and Media Policy statement. Pediatrics, 138(5): e2016-2592. Rideout, V. (2017). The Common Sense Census: Media use by kids age zero to eight. San Francisco, CA. Available at: www.commonsensemedia.org/research/the-common-sense-census-media-use-by-kidsage-zero-to-eight-2017 (accessed 19 November 2017). Samaha, M., and Hawi, N. (2017). Associations between screen media parenting practices and children’s screen time in Lebanon. Telematics and Informatics, 34: 351–358. Sefton-Green, J. et al. (2016). Establishing a Research Agenda for the Digital Literacy Practices of Young Children: A White Paper for COST Action IS1410. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/. Séguin, D., and Klimek, V. (2016). Just five more minutes please: electronic media use, sleep and behaviour in young children. Early Child Development and Care, 186(6): 981–1000. Available at: www. tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03004430.2015.1071528 (accessed 21 October 2017). Seo, H., and Lee, C. S. (2017). Emotion matters: what happens between young children and parents in a touchscreen world. International Journal of Communication, 11: 561–580.

107

Kristiina Kumpulainen and Julia Gillen

Slutsky, R., and DeShetler, L. M. (2017). How technology is transforming the ways in which children play. Early Child Development and Care, 187(7): 1138–1146. Smahelova, M. et al. (2017). Mediation of young children’s digital technology use: the parents’ perspective. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 11(3). Available at: https://cyberpsychology.eu/ article/view/8561/7732 (accessed 27 November 2017). Teichert, L. (2017). To digital or not to digital: how mothers are navigating the digital world with their young children. Language and Literacy, 19(1): 63–76. Thompson, D. A., and Tschann, J. M. (2016). Factors contributing to background television exposure in low-income Mexican–American preschoolers. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 20(9): 1835–1841. Available at: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10995-016-1986-0 (accessed 19 October 2017). Troseth, G. L., Russo, C. E., and Strouse, G. A. (2016). What’s next for research on young children’s interactive media? Journal of Children and Media, 10(1): 54–62. Available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/ full/10.1080/17482798.2015.1123166 (accessed 19 October 2017). van Kruistum, C., and van Steensel, R. (2017). The tacit dimension of parental mediation. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 11(3). Available at: https://cyberpsychology.eu/article/ view/8563/7750 (accessed 27 November 2017). Vittrup, B. et al. (2016). Parental perceptions of the role of media and technology in their young children’s lives. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 14(1): 43–54. Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com/ doi/10.1177/1476718X14523749 (accessed 29 October 2017). Wolfe, S., and Flewitt, R. (2010). New technologies, new multimodal literacy practices and young children’s metacognitive development. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(4): 387–399. Available at: www. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0305764X.2010.526589 (accessed 16 July 2017). Yılmaz Genç, M. M., and Fidan, A. (2017). Children, parents and tablets: preschool children’s tablet use. Pegem Eğitim ve Öğretim Dergisi, 7(3): 367–398. Available at: www.pegegog.net/index.php/pegegog/ article/view/pegegog.2017.014 (accessed 19 October 2017). Zaman, B. et al. (2016). A qualitative inquiry into the contextualized parental mediation practices of young children’s digital media use at home. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 60(1): 1–22. Available at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08838151.2015.1127240 (accessed 12 October 2017).

108

7 Reconceptualizing the home of digital childhood Marta Morgade, Cristina Aliagas and David Poveda

Introduction: the centrality of home in children’s digital contemporary life Nowadays, a technologically rich home is the social space where contemporary children are exposed to multiple screen and digital artefacts (i.e. television, smart phones, computers, tablets, digital toys) from the very first months of their lives (Marsh 2004), and where they interact with technology under the mediation and rules set up by adults in the family (Chaudron 2015). At home, children participate in technology-based practices and develop attitudes toward the “digital culture” that is and will be part of their experiences. This appropriation is influenced by the socioeconomic environment of the family – where technology can be more or less present and/or accessible and where family beliefs and values about technology frame the texture of the conversations between parents and children around technology, as well as the absence of this topic in family life. Thus, home emerges as a critical context in which children’s socialization in digital culture is initiated; it is through family members and other intimate relevant adults that children learn to locate themselves in the world and to become members of the digital society in which they live by imitating, rejecting, claiming and exploring digital technology (Lahikainen, Mälkiä and Repo 2017). The centrality of families as a space of young children’s digital appropriation is reflected in studies that emphasize the home as a key setting to locate research on the role that technology and digital literacies play in children’s lives (Carrington 2001; Church, Weight, Berry, and MacDonald 2010; Aliagas and Margallo 2017). However, it seems disconcerting that many childhood studies with a focus on digital culture lack a clear, complex view of the home or even contribute to making invisible the home setting as an analytically relevant aspect of the research process. Not considering diversity in home contexts is reinforced by the general tendency of assuming standard notions of home based on the realities of middle-class families in Western contexts. Home is usually the “container” of studies but it is rarely brought into focus; in other words, it tends neither to be problematized nor described in detail. From our perspective, this “invisibilization” of the home is detrimental to the advancing of our understanding of children’s digital experiences and practices. We argue that it is important to pay attention to notions of and discourses about the home when researching young children’s digital practices as these have 109

M. Morgade, C. Aliagas and D. Poveda

implications for the analysis and interpretations that are built during research. Critical questions include issues such as: What is “home” in today’s digital world? How is “home” represented in recent research dealing with digitality in children’s life? What contexts, elements and dynamics do we need to take into account when researching children’s digital cultures? We start from a call to theorize home in holistic and complex ways, making the best of different traditions that have advanced knowledge independently. We also argue that a dialogue between different disciplines and traditions focusing on children and home is essential to gain a better understanding of the role of technology in children’s lives. The first aim of this chapter is to provide a conceptual framework that can be brought into research on young children’s digital practices and experiences in contemporary homes and families. It critically reviews different ways in which the home has been traditionally represented in research in Home Studies and Childhood Studies and builds from existing discussions to rethink home and childhood in the digital era. To do this, we bring together recent work on Network Systems Theory (Neal and Neal 2013) with Sociocultural Theories of Development (Rogoff, Mejía-Arauz, and Correa-Chávez 2015) and studies on Children’s Intimate Geographies (Valentine 2008). The reassembling of these traditions, when matched with new ways of understanding home and family in the contemporary world, will help uncover theoretical and methodological needs for future research on children’s digital worlds.

House, home, family As we will see further on, “home” is a sociohistorical construction that is continuously disputed, shaped and reshaped in the context of cultural and political struggles. It is worrying that although many people live in a wide range of homes with different characteristics, social and material configurations, the most widespread idea of a home is one that fits with a dominant middle-class “house” in a Western context, an idealized conception of house that is assumed as superior, more socially appropriate and desirable (Veness 1993; Blunt and Dowling 2006). In this regard, the socially widespread concept of home encloses an idealization of a particular type of housing which reinforces the belonging and intimacy of the members of the family. In contemporary discourse and also in childhood research the concepts of “home” and “house” are often used interchangeably. However, in other social sciences, the distinction between home and house has been discussed in detail as another binary opposition between the material-physical and the cultural-symbolic (Rapport and Overing 2000). The concept of “home” gained particular importance in research in the late 1980s when home was emphasized as the nexus between the individual and the family. From that moment, home began to be seen as a matrix of social relationships with symbolic and ideological meanings (Valentine 2001). In this way, if a house is defined as an object within a scenario, home is an emotionally significant relationship between the inhabitants and the place of residence. It is argued that a house becomes a home when the family is inside (Allan and Crow 1989) and this link partly explains how home and family have become almost interchangeable terms in contemporary discourse, policy and research. It is also argued that indoor-house has become the main playing space for children due to the rise of digital activities, which are increasingly popular among children, and the dread of “stranger danger” (Blunt and Dowling 2006; Poveda, Morgade and González-Patiño 2012). In addition, post constructivists state that home should be considered as something multiple, situational, individual and temporary (Rapport and Overing 2000). Home is located cognitively in memories and narrations, and in everyday social interaction. Moreover, the contemporary notion of a “mobile home” does not indicate that one is at home “everywhere” but that one can feel at home in any place, depending on the circumstances. 110

Reconceptualizing digital childhood’s home

If home is defined as a physical refuge or in emotional proximity to the family, then the importance of “feeling safe/secure” becomes an essential aspect. Home is where one feels protected and in control of a predictable environment (Valentine 2001). Under these premises, home is also a strong source of an individual’s identity and consciousness. According to Rapport and Overing (2000), home is where one gets to know oneself; where one finds the best possible mediation for one’s own identity. Furthermore, hegemonic and Western ideas define home on the basis of a private sphere, assuming rigid limits between private/public, home/society, leading to a dichotomous belief in which home and street are set in opposition to each other. In this way, children who grow up in the street are considered “out of place” and out of infancy (Ennew 2003). However, although many of these children can be described as persons without home in a territorial sense of “house”, their narratives challenge the assumptions by showing the complex forms in which many children who live on the street feel at home in streets (Ennew and Swart-Kruger 2003). Interestingly, the feeling of home is closely related to aspects of their life that they consider important, such as autonomy, safety and belonging (e.g. Leyra 2012). The notion of home as a sociocultural construct articulates two main attributes: order and identity. Home gives order to the space, time and social order of personal interaction. In the spatial order, home arranges life because home is a demarcated territory with physical and symbolic boundaries which guarantee that inhabitants, including young children, have more control over the domestic environment. In this regard, home is a sacred place (Eliade 1959), a secure place (Rainwater 1966), a place full of certainty and stability (Dovey 1978). In the temporal order, home is a sort of origin; we “go back” home, even with a future perspective. The cosy atmosphere of home is infused with the familiarity of past experience. In the sociocultural order, there are multiple manifestations of home in terms of its formal characteristics. The notion of home in the social order is extremely flexible in the extent that home is not materialized in a house or a building but in the design of experience and behaviour. It is a relationship with an atmosphere that can be transposed from one place to another, and so the meanings of home can be invoked again if patterns are recreated. Thus, home is an extremely complex system of emplaced ordered connections (Seamon 2014), an order that orients us within space, time and society. However, the phenomenon of home is more than an experience of being oriented within a familiar order; it also signifies identification with the place where we live. Although home has a strong cognitive element, home as identity is fundamentally emotional. Identity implies a certain merging between person and place, in that place takes identity from the inhabitant and the inhabitant takes place as a trait of identity. But since home expands the limits of the house, social identity is also linked to the notion of home. The idea of travel is the contrary of home, being home as the place of rest from which we move toward the outside, and the place we go back to after a long journey. The construction of social identity is developed in relation to the idea of travel and framed within other dialectical contraries such as me/the other, identity/community, private/public.

Theoretical representations of the home A variety of theoretical approaches have sought to understand and conceptualize the multiple sides and complexities of home, and together they define the interdisciplinary field of Home Studies. In this section, we focus on particular aspects of three theoretical frameworks that have recently been revisited by a variety of researchers: (a) the systemic aspect of the ecological approach developed by Bronfenbrenner; (b) how aspects of classical sociocultural theories have been reworked; and (c) recent approaches in Children’s Geography that have turned to more intimate spaces and experiences. From our holistic, interdisciplinary perspective, these strands taken together 111

M. Morgade, C. Aliagas and D. Poveda

provide powerful conceptual tools relevant for the study of home and childhood in a digitally mediated world. Further, the concepts discussed below provide resources to problematize and hedge dominant, yet opposed, discourses about family and digital childhood: a utopian discourse that emphasizes the digital as an enabler for the transformation of society and a dystopian discourse that considers digital technologies as fracturing family life and home values. Finally, as advanced above, exploring the intersection between diverse theoretical perspectives also helps to identify gaps and challenges in current research about young children’s digital lives.

Home as an interdependent environment in a network of influences Ecological System Theory (EST) (Bronfenbrenner 1979, 1986) emphasizes contextual aspects of human development. EST is one of the most influential theories guiding developmental research and the framework has experienced a number of transformations throughout Bronfenbrenner’s career (Rosa and Tudge 2013). Originally, EST defined the ecology of human development as a set of interdependent developmental systems (micro-, meso-, exo-, macro- and chrono-systems) which influence children’s experiences directly or indirectly. In his original formulation, the ecological environment is defined as “a set of nested structures, each inside the next, like a set of Russian dolls” (Bronfenbrenner 1979: 22). Based on the perspective of the influences of multiple levels, EST has been used to understand multiple developmental phenomena including psychological and academic results, signs of risk in child development, youth participation or family influences in the construction of gender identity (Bronfenbrenner 1986). Moreover, studies on child development in Childhood Studies, Education and Developmental Psychology have used EST to identify predictors or points of intervention that are beyond the individual, such as aspects of the microsystem (family/school, family/neighbourhood) and mesosystem (interactions between the microsystems). The use of EST as a frame for the empirical exploration of exosystems and macrosystems in child development has turned out to be more complicated as the impacts of these more distal influences are difficult to grasp in developmental research. Recent developments in Network System Theory (Neal and Neal 2013) argue that the ecological systems could be conceptualized as an overlapping configuration of relations and not as nested systems. While the traditional nested system metaphor does not clarify how ecological systems are related to one another, in the networked conceptualization each system is defined in relation to the social relationships that surround a focal individual, and the different systems are connected with each other in specific points of overlap. Figure 7.1 exemplifies how the developmental ecology of a child would be represented as a nested or networked system (adapted from Neal and Neal 2013): In relation to home and the developing child, the family is a microsystem of relationships where the child performs a role (e.g. daughter, sibling), lives and accumulates experiences (e.g. enjoying background music), and participates in social interactions with others (e.g. playing with a sibling, painting with mum). From an EST perspective, a network approach helps identify the sets of relationships within this first microsystem and how these relationships change and develop over space, time and social context. In addition, examining networks allows us to understand how these relationships may be configured by indirect influences, such as parental work or other significant sets of relationships in which members of the child’s home participate. Admittedly, a networked approach makes less visible macrosystemic influences, such as the economic context of the family or relevant cultural values, but a nested approach incorporates this level with ease, including a developmental influence that other psychological theories continue to neglect (Gifre and Esteban 2012).

112

Reconceptualizing digital childhood’s home

Macrosystem Exosystem

Mesosystemic Relation

Microsystem

Mesosystemic relation Microsystem

Microsystem

Microsystem Exosystem Nested

Network

Figure 7.1 Two ways of representing a person’s developmental ecology (adapted from Neal and Neal 2013).

Home as a primary space of parental mediation In recent sociocultural approaches, which seek to understand the intersection between the individual and cultural context, home is framed as the primary space of mediation of children’s first activities and thus home is seen as key in infants’ development. It is assumed that family is the social space where children begin the process of socialization through linguistic, social and play practices, and that these will shape their understanding and interpretation of their immediate and wider physical and cultural environment. Parental mediation is seen as a key process in children’s socialization as it is through interaction with the family (and beyond the family environment) that children learn to locate themselves in the world and to become members of the society in which they live by imitating, reflecting and curating their social image, in a constant negotiation with others (James 2013). Nowadays, with the growing role of technology in family life, other mediators in the home context are becoming more central, such as social media apps or software-toys. Building on this sociocultural view, in Cultural-Ecological Theory (Tudge and Hogan 2005; Tudge 2008), which draws from Vygotsky’s and Bronfenbrenner’s theories, children, family and child-rearing are at the centre of analysis, often informed by a comparative or cross-cultural perspective. Adult mediation of children’s practices and experiences develops across space, time and home activities, and includes the socialization of particular values and cultural viewpoints. The adult’s interpretation of context is part of how children’s lives and learnings are organized. Rogoff’s recent work (Rogoff, Mejía-Arauz and Correa-Chávez 2015) aims to systematize how learning relates to community and participation, and pays particular attention to home/family as the provider of structure in children’s activities, and as an enabling element in different forms of learning and relating to the world. Conceptualizing the home as the first mediator of childhood activity provides a first reference frame that will influence later phases of children’s lives in society and their participation in other contexts, such as the school, the neighbourhood or the online world. The sociocultural approach sees culture as a simultaneously created and shaping force of home, other educational contexts and the local community. This marks a difference with EST models discussed above, in which culture is understood as a shared system of values and beliefs and is “located” within the macrosystem. This conceptualization invites seeing

113

M. Morgade, C. Aliagas and D. Poveda

culture as something distant, rather than something situated and integrated in daily practices. A sociocultural approach challenges the peripheralization of culture and emphasizes the dynamic relationship between activities and context as a way to understand the forms through which culture is created and recreated across contexts. In this vein, Literacy Studies (cf. Pahl and Rowsell 2015) have adopted a sociocultural orientation to understand literacy and learning as situated practices located in time and place. In the extended field of Digital Literacies (Gillen 2014), meaning-making and interpretation are researched in relation to fluid and multimodal literacy practices, “dynamic literacies” (Potter and McDougall 2017) and negotiated spaces of communication and understanding, hybrid in nature, where meanings are made and shared. A socially situated approach to literacy refuses to analyse, for example, particular digital texts by considering context as a “wrapper”. In contrast, it takes context seriously and sees it as integrating in the analysis the “written language used, the technologies, the cultural practices, the historically informed understandings, as entwined” (Gillen 2014: 10). As a result of emphasizing the complexities of context, Digital Literacies studies have shown a cross-cutting commitment to diversity of experiences and inequalities and claim to study the digital in relation to diverse people and marginalized contexts, examining also the implications for the education and social participation of a diversity of children.

Home as a space of experience for children Children’s Geographies adds to the previous discussions a new understanding of home beyond an adult-centric view. The field focuses on children’s appropriation of places and spaces, and how these experiences are shaped by societal process, policies and ethical viewpoints about childhood. In addition, key research within Children’s Geographies has built fruitfully from Gender Studies (Butler 1990) and The Sociology of Childhood (Corsaro 1997). From feminist geographies it draws the push to examine the intersections between age, gender, culture, class and other structuring elements in the construction of spatial experiences and the appropriation of place. From a contemporary sociological understanding of childhood (a general label that includes children, teenagers and youth) it problematizes hierarchical oppositions between adults and children and adult-centric discourses in the production of knowledge. Holloway and Valentine (2000a) have identified three approaches in relation to how spatiality and childhood are understood: the importance of place, the experience of everyday spaces and social constructions of childhood that shape the meanings of space. Church, Weight, Berry and MacDonald (2010) also point out the importance of negotiations around issues of space and design, which reflect questions of ownership, access and availability as well as thinking about how design shapes behaviour, routines and uses of media and digital technologies. From this perspective, children’s and adults’ use of media and digital technologies at home is a process of accommodation of media technologies to domestic spaces involving a range of decisions, choices, negotiations and compromises. Within Children’s Geography (Holloway and Valentine 2000a), home is seen as an everyday space where children’s lives and identities are in an ongoing process of creation and recreation. The analysis typically focuses on the ways in which children use, experiment and value space (Holloway and Valentine 2000b: 11–12) and the forms through which space, time, practices and objects contribute to create children’s experience and, at the same time, shape the social spaces of infancy. Home is more than a physical space: it is a place full of meanings and it is part of identity construction and the matrix of relationships between people and the social environment (Dovey 1978; Christensen and James 2000; Valentine 2001; Blunt 2005). Children build 114

Reconceptualizing digital childhood’s home

distinct and meaningful relationships with their home from that of other members of the home (parents, siblings or other adults), an aspect that is often obscured in discussions that equate “families” and “homes” and use the terms interchangeably (James and James 2012). Further, in this discursive construction “family” actually means “parents” and tends to exclude children as active participants either in the family context or at home (Smart, Neal and Wade 2001). Some research attempts to dismantle this equation. For instance, Jones (2000) refers to “otherable space” when studying children in a rural village and observes the opportunities that children have to appropriate spaces within their own logic. He argues that the field of Children’s Geographies is framed by adult influences, ideologies and policies, and claims to approach the understanding of children – at least theoretically – as a social group that operates in relation to a social order and not as members of a family. The disconnection of home and family requires distinguishing the relationships with the home from relationships within the family, however these intertwine in everyday life. Solberg (2005) documented how 10–12-year-old children used the home space after school when their parents were still working and called them “new home occupants”. Rasmussen (2004) sees courtyards and gardens as key spaces to study and distinguishes “children’s places” (places that have significance and identity for children) from “spaces for children” (places design by adults for children). Nowadays, the engagement with technologies enables new “digital spaces” for the children to participate in family, social and global life. The dearth of studies about the home using the child as a reference seems a consequence of the prioritization of the study of family and related systems and institutions. Yet, a few studies move beyond this logic and begin to problematize some of the idealizations about middle-class Western homes discussed above. Wardhaugh (1999) suggests the possibility of lacking home within home in the context of domestic violence. Harden (2000) observes that the conventional associations of “home” with “security” are shared by many children in “ordinary” families, but questions these assumptions for children who experience domestic violence and frequent home accidents. Gender power dynamics that influence the use of different parts of the home have also been identified (McRobbie and Garber 1976), as well as children’s accounts about the complex interplay between “private” and “public” spaces even within homes (Leonard 2007). In our modern minds, children and home are united as one (Hareven 1991). The union is usually symbolized through notions of security, confidence and fondness, under the condition that at least one adult should be at home (typically, the mother). Thus, a child who spends time at home without the supervision of an adult is violating a cultural and modern convention, so the absence of the family is converted into a social concern. In addition, considering home as the “appropriate place” for children has become insufficient when attention is paid to children’s extra-curricular and after-school agendas. The contradictions between home as an ideal space versus the school space, or public spaces, or houses as self-sufficient structures for families, emerge even more forcefully when digital technologies are added to the discussion, and new unresolved questions are brought to the table.

Reconsidering home in the light of digital contemporaneity Illuminating interactions between children and technology was not a concern for Tudge or Bronfenbrenner since ecological or sociocultural theorizations were not developed for this purpose, nor did they emerge in a historical moment in which digital mobile technologies played a key role. The digital home invites these theories to move forward and articulate how they provide useful concepts when digital devices are an integral part of research into young children’s experiences and daily lives. 115

M. Morgade, C. Aliagas and D. Poveda

Furthermore, the current technological landscape complicates assumptions about the materiality of spaces. The limits between home and technology become blurred and, drawing from Bronfenbrenner’s vocabulary, digital devices can be situated within children’s microsystem (e.g. their home interactions), as a mesosystemic element (e.g. connecting home and extended family or home and school), as an exosystemic influence (e.g. as siblings or parents develop their distinct digitally mediated networks) or as a macrosystemic influence (e.g. through media diffusion). In addition, technology is becoming even more omnipresent and invisible in families and family life. The emergence of the Internet of Things (IoT; Mascheroni and Holloway 2017) requires alternative forms of conceptualizing technology, home and context. The IoT connects objects (e.g. physical devices, vehicles, home appliances) so they can exchange data in an inter-operated network. This connectivity does not require recognizable digital devices, such as mobile phones, tablets or laptops, and so it is more difficult to “observe” as part of a social and interactional network. It is also a further step in blurring the limits between the physical and the digital world. For example, a child hugging a teddy bear with embedded sensors, can be – unknowingly – sending biometrical data (such as cardiac frequency or body temperature) to doctors or to the parents’ mobile phones. The emergent world of the IoT, as a part of the Internet of Things, is filling childhood with software-enabled toys: some are connected to online platforms through WiFi and Bluetooth and others are equipped with sensors that activate interactivity. These new smart toys offer new ways of personalizing play and learning and open a new area of study as they become central in children’s lives (Holloway and Green 2016; Marsh 2017). In short, this new context points toward a need for new models or frames that enable us to conceptualize this new space and the boundaries of what is and what is not context, home, private, public, secure, insecure, intimate, etc. when digital devices are “reworking, mediating, mobilizing, materializing and intensifying social and other relations” (Ruppert, Law and Savage 2013: 3). Concepts of context and home influenced by Bronfenbrenner and sociocultural approaches assume boundaries that can disappear, making it especially challenging to locate social and cultural practices. Research in Children’s Geographies broke the monopoly of adults in the organization of home and situated the experience of children at the centre of research. However, these referents still face unanswered questions. There is still the challenge of deciding what data will help understand the diverse interactions between people, places and objects when researching children and digital interactions. Also, discussions about digitalization have not fully taken into account social and functional diversity. When seen from the perspective of children’s home experiences, these issues take distinctive forms that deserve to be documented and acknowledged in order to have a more complex understanding of digital contemporaneity.

A conceptual horizon to understand young children’s digital practices and experiences in contemporary homes The three theoretical perspectives that we bring together in this chapter, combined in novel ways, provide a new horizon to understand young children’s experiences in contemporary homes. Each approach contributes to the understanding of home as a sociocultural construct: 1

2

116

Network System Theories situate home as the first nucleus of influence in a child’s life and stresses the relationships and the interactions that are developed in the home context within a larger network of interconnections and influences. In Sociocultural Theories, home is defined as the first space of socialization and enculturation of children through sociocultural participation, and so home is seen as a structured scenario mediated by adult strategies and values.

Reconceptualizing digital childhood’s home

3

Children’s Geographies introduces the idea of childhood as a space of experience and so it sees home as a space that children can appropriate on their own. This approach also stresses the importance of micro/intimate geographies (Valentine 2008; Ansell 2009) to understand children’s experiences.

This ensemble outlines the coordinates of a conceptual re-configuration of the “home” when we turn to the changes precipitated by digital technologies. For example, some time ago Livingstone (2002) argued that media technologies are reconfiguring the physical and social space of children’s bedrooms, and that this has an impact on the organization of the overall house. In this context, Sociocultural Theories would emphasize the importance of research about parental communication around children’s electronic media use in relation to child development, and parental beliefs about technology that shape children’s uses of technology: what devices are brought to the home, what discourses are present around technology, what rules of use are put forward, etc. However, increasingly interconnected, online digital experiences put the focus on children’s digital culture and Children’s Geographies emphasize children’s perspectives, familial connections and practices beyond the domestic: “By focusing only on relationships in the domestic, we miss out on the complex web of intimate relationships that span different spaces and scales” (Valentine 2008: 2105). In addition, as advanced, research on children and the digital needs to focus on diversity and exclusion, and define ways for understanding the digital experience, understandings and sensibilities of childhoods that go beyond culturally hegemonic imaginaries of the “normal child”. In particular, we think it is important to take into account research that focuses on, at least, three types of less explored childhood realities: (1) diversity in family structures and how they influence children’s uses of technology and understandings of digital culture; (2) children’s digital practices in contexts of exclusion and in underprivileged communities (ethnic minority groups); and (3) functionally diverse childhoods and digital experiences.

Emphasizing the diversity of family forms Expanding the concept of family in research on childhood and digital culture requires moving research beyond the “normal child” and beyond cultural homogenization. Contemporary society and globalization have brought new ways of “doing” family that are supported by different homes, sometimes over large geographical distances (Valentine 2008: 2104). This is the case for transnational families in migration and diaspora contexts, families in which intimacy and contact is sustained despite physical distance. New and non-conventional family forms (Golombok 2015) such as single-parent by choice and homo-parental families also invite us to revisit notions of family experience. The pluralization of family forms, as well as migration and diaspora, require us to move beyond the idea of the family as place-bound, assuming Rapport and Overing’s (2000) definition of home as a space of identity and consciousness but not necessarily associated with a particular or unique physical house. It also points to new emerging issues, such as the forms of social relationships that might substitute or extend affective structures, through friendship or community involvement. It also highlights the need to map the webs of intercommunication, power, emotions and intimacy within which relationships are embedded and how these influence children’s uses, practices and understanding of technology. There is an emerging body of research that looks at the role of media artefacts in migrant families as an enabler of communication across borders. Lam and Warriner (2012) gather some of these studies in a review on transnationalism and literacy in contexts of migration and show that the new and changing communication media (e.g. the Internet, social media) are key tools 117

M. Morgade, C. Aliagas and D. Poveda

that allow for social interactions among members of transnational families and, thus, maintaining family ties and identity across borders. Moreover, broadcast media such as transnational television or digital newspapers have been found to be a significant part of the media experiences of migrant families; adults use them to be informed and also as a way to nurture their child’s bonds with their heritage languages, cultures and countries. These practices, through digital communication and more traditional broadcast media, contribute to the construction of a transnational social field where adults and children both take on mediation roles: “children broker or help facilitate adults’ use of digital technologies, whereas adults tend to influence children’s exposure to multiple sources of news and broadcast media” (Lam and Warriner 2012: 206).

Emphasizing research in contexts of social exclusion and social inequalities Research into the digital in contexts of social exclusion is needed to understand the complexity and diversity of digital cultures that are crystallizing across childhood realities. Notions of access to technology, social participation and marginalization are relevant for understanding the dynamics of exclusion/inclusion in the digital world. In many cases, social exclusion is an issue closely connected to issues of social inequality and poverty. In this regard, children at risk of social exclusion need to be much more present in the children and technology research agenda. For example, we need more research on particular experiences, such as refugee children or children in residential care settings. More importantly, this research should avoid an adult-centric approach in the understanding of these issues. To do this, it is crucial, as Jones (2000) argues, to study children in their social worlds and not just as members of an idealized family within a sociocultural system. For example, Suwannamai (2017) conducted an ethnographic study of three 6–9-year-old Karenni refugee children recently arrived in Phoenix, Arizona. These children engaged regularly in about three hours a day of after-school video-gaming as a way to expand the scope of their socialization with their neighbours. This study sought to understand how and to what extent home-based video gameplay can foster learning and literacy development. The findings, based on detailed analysis of children’s practices and experience, indicate that digital technologies are new learning sites, both social and linguistic, and this provides a new dimension for understanding access. The study also shows that multimodality and mode-switching are integral to language and literacy socialization in a digital era that challenges us to rethink notions of social inclusion/exclusion.

Emphasizing research of functionally diverse childhoods Researching functionally diverse children (i.e. deaf children, those with physical or cognitive impairments or mental issues, and migrant children) is another unresolved matter not just in the studies on children’s digital culture but more generally in Childhood Studies and the field of Digital Literacies. Functionally diverse adults and children are mostly invisible in the current research agenda around young children and digital technologies. This is so, for example, even though communication technologies have played an important role in Deaf families for decades (Maxwell 1985) and there is current discussion about the role the Internet of Things in the lives and homes of people with physical or cognitive disabilities (Domingo 2012). More importantly, from our perspective, this incorporation into the current research agenda requires an approach to research and design that is inclusive and participatory (Alper, Hourcade and Gilutz 2012) and is sensitive to the creative adaptations that (neurological, motor or sensorially) functionally diverse children and families develop around digital technologies. An excellent 118

Reconceptualizing digital childhood’s home

recent example of this approach is provided by Alper (2018) who builds an inclusive sensory ethnographic perspective (cf. Pink 2015) to examine engagement with digital technologies at home by children diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum. She describes the careful adaptations created in the home, in relation to spaces, artefacts, routines and norms, to accommodate the sensorial and perceptual needs of children with autism, and how children and families develop “active strategies for sensory fitting at the home” (Alper 2018: 12) in ways that disrupt conventional home arrangements or run counter to recommendations made for neuro-typically developing children.

Conclusions In this chapter we put forward a conceptual framework to think about the place of the “home” in research on young children’s engagement with digital technologies and their emerging digital literacies. We need a dynamic framework able to capture evanescence and change in family life. From our perspective, this framework provides tools for critical reflection in one of the key contexts through which young children come into contact with digital technologies and through which children’s digital practices are shaped. We also suggest that rethinking domestic and intimate spaces from the interdisciplinary and holistic perspective we develop in the chapter highlights particular areas in the study of the digital literacies and practices of young children that have been relatively neglected within the recent (but now growing) body of research in this area: diversity of family forms, contexts of social exclusion and functionally diverse childhoods. Rethinking homes from the perspectives we outline in this chapter (and others that may be incorporated into the dialogue) also involves methodological challenges and innovations – including some of the methodological alternatives discussed in Chapter 3 of this Handbook, as well as addressing some of the ethical questions raised in Chapter 4. We hope that this chapter will also serve as a resource for dialogue with other themes developed in this Handbook, including how homes are situated within communities or in relation to schools and other informal learning settings. It might also provide an additional reading for studies that focus on particular mediations (e.g. parental or sibling) or child practices (e.g. play, reading) that take place within children’s homes and domestic spaces. We should not forget to pay attention to objects in the “smart house” (e.g. automatic connected lights, domestic robots) and to new software-enabled toys and touch-responsive games that are increasingly commercially available, as these are influencing the ways children interact, play and learn. Finally, to build our conceptual framework we brought into dialogue aspects of three relevant theoretical traditions. This opens a space for alternative and emergent theoretical approaches to be added to the conversation and interrelate in alternative ways. As an example, ActorNetwork-Theory (ANT) (Law 2004; Latour 2005) would be a strong candidate for future exploration since it has been used in studies of Digital homes (Tang and Venables 2000) or Smart Cities (Callon 1986). In ANT, a house becomes another node of the macro social network, both receiving and producing information. In this approach, home is seen as a network between humans and actants, i.e. objects with the capacity of interacting with users, cooperating among them and generating new forms of sociability among things and human beings. From this perspective, technologies are fluid and malleable, and are shaped by its users. Thus, technologies are not fixed entities, formed completely and fully defined by their creators and introduced in the market to be massively adopted in the same way by all users (Kullman 2013). The examples discussed in this chapter show precisely a diversity of homes, in which participants – adults, children and technology – in their everyday life generate non-determined networks in which experimentation and a range of uses produced by actors set up digital practices that 119

M. Morgade, C. Aliagas and D. Poveda

flow in wide networks. An ANT approach would connect nicely with the three theoretical approaches around the notion of home that we have discussed in this chapter in connection to digital childhoods. However, space constraints and the complexity of the argument developed so far discouraged us from introducing additional theoretical frameworks. Yet, the chapter can also be seen as an invitation to do this in future work.

References Aliagas, C., and Margallo, A. M. (2017). Children’s responses to the interactivity of storybook apps in family shared reading events involving the iPad. Literacy, 21: 44–52. Allan, G., and Crow, G. (eds.) (1989). Home and Family: Creating the Domestic Sphere. London: Palgrave Macmillan Springer. Alper, M. (2018). Inclusive sensory ethnography: studying new media and neurodiversity in everyday life. New Media & Society, 20(10): 3560–3579. Alper, M., Hourcade, J., and Gilutz, S. (2012, June). Interactive technologies for children with special needs. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 363–366. Ansell, N. (2009). Childhood and the politics of scale: descaling children’s geographies? Progress in Human Geography, 33(2): 190–209. Blunt, A. (2005). Cultural geographies of home. Progress in Human Geography, 29: 505–515. Blunt, A., and Dowling, R. (2006). Home. London: Routledge. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bronfenbrenner, U. (1986). Ecology of the family as a context for human development: research perspectives. Developmental Psychology, 22(6): 723–742. Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Callon, M. (1986). The sociology of an actor-network: the case of the electric vehicle. In: M. Callon, R. Arie and J. Law (eds.), Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology (pp. 19–34). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Carrington, V. (2001). Emergent home literacies: a challenge for educators. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 24(2): 88–100. Chaudron, S. (2015). Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology: A qualitative exploratory study across seven countries. Joint Research Centre, European Commission. Retrieved May 10, 2016 from http://publications. jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC93239 Christensen, P., and James, A. (eds.) (2000). Research with Children: Perspectives and Practices. London: Routledge. Church, K., Weight, J., Berry, M., and MacDonald, H. (2010). At home with media technology. Home Cultures, 7(3): 263–286. Corsaro, W. (1997). The Sociology of Childhood. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. Domingo, M. C. (2012). An overview of the internet of things for people with disabilities. Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 35: 584–596. Dovey, K. (1978). Home: an ordering principle in space. Landscape, 22(2): 27–30. Eliade, M. (1959). The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (Vol. 144). New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Ennew, J. (2003). Difficult circumstances: some reflections on ‘street children’ in Africa. Children, Youth and Environments, 13(1): 128–146. Ennew, J., and Swart-Kruger, J. (2003). Introduction: homes, places and spaces in the construction of street children and street youth. Children, Youth and Environments, 13(1): 81–104. Gifre, M., and Esteban, M. (2012). Consideraciones educativas de la perspectiva ecológica de Urie Bronfenbrenner. Contextos Educativos, 15: 79–92. Gillen, J. (2014). Digital Literacies. London: Routledge. Golombok, S. (2015). Modern Families: Parents and Children in New Family Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harden, J. (2000). There’s no place like home: the public/private distinction in children’s theorizing of risk and safety. Childhood, 7(1): 43–59. Hareven, T. K. (1991). Synchronizing individual time, family time, and historical time. In: J. Bender and D. Wellbery (eds.), Chronotypes: The Construction of Time (pp. 167–182). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. 120

Reconceptualizing digital childhood’s home

Holloway, D., and Green, L. (2016). The Internet of Toys. Communication Research and Practice, 2(4): 506–519. Holloway, S., and Valentine, G. (eds.) (2000a). Children’s Geographies: Living, Playing, Learning. London: Routledge. Holloway, S., and Valentine, G. (2000b). Spatiality and the new social studies of childhood. Sociology, 34(4): 763–783. James, A. (2013). Socialising Children. London: Palgrave Macmillan. James, A., and James, A. (2012). Key Concepts in Childhood Studies. 2nd ed. London: Sage. Jones, O. (2000). Melting geography: purity, disorder childhood and space. In: S. Holloway and G. Valentine (eds.), Children’s Geographies: Living, Playing, Learning (pp. 28–47). London: Routledge. Kullman, K. (2013). Geographies of experiment/experimental geographies: a rough guide. Geography Compass, 7(12): 879–894. Lahikainen, A. R., Mälkiä, T., and Repo, K. (eds.) (2017). Media, Family Interaction and the Digitalization of Childhood. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing. Lam, E., and Warriner, D. (2012). Transnationalism and literacy: investigating the mobility of people, languages, texts, and practices in contexts of migration. Reading Research Quarterly, 47(2): 191–215. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Law, J. (2004). After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge. Leonard, M. (2007). Trapped in space? Children’s accounts of risky environments. Children and Society, 21: 432–445. Leyra, B. (2012). Niñas trabajadoras en Ciudad de México: Aproximaciones y reintepretaciones conceptuales. Alternativas, 19: 9–32. Livingstone, S. (2002). Young People and New Media: Childhood and the Changing Media Environment. London: Sage. Marsh, J. (2004). The techno-literacy practices of young children. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 2(1): 51–66. Marsh, J. (2017). The Internet of Toys: a posthuman and multimodal analysis of connected play. Teachers College Record, 119(15): 1–32. Mascheroni, G., and Holloway, D. (2017). The Internet of Toys: A report on media and social discourses around young children and IoToys. DigiLitEY/Cost Action IS1410 Report. Retrieved April 1, 2019 from: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IoToys-June-2017-reduced.pdf Maxwell, M. (1985). Some functions and uses of literacy in the deaf community. Language in Society, 14(2): 205–221. McRobbie, A., and Garber, J. (1976). Girls and subcultures. In: S. Hall and J. Jefferson (eds.), Resistance through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain (pp. 209–229). London: Unwin Hyman/Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. Neal, J., and Neal, Z. (2013). Nested or networked? Future directions for ecological systems theory. Social Development, 22(4): 722–737. Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (eds.) (2015). The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies. London: Routledge. Pink, S. (2015). Doing Sensory Ethnography. London: Sage. Potter, J., and McDougall, J. (2017). Digital Media, Culture and Education: Theorising Third Space Literacies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Poveda, D., Morgade, M., and González-Patiño, J. (2012). Children at home in Madrid. ETNIA-E: Cuadernos de Investigación Etnográfica sobre Infancia, Adolescencia y Educación del IMA/FMEE, 4: 1–15. Rainwater, L. (1966). Fear and the house-as-haven in the lower class. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 32(1): 23–31. Rapport, N., and Overing, J. (2000). Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts. London: Routledge. Rasmussen, K. (2004). Places for children–children’s places. Childhood, 11(2): 155–173. Rogoff, B., Mejía-Arauz, R., and Correa-Chávez, M. (2015). A cultural paradigm: learning by observing and pitching in. Advances in Child Development and Behavior, 49: 1–22. Rosa, E., and Tudge, J. (2013). Urie Bronfenbrenner’s theory of human development: its evolution from ecology to bioecology. Journal of Family Theory and Review, 5(4): 243–258. Ruppert, E., Law, J., and Savage, M. (2013). Reassembling social science methods: the challenge of digital devices. Theory Culture and Society, 30(4): 22–46. Smart, C., Neale, B., and Wade, A. (2001). The Changing Experience of Childhood. Cambridge: Polity. 121

M. Morgade, C. Aliagas and D. Poveda

Seamon, D. (2014). Lived emplacement and the locality of being: a return to humanistic geography? In: S. Aitken and G. Valentine (eds.), Approaches to Human Geography: Philosophies, Theories, Peoples and Practices. 2nd ed. (pp. 35–48). London: Sage. Smart, C., Neale, B., and Wade, A. (2001). The Changing Experience of Childhood. Cambridge: Polity. Solberg, A. (2005). Negotiating childhood: changing constructions of age for Norwegian children. In: A. James and A. Prout (eds.), Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood, 2nd ed. (pp. 123–140). London: Falmer Press/Taylor and Francis. Suwannamai, C. (2017). “You not die yet”: Karenni refugee children’s language socialization in a video gaming community. Linguistics and Education, 42: 1–9. Tang, P., and Venables, T. (2000). Smart homes and telecare for independent living. Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, 6(1): 8–14. Tudge, J. (2008). The Everyday Lives of Young Children: Culture, Class, and Child Rearing in Diverse Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tudge, J., and Hogan, D. (2005). An ecological approach to observations of children’s everyday lives. In: S. Greene and D. Hogan (eds.), Researching Children’s Experience: Approaches and Methods (pp. 102–121). London: Sage. Tudge, J. (2008). The Everyday Lives of Young Children: Culture, Class, and Child Rearing in Diverse Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Valentine, G. (2001). Social Geographies: Society and Space. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Valentine, G. (2008). The ties that bind: towards geographies of intimacy. Geography Compass, 2(6): 2098–2110. Veness, A. (1993). Neither homed nor homeless: contested definitions and the personal worlds of the poor. Political Geography, 12(4): 319–340. Wardhaugh, J. (1999). The unaccommodated woman: home, homelessness and identity. The Sociological Review, 47(1): 91–109.

122

8 Older siblings as mediators of infants’ and toddlers’ (digital) media use Andra Siibak and Elyna Nevski

Introduction Many toddlers and infants (0–3 year olds) have for some time been growing up in media-rich households (Livingstone 2002), and are increasingly surrounded by a wide range of analogue and digital media which provide them with daily opportunities to engage with diverse media. Several studies (Holloway and Green 2008; Holloway, Green and Livingstone 2013; Nikken and Schols 2015; Nevski and Siibak 2016a, b) have revealed that the habits of parents and other family members, especially siblings, have a considerable role to play in forming young children’s media diet. In short, as argued by Stephen, McPake, Plowman and Berch-Heyman (2008), “the family habitus (practices and culture) has an impact on the young child’s engagement with media technologies” (p. 24). In this context, as defined by Archer et al. (2012), the concept of ‘family habitus’ (see also Bourdieu 1990) “helps to encompass a broad spectrum of family resources, practices, values, cultural discourses and ‘identifications’” (p. 886) and helps us to understand the ways in which families operate. Thus, in this chapter, we also proceed from the assumption that, through the nature of their social relationships with their younger sisters and brothers, older siblings play a distinct role in guiding younger children’s media consumption and use of digital technologies within a broader habitus of practices. Many scholars (cf. Kumpulainen and Gillen 2017, and Chapter 6 this volume) have focused on studying parents’ views, experiences and mediation practices in the context of toddlers’ and infants’ digital device use and general media consumption. Although researchers (e.g. Holloway and Green 2008; Holloway, Green and Livingstone 2013) agree that siblings play a significant role in forming and mediating younger brothers’ or sisters’ media diet, so far relatively little attention has been devoted to siblings and their impact on one another’s media use. Based on current research knowledge, the aim of this chapter is to provide insight into daily media patterns of 0–3 year olds, and to explore the role of (older) siblings in influencing, guiding and mediating infants’ and toddlers’ (digital) media use. First, we present a short overview of the ecological system theory of Bronfenbrenner (1979) and techo-microsystem theory of Johnson and Puplampu (2008) which have often been used as a theoretical basis when studying how children’s development is affected by their social relationships and the world around them, but equally have been critiqued in recent work. We then 123

Andra Siibak and Elyna Nevski

move on to introduce the findings of recent empirical studies on infants’ and toddlers’ media use, paying special attention to the findings that differentiate between media use in households with and without siblings. We then focus on introducing the different roles (older) siblings can assume when mediating younger children’s media use. We draw on recent empirical literature on the topic and present additional illustrating details from the findings of our own ethnographic case study (Nevski and Siibak 2016b) about the roles played by 4-year-old Lily when guiding and mediating the media use of her 2-year-old sister, Mia. The chapter ends with some concluding thoughts and suggestions for future research.

Media ecology framework Kabali et al. (2015) have stressed the importance of studying children’s engagement with technology in natural settings, more specifically, in home environments, so as to gain a better understanding of children’s experiences at a young age. Several scholars (Lauricella, Wartella and Rideout 2015; O’Neill 2015) have suggested that ecological system theories, for example by Bronfenbrenner (1979) or the techo-microsystem theory of Johnson and Puplampu (2008) provide a valuable theoretical basis when studying how children’s development is affected by their social relationships and the world around them, as these ecological approaches highlight the multi-dimensional nature of contextual influences and the role of others in children’s development. At the same time, ecological models have also been critiqued for being too static to illustrate the complexity and dynamism of multiple processes (Sefton-Green et al. 2016). The underlying proposition of the ecological framework suggests that “in order to understand human development one must consider the actual environments in which humans live and grow” (O’Neill 2015: 6). According to Bronfenbrenner (1979), a child’s development is shaped by the varied systems of the child’s environment and by the interrelationships between the systems. Bronfenbrenner divided the context of child development into five nested environmental systems (micro-, meso-, exo-, macro- and chronosystem), each of which contains the next smallest. In the context of this chapter, we focus on what Bronfenbrenner referred to as the microsystem, i.e. the immediate environment the child lives in, which includes the reciprocal interactions between the child and any immediate relationships or extended communities they interact with (e.g. parents, siblings, caregivers, close relatives, day-care, pre-school, peers). At the same time, these environments should not be seen as “entities, but rather reflect processes of influence” (McHale, Dotterer and Kim 2009: 5) in which children are viewed as active participants in forming their own experiences and development. Johnson and Puplampu (2008) proposed an extension to Bronfenbrenner’s theory by adding an ecological techno-subsystem, a dimension of the microsystem that “includes child interaction with both people and artefacts of communication, information, and recreation technologies in immediate or direct environments” (p. 178). In this framing, the techno-subsystem also mediates bidirectional interaction between the child and the microsystem. Learning and social experiences at home are complementary (Johnson 2010) and important others in the child’s life, e.g. parents, siblings, peers, who can bring about changes in a child’s behaviour, ways of thinking, and formation of habits. Research (Hesketh, Hinkley and Campbel 2012; Anderson and Hanson 2013; Chaudron 2015; Harrison and McTavish 2016; Archer 2017) has also shown that siblings play distinct roles in guiding young children’s media use. For example, in an ethnographic case study about the media use and mediation practices of 4-year-old Lily and her 2-year-old sister Mia, the framework proposed by Kalmus (2013) proved to be useful when exploring the different roles that the older sister played when mediating the younger one’s media use. We were able to differentiate 124

Older siblings as mediators

between the following roles the older sister engaged in: (1) a gatekeeper (i.e. Lily selected and decided what content her younger sister accessed, what activities Mia engaged in and what activities, platforms and topics were restricted); (2) a guide (i.e. helping the younger one to make sense of her media experience); and (3) a window (i.e. helping to extend her younger sister’s vision and scope of the opportunities media and new technologies offer) (Nevski and Siibak 2016a). In the following sections we present an overview of the dominant trends in research on 0–3 year olds’ media use, with a focus on the roles of siblings in terms of gatekeepers, guides and windows when mediating their younger brothers’ or sisters’ media use.

Review of research on infants’ and toddlers’ media use Today’s young children live in media-rich homes (Marsh et al. 2017) where both traditional and new media are integrated in their daily routines (Kucirkova 2011). Sefton-Green et al. (2016) argue that young children’s access to and use of digital technologies “is significantly altering the time spent by children by themselves and how they now grow up in sets of physical and virtual relationships” (p. 7). However, regardless of the fact that many young children, especially in the Global North, are spending more time using digital media than ever before (Holloway, Green and Livingstone 2013), the findings of a pan-European study by Chaudron (2015) indicate that this does not necessarily mean that digital devices are readily available to infants and toddlers. Furthermore, it is important to note that “issues of difference, diversity, and equity need to be addressed when reviewing the technological landscape of contemporary childhoods”, as a marked “digital divide” remains an issue (Marsh et al. 2017: 4). In many homes across the globe, children have access to a TV set, which is why television still reigns supreme in the screen media use of infants and toddlers. For example, findings of a recent Ofcom (2017) study in the UK suggest that live viewing on a TV set makes up the largest proportion of media time for 3–4 year olds in the UK, among whom 96 percent watch TV for around 15 hours a week. At the same time, studies reveal that the nature of TV viewing is undergoing evident changes. For example, in 2013 toddlers in the United States spent one third of their TV-viewing time watching programmes that had been recorded on DVR, downloaded or streamed, or were accessed on demand (Rideout 2013: 10). In 2017, just four years later, a considerable number of families were also subscribing to streaming video services e.g. Netflix and Hulu, or paid for cable TV (Rideout 2017: 5), leading to a somewhat different media diet for children. The latter change is also one of the main reasons why scholars find it increasingly difficult to measure time usage in relation to a single device (Marsh et al. 2017). Furthermore, there are significant cultural differences regarding the time infants and toddlers spend watching television, the types of programmes they watch as well as parental control over young children’s viewing habits (Ruangdaraganon et al. 2009). For example, three waves of nationally representative surveys (from 2011, 2013 and 2017) carried out in the US suggest that there is a considerable difference between TV consumption in the homes of children from lower- as compared to higher-income families, and in the homes of lower- vs. higher-educated parents (Rideout 2017: 18). Researchers have acknowledged similar trends in Europe, suggesting that higher-education/higher-income parents are more likely to promote young children’s offline activities and less likely to limit their screen time (Livingstone et al. 2015). At the same time, researchers have investigated the effects of ‘background television’ on infants and toddlers, although scholars are yet to define the common characteristics of this concept (Nathanson et al. 2013). Some scholars (Anderson and Evans 2001) differentiate between background television, i.e. adult-directed content, and foreground television, i.e. child-directed 125

Andra Siibak and Elyna Nevski

content; while others measure background television by asking how often the television is left on in the household without anyone watching it. At the same time, many parents of 0–2 year olds in Brown and Smolenaers’ (2016) study believed that their infants showed no interest in and paid no attention to TV and thus, saw no reason to limit their exposure to TV screens. This latter finding might help to explain why in comparison to 16–18-month-old infants, 6–12-month-old infants have been found to be exposed to higher levels of adult-directed tele­ vision (Barr et al. 2010). Findings of a nationally representative survey in the US suggest that 8–24 month olds are exposed to an average 5.5 hours of background TV per day, and thus spend a significant proportion of their waking hours in the presence of background TV (Lapierre, Piotrowski and Linebarger 2012), which is claimed to have a negative influence on infants and toddlers for its disrupting nature (Rideout, Hamel and Kaiser 2006). Still, it is important to note that although the exposure and impact of children’s television has been studied for more than 70 years, research findings to date have largely supported the claims made by Schramm, Lyle and Parker (1961: 1) who concluded that for some children, under some conditions, some television is harmful. For other children under the same conditions, or for the same children under other conditions, it may be beneficial. For most children, under most conditions, most television is probably neither particularly harmful nor particularly beneficial. Although, TV is currently still the most frequently used technology medium for infants and toddlers, in recent years more and more young children have gained access to a more diverse range of digital devices. For example, a nationally representative survey in the US found that the average time spent with mobile devices has tripled in the 0–8 age group, growing from five minutes a day in 2011 to 48 minutes a day in 2017 (Rideout 2017: 17). According to Ofcom (2017), 53 per cent of 3–4 year olds in the UK go online for nearly eight hours in a week. Furthermore, more and more infants and toddlers use their personal digital devices to go online, the most popular of these devices being a tablet, which has grown annually in usage to 71 per cent of 3–4 year olds in the UK (Ofcom 2017). Recent empirical studies (Roy and Paradis 2015; Nevski and Siibak 2016a) indicate that child age, parent attitudes and parent screen time “play a dynamic and complex role in children’s screen time with these technologies” (Lauricella, Wartella and Rideout 2015: 15). For instance, parents who believe it is important for their toddlers to be familiar with technology are more likely to allow their child to use their smart phones (Roy and Paradis 2015), and 0–2 year olds with parents who have more positive attitudes toward smartphones and tablets spend more time with smart devices (Lauricella, Wartella and Rideout 2015). Research also suggest that parents provide toddlers with smart devices mainly in the hope of creating additional educational opportunities for their children (Baek, Lee and Kim 2013; Nevski and Siibak 2016b), although young children mainly use digital devices for watching TV content, films and videos, playing games and listening to music (Chaudron et al. 2015; Ofcom 2017). Since the early 2000s, children’s digital books have emerged in forms such as iBooks (i.e. a free app and e-book reader that enables users to search for, download and read e-books on Apple iOS-powered devices), storybook apps or e-books (i.e. electronic versions of printed books). Although the popularity of digital books for infants and toddlers has been growing in the last few years, recent research from the UK suggests that in the majority of households print books are still preferred both for reading for pleasure and for educational reading (Kucirkova and Littleton 2016). Indeed, many parents in the UK believe that print books should be read to a child during their first year of life, while the best age to introduce their child to interactive e-books is 126

Older siblings as mediators

two-years and for simple e-books three years (ibid.). However, a recent study in the US (Kids and Family Reading Report 2017) suggests that 40 per cent of parents start reading to their child within three months of the child’s birth. At the same time, it is important to note that the prevalence of daily book sharing with infants in African-American families (Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics 2002), Latinos (Madding 2002) and Chinese parents (Li 2002) has been found to be considerably lower than among European American families.

The influence of siblings on the media use of toddlers and infants Siblings influence the media use of their younger brothers and sisters in many respects, and we now give a short overview of empirical findings about the impact of siblings on infants’ and toddlers’ technology use, screen time and media consumption. First, research suggests that older siblings have a significant impact on the age their younger sisters or brothers are introduced to technology. Recent findings by Archer (2017) indicate that younger siblings are introduced to TV, smartphone and tablet at a much younger age than the first child. Furthermore, parents of children with older siblings were significantly more likely to have a positive opinion regarding mobile technology use, while parents of children without older siblings were more likely to have a negative opinion about technology (Archer 2017), suggesting that parents’ previous experiences with children using digital devices tend to result in more positive attitudes toward technology in general. Studies about the impact of siblings on the screen time of young children, however, have produced conflicting results. Systematic literature reviews about the screen time use of children aged under three (Hinkley et al. 2010; Duch et al. 2013) suggest that the number of children in the home is not associated with screen time; whereas some earlier studies (Zimmermann, Christakis and Meltzoff 2007) suggest that compared to children with no siblings, children with two or more siblings actually watch less screen media in all content types. Here, however, it is important to note that the latter finding relies on a single empirical study which dates back more than a decade, during which researchers’ views about measuring screen time have undergone significant changes. Empirical findings have also produced conflicting accounts about the impact of siblings on the media content consumed by young children. Some research (Barr et  al. 2010; Bagley, Salmon and Crawford 2006) indicates that in families with siblings, infants and toddlers have higher exposure to child-directed programming relative to overall television exposure, and play more with infant/toddler applications in comparison to families without siblings (Archer 2017). Other studies (e.g. Brown and Smolenaers 2016) suggest that having an infant in the family has sometimes resulted in increased screen time for the older child, leading also to more exposure to adult-directed television for the infant. However, Hesketh, Hinkley and Campbel (2012: 11) found that in families with siblings, parents may make use of strategies “to accommodate the needs of younger children, such as not allowing older children to view programs inappropriate for younger siblings or viewing in a separate room”. Similar findings have also been detected in the context of internet use (Nikken and de Haan 2015), i.e. parents experienced more mediation problems when older siblings in the family were interested in media that the parents found inappropriate for the younger child. Sibling constellation might therefore explain the findings of Van den Bulck and Van den Bergh (2000) who claimed that parental mediation of young children’s television viewing increased general conflict both between siblings as well as between the parents themselves. Zimmermann, Christakis and Meltzoff (2007) report that children with one sibling are more likely to watch non-educational content directed at children on television, than children 127

Andra Siibak and Elyna Nevski

without siblings. Similar findings have also been reported by Nabi and Krcmar (2016), who argue that in households with multiple children, parents are more likely to use media as “‘mere’ enjoyment, rather than for more nuanced reasons” (p. 301). According to Archer (2017) parents of young children with older siblings are more likely than parents of children without older siblings to provide their children with mobile technologies “to distract them in an attempt to avoid boredom” (p. 41), suggesting that parents in multiple-child households might tend to make use of technology as a babysitter. In the sections below we add to this body of findings by presenting the findings of empirical research on the different mediating roles older siblings can take while guiding their younger brothers’ or sisters’ media use, following the aforementioned categories of ‘gatekeeper’, ‘guide’ and ‘window’.

Older siblings as ‘gatekeepers’ of toddlers’ and infants’ media use Previous studies (Anderson and Hanson 2013; Chaudron 2015; Harrison and McTavish 2016) suggest that older siblings often control the media content and media choices available for younger ones. That is, they often take on the role of a gatekeeper (or filter), by selecting and deciding what content younger siblings access, what activities they take part in, and which activities, platforms and topics are restricted. The findings of our ethnographic case study of digital media use and mediation between 2-year-old Mia and her 4-year-old sister Lily (Nevski and Siibak 2016a) suggest that on most occasions the 4-year-old was responsible for selecting the media content that both sisters consumed. However, although at times the older sibling’s choices included child-directed programming, e.g. cartoons like Peppa Pig or Frozen, her preferred content was usually adult-directed (e.g. music videos by Katy Perry or Justin Bieber, and home videos), which, in Lily’s opinion, were unsuitable for her younger sister. On these occasions, linked to her identity as an older and more adult person, the 4-year-old assumed the role of gatekeeper by simply prohibiting the younger one from viewing Katy Perry music videos (e.g. ‘Last Friday Night’, ‘California Girls’, ‘Roar’, ‘This Is How We Do It’). Thus, our results coincide with the findings of Chaudron (2015), who argued that older siblings may sometimes be very pro-active in risk-prevention for their younger brothers and sisters. Lily justified her protective decisions by citing how her parents restricted certain media content, and explained to Mia that Katy Perry’s videos were ‘naughty’ and Mia might have bad dreams if she watched them (Nevski and Siibak 2016a). Although older siblings can dominate the use of devices, and thereby seek to prevent their younger brothers and sisters from participating in computer games or watching videos, younger siblings do not always passively comply (Harrison and McTavish 2016; Plowman 2014). Indeed, studies suggest that conflicts are likely to emerge between siblings who need to share a tablet or to take turns using one device about “who is able to hold the device, for how long, and for what purpose” (Beyens and Beullens 2016: 24). Our ethnographic case study (Nevski and Siibak 2016a) of Mia and Lily also indicated that when the older sister was holding the tablet and explained to the younger one that she had to wait for her turn, and instructed her on the screen usage, the younger one was more reluctant to wait for her turn. However, if Mia had no clear role in the co-use or did not get any guidance from Lily, she rarely waited longer than a few seconds before trying to grab the device. Such incidents occurred more frequently when the parents were not nearby. If the parents did not intervene, Lily used her physical strength to push Mia away, whereupon Mia often started to cry to bring the parents’ attention to the injustice that had occurred (Nevski and Siibak 2016a). Thus, our observations are in line with 128

Older siblings as mediators

the findings of Reich et al. (2013), who carried out interviews and observations with 4–12-yearold sibling pairs and their parents and reported that although siblings in their sample sometimes engaged in co-operative game play, quite often only one of the siblings was actively using the device while the other was cheering, commenting or asking questions about the usage, i.e. inviting the older sibling to take the role of a ‘guide’.

Older sister taking up the role of a ‘guide’ Oftentimes older siblings also help the younger ones to make sense of their media experience, and pay attention to what seems to be puzzling or difficult for the younger ones to cope with, i.e. older siblings adopt the role of a guide or interpreter. When taking the role of a guide, older siblings have been found to encourage and mediate younger siblings’ use of digital media, for example by showing them how to use the internet and access virtual worlds (Stevens, Satwicz and McCarthy 2008), or demonstrating how by pressing or scrolling icons they can download and use apps (Marsh et al. 2015). Taking the role of a guide is also often found to occur when siblings are co-using tablets or gaming apps (e.g. TocaBoca), when older siblings often demonstrate how to open apps or what to do with them (Nevski and Siibak 2016a; Marsh et al. 2015). Older siblings also take the role of a ‘guide’ when co-using traditional media, e.g. helping the younger one to turn the pages of a book or helping them with stickers (Nevski and Siibak 2016a). It is important to note that by doing all of the above, however, older siblings have an important impact on younger children’s content preferences (Teuwen, Grooff and Zaman 2012). Although older siblings may assume the role of guide, Gregory (2001) has argued that rather than underestimating the role of younger children in such contexts, the relationship should be viewed as reciprocal as younger children actually act as triggers for older siblings, enabling them to learn “through practising adult practices” (p. 310). Gregory’s studies of sibling mediation in the context of young children’s literacy practices have led her to suggest that there is synergy in siblings’ interactions. That is, there is “a unique reciprocity whereby siblings act as adjuvants in each other’s learning, i.e. older children ‘teach’ younger siblings and at the same time develop their own learning” (p. 309). We detected such reciprocity when observing 4-year-old Lily’s and 2-year-old Mia’s joint media experiences, which were often initiated by Mia inviting Lily to co-view their favourite book The Story of Anna and Elsa (Nevski and Siibak 2016a). During those co-viewing sessions, Lily sometimes imitated reading out loud by describing to Mia either what she was seeing on the pictures, or recalling the story from the cartoon film or from the reading sessions with her parents. Oftentimes the sisters’ joint book-reading sessions turned into joint mixed-media experiences, especially when some of the book’s pictures reminded the sisters about theme songs from Frozen. In these occasions, they searched for the songs on YouTube and played them on TV, often dancing and singing along. Lily frequently encouraged Mia to join in with her, and through their joint media experiences, Mia imitated Lily’s movements, speech and emotive expressions when dancing and singing Frozen clips. In this respect, while browsing through books or watching related video clips on YouTube, the sisters were simultaneously both audience and co-performers as they “produced hybridized texts which reflected a range of elements of their experience and seamlessly integrated media narratives into seminal acts of meaning-making” (Marsh 2004: 56). The above description also helps to illustrate the claims by Kumpulainen and Gillen (2017) who argue that a great deal of young children’s “digital activities interact and support their ‘offline’ interests as children use digital media as an enlargement of their activities” (p. 21). 129

Andra Siibak and Elyna Nevski

Older siblings taking a role of a ‘window’ Older siblings are often the ones who extend young children’s vision of the media world by introducing new media content and digital devices, or simply by broadening the scope of the younger one’s online opportunities. Previous research has found that older children are important role models for their younger siblings, help them to generate interest in different media content (Teuwen et al. 2012), and play a significant role in acquainting their younger brothers and sisters with new technology (Stephen et al. 2008; Vinter and Siibak 2012; Archer 2017). For example, our observations indicate that in the case of Lily and Mia, the older sister often introduced new kinds of media content, e.g. animated cartoons, characters, games and her own favourite YouTube videos to the younger one, and also introduced various opportunities offered by touch-screen technology (Nevski and Siibak 2016a). However, the media content older siblings introduce to toddlers and infants might not always be age-appropriate. The latter might become problematic as co-viewing of media content with a sibling is often more frequent than co-viewing with a parent (Davies and Gentile 2012; Nevski and Siibak 2016a). For example, Chaudron et al. (Chaudron 2015; and Chapter 9 this volume) found in their study in six EU countries and Russia about young children’s digital engagement, that young children sometimes may come across inappropriate content, e.g. images of naked women, due to their older siblings’ internet use. Other authors have also indicated that toddlers might be exposed to inappropriate content, for instance, in YouTube, following suggestions generated through the platform, based on their older siblings’ or parents’ viewing (Dias et al. 2016).

Conclusions Many of the present day infants and toddlers live in media-rich households (Livingstone 2002) communicating and interacting daily through both people (e.g. parents and siblings) and artefacts, e.g. digital devices, all of which enable them to coordinate their learning experience within the techno-subsystem and across the home environment (Johnson 2010: 35). Older siblings play an important role within the microsystem of the home by influencing, controlling and mediating younger children’s media habits and consumption, and thus oftentimes could be “regarded as a convenient source of help in the eyes of parents” (Vinter and Siibak 2012: 90). Our analysis suggests that older siblings mainly act in three mediating roles: (1) as gatekeepers of younger siblings’ media use by controlling the exposure, content and technologies the younger one is able to access and consume; (2) as guides when helping the younger ones to make sense of the media content and assisting when problems occur; and (3) as windows when introducing new opportunities and content. These mediating interactions between siblings, however, are bidirectional and complementary and should therefore be viewed as a synergy, “a unique reciprocity whereby siblings act as adjuvants in each other’s learning” (Gregory 2001: 309). Although sibling relations provide a unique and important context for the development of young children’s media diets, the number of studies that focus on sibling mediation of infants’ and toddlers’ media use is still scarce. In particular, qualitative studies are needed to explore further the synergy in the interactions between siblings in greater detail.

Acknowledgement Andra Siibak is grateful for the support of the personal research funding project PUT44 financed by the Estonian Research Council. 130

Older siblings as mediators

References Anderson, D. R., and Evans, M. K. (2001). Peril and potential of media for infants and toddlers. Zero to Three, 22(2): 10–16. Anderson, D. R., and Hanson, K. G. (2013). What researchers have learned about toddlers and television. Zero to Three, 33(4): 4–10. Archer, K. (2017). Infants, Toddlers and Mobile Technology: Examining Parental Choices and the Impact of Early Technology Introduction on Cognitive and Motor Development. PhD. Wilfrid Laurel University. Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3031&context=etd (accessed 10 August 2018). Archer, L., DeWitt, J., Osborne, J., Dillon, J., Willis, B., and Wong, B. (2012). Science aspirations, capital, and family habitus: how families shape children’s engagement and identification with science. American Educational Research Journal, 49(5), 881–908. doi: 10.3102/0002831211433290. Baek, Y.-M., Lee, J.-M., and Kim, K.-S. (2013). Smart phone use condition of infants and toddlers. International Journal of Smart Home, 7(6): 123–132. http://dx.doi.org/10.14257/ijsh.2013.7.6.12. Bagley, S., Salmon, J., and Crawford, D. (2006). Family structure and children’s television viewing and physical activity. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, 38(5): 910–918. doi: 10.1249/01. mss.0000218132.68268.f4. Barr, R., Danziger, C., Hilliard, M. E., Andolina, C., and Ruskis, J. (2010). Amount, content and context of infant media exposure: a parental questionnaire and diary analysis. International Journal of Early Years Education, 18(2): 107–122. Available at: doi: 10.1080/09669760.2010.494431. Beyens, I., and Beullens, K. (2016). Parent–child conflict about children’s tablet use: the role of parental mediation. New Media & Society, 19(12): 2075–2093. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444816655099. Bourdieu, P. (1990). Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Orig. pub. 1972.) Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979). The Ecology of Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brown, A., and Smolenaers, E. (2016). Parents’ interpretations of screen time recommendations for children younger than 2 years. Journal of Family Issues, 39(2): 406–429. doi: 10.1177/0192513X16646595. Chaudron, S. (2015). Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology: A Qualitative Exploratory Study across Seven Countries [pdf]. Luxembourg. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/jrc (accessed 12 July 2018). Chaudron, S., Beutel, M. E., Černikova, M., Donoso Navarette, V., Dreier, M., Fletcher-Watson, B., et al. (2015). Young children (0–8) and digital technology. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Available at: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC93239 (accessed 9 April 2019). Davies, J. J., and Gentile, D. A. (2012). Responses to children’s media use in families with and without siblings: a family development perspective. Family Relations, 61(3): 410–425. doiI:10.1111/ j.1741-3729.2012.00703.x. Dias, P. et al. (2016). The role of parents in the engagement of young children with digital technologies: exploring tensions between rights of access and protection, from ‘gatekeepers’ to ‘scaffolders’. Global Studies of Childhood, 6(4): 414–427. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043610616676024. Duch, H., Fisher, E., Ensari, I., and Harrington, A. (2013). Screen time use in children under 3 years old: a systematic review of correlates. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 10(1): 461–468. http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1479-5868-10-102. Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics (2002). America’s Children: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2002. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office. Available at: www.childstats.gov/pdf/ac2002/ac_02.pdf (accessed 9 April 2019). Gregory, E. (2001). Sisters and brothers as language and literacy teachers: synergy between siblings playing and working together. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 1(3): 301–322. https://doi. org/10.1177/14687984010013004. Harrison, E., and McTavish, M. (2016). ‘i’Babies: infants’ and toddlers’ emergent language and literacy in a digital culture of iDevices. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 18(2): 163–188. https://doi. org/10.1177/1468798416653175. Hesketh, K. D., Hinkley, T., and Campbel, K. J. (2012). Children’s physical activity and screen time: qualitative comparison of views of parents of infants and preschool children. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 9(1): 152. https://doi.org/10.1186/1479-5868-9-152. Hinkley, T., et al. (2010). Correlates of sedentary behaviours in preschool children: a review. International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity, 7(66). doi: 10.1186/1479-5868-7-66. Holloway, D., and Green, L. (2008). Room to view: family television use in the Australian context. Television & New Media, 9(1): 47–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/1527476407307230. 131

Andra Siibak and Elyna Nevski

Holloway, D., Green, L., and Livingstone, S. (2013). Zero to Eight: Young Children and Their Internet Use. London: LSE, EU Kids Online. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/52630/1/Zero_to_eight.pdf (accessed 2 December 2017). Johnson, G. M. (2010). Internet use and child development: validation of the ecological techno-subsystem. Educational Technology & Society, 13(1): 176–185. Johnson, G. M., and Puplampu, K. P. (2008). Internet use during childhood and the ecological technosubsystem. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology/La revue canadienne de l’apprentissage et de la technologie, 34(1). Available at: www.cjlt.ca/index.php/cjlt/article/viewArticle/172 (accessed 3 August 2018). Kabali, H. K., Irigoyen, M. M., Nunez-Davis, R., Budacki, J. G., Mohanty, S. H., Leister, K. P., and Bonner, R. L. Jr. (2015). Exposure and use of mobile media devices by young children. Pediatrics, 136(6): 1044–1050. doi: 10.1542/peds.2015-215 Kalmus, V. (2013). Making sense of the social mediation of children’s internet use: perspectives for interdisciplinary and cross-cultural research. In: C. W. Wijnen, S. Trültzsch, and C. Ortner (eds.), Medienwelten im Wandel: Kommunikationswissenschaftliche Positionen, Perspektiven und Konsequenzen. Festschrift für Ingrid Paus-Hasebrink (pp. 137–149). Wien: Springer. Kids & Family Reading Report. 6th edition. (2017). [online]. Available at: www.scholastic.com/reading­ report/files/Scholastic-KFRR-6ed-2017.pdf (accessed 12 August 2018). Kucirkova, N. (2011). Digitalised early years: where next? Psychologist, 24: 938–941. Kucirkova, N., and Littleton, K. (2016). The Digital Reading Habits of Children: A National Survey of Parents’ Perceptions of and Practices in Relation to Children’s Reading for Pleasure with Print and Digital Books. Book Trust. Available from: www.booktrust.org.uk/globalassets/resources/research/digital_reading_surveyfinal-report-8.2.16.pdf (accessed 12 August 2018). Kumpulainen, K., and Gillen, J. (2017). Young Children’s Digital Literacy Practices in the Home: A review of the literature. COST ACTION ISI1410 DigiLitEY. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/ uploads/2017/01/WG1LR_with-amends-JG.pdf (accessed 12 August 2018). Lapierre, M. A, Piotrowski, J. T., and Linebarger, D. L. (2012). Background television in the homes of US children. Pediatrics, 30(5): 839–846. Available at: 10.1542/peds.2011-2581. Lauricella, A. R., Wartella, E., and Rideout, V. J. (2015). Young children’s screen time: the complex role of parent and child factors. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 36: 11–17. doi: https://doi. org/10.1016/j.appdev.2014.12.001. Li, G. (2002). East is East, West is West? Home Literacy, Culture, and Schooling. New York: Peter Lang. Livingstone, S. (2002). Young People and New Media: Childhood and the Changing Media Environment. London: Sage Publications. Livingstone, S., et al. (2015). How Parents of Young Children Manage Digital Devices at Home: The Role of Income, Education and Parental Style. London: EU Kids Online, LSE. Available at: www.lse.ac.uk/ media@lse/research/EUKidsOnline/EUKidsIV/PDF/Parentalmediation.pdf (accessed 3 August 2018). Madding, C. C. (2002). Socialization practices of Latinos. In: A. E. Brice (ed.), The Hispanic Child: Speech, Language, Culture, and Education (pp. 68–84). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Marsh, J. (2004). The techno-literacy practices of young children. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 2(1): 51–66. Marsh, J., et  al. (2015). Exploring Play and Creativity in Pre-Schoolers’ Use of Apps: Technology and Play. Economic and Social Research Council. Available at: www.techandplay.org/tap-media-pack.pdf (accessed 7 December 2017). Marsh, J., et al. (2017). The Online and Offline Digital Literacy Practices of Young Children: A Review of the Literature. COST ACTION IS1410. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ WG4-LR-jan-2017.pdf (accessed 3 August 2018). McHale, S. M., Dotterer, A., and Kim, J.-Y. (2009). An ecological perspective on the media and youth development. American Behavioral Scientist, 52(8): 1186–1203. doi: 10.1177/0002764209331541. Nabi, R. L., and Krcmar, M. (2016). It takes two: the effect of child characteristics on U.S. parents’ motivations for allowing electronic media use. Journal of Children and Media, 10(3): 285–303. doi: 10.1080/17482798.2016.1162185. Nathanson, A. I., Sharp, M. L., Aladé, F., Rasmussen, E. E., and Christy, K. (2013). The relation between television exposure and theory of mind among preschoolers. Journal of Communication, 63(6): 1088–1108. https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom. 12062. Nevski, E., and Siibak, A. (2016a). Mediation practices of parents and older siblings in guiding toddlers’ touchscreen technology use: an ethnographic case study. Media Education: studi, ricerche, buone pratiche, 7(2): 320–340. doi: 10.14605/MED721609. 132

Older siblings as mediators

Nevski, E., and Siibak, A. (2016b). The role of parents and parental mediation on 0–3 year olds’ digital play with smart devices: Estonian parents’ attitudes and practices. Early Years, 36(3): 227–241. doi: http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/09575146.2016.1161601. Nikken, P., and de Haan, J. (2015). Guiding young children’s internet use at home: problems that parents experience in their parental mediation and the need for parenting support. Cyberpsychology: Journal of Psychosocial Research on Cyberspace, 9(1), article 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.5817/CP2015-1-3. Nikken, P., and Schols, M. (2015). How and why parents guide the media use of young children. Journal of Children and Family Studies, 24: 3423–3435. doi: 10.1007/s10826-015-0144-4. Ofcom (2017). Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report. Available at: https://www.ofcom. org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/108182/children-parents-media-use-attitudes-2017.pdf (accessed 5 August 2018). O’Neill, B. (2015). Ecological perspectives and children’s use of the internet: exploring micro to macro level. Estonian Journal of Education, 3(2): 32–53. doi: 10.12697/eha.2015.3.2.02b. Plowman, L. (2014). Researching young children’s everyday uses of technology in the family home. Interacting with Computers, 27(1): 36–46. doi: 10.1093/iwc/iwu031. Reich, S. M., Korobkova, K. A., Black, R. W., and Sumaroka, M. (2013). “Hey! Can you show me how to do this?” Digital games mediating family interactions. In A. Burke and J. Marsh (eds.), Children’s Virtual Play Worlds Culture, Learning and Participation (pp. 133–150). New York: Peter Lang Publishing. Available at: http://sites.uci.edu/disc/files/2016/10/Reich-et-al.-2013-Childrens-Virtual-PlayWorlds_Chapter-9.pdf (accessed 9 April 2019). Rideout, V. (2013). “Zero to eight: children’s media use in America 2013.” A Common Sense Media Research Study. Available at: www.commonsensemedia.org/research/zero-to-eight-childrens-mediause-in-america-2013 (accessed 9 April 2019). Rideout, V. (2017). The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense Media. Rideout, V., Hamel, E., and Kaiser Family Foundation (2006). The Media Family: Electronic Media in the Lives of Infants, Toddlers, Preschoolers and their Parents. Kaiser Family Foundation. Available at: https:// kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/7500.pdf (accessed 12 October 2017). Roy, R., and Paradis, G. (2015). Smartphone use in the daily interactions between parents and young children. Philadelphia: Society for Research in Child Development (poster). Available at: www.csustan.edu/sites/ default/files/groups/Child%20Development/srcd_poster_2015_-smartphones.pdf (accessed 9 April 2019). Ruangdaraganon, N., et al. (2009). Television viewing in Thai infants and toddlers: impacts to language development and parental perceptions. BMC Pediatrics, 9(34). https://doi.org/10.1186/146-2431-9-34. Schramm, W., Lyle, J., and Parker, E. B. (1961). Television in the Lives of Our Children. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Sefton-Green, J., et al. (2016). Establishing a Research Agenda for the Digital Literacy Practices of Young Children: A White Paper for COST Action IS1410. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/ DigiLitEYWP.pdf (accessed 6 July 2018). Stephen, C., McPake, J., Plowman, L., and Berch-Heyman, S. (2008). Learning from the children: exploring preschool children’s encounters with ICT at home. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 6(2): 99–117. doi: 10.1177/1476718X08088673. Stevens, R., Satwicz, T., and McCarthy, L. (2008). In-game, in-room, in-world: reconnecting video game play to the rest of kids’ lives. In: K. Salen (ed.), The Ecology of Games: Connecting Youth, Games, and Learning (pp. 41–66). doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262693646.041. Teuwen, J., Grooff, D. D., and Zaman, B. (2012). Flemish Preschoolers On-line: A Mixed-Method Approach to Explore Online Use, Preferences and the Role of Parents and Siblings. Available at: https://lirias.kuleuven. be/bitstream/123456789/350708/1/Flemish+Preschoolers+Online_English+version.pdf (accessed 12 October 2017). Van den Bulck, J., and Van den Bergh, B. (2000). The influence of perceived parental guidance patterns on children’s media use: gender differences and media displacement. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 44(3): 329–348. doi: 10.1207/s15506878jobem4403_1. Vinter, K., and Siibak, A. (2012). The role of parents in guiding pre-school children’s use of computers and the internet: analyzing perceptions of Estonian children and parents. In: J. Mikk, L. Piret, and M. Veisson (eds.), Lifelong Learning and Teacher Development (pp. 78–94). Oxford: Peter Lang. Zimmerman, F. J., Christakis, D. A., and Meltzoff, A. (2007). Television and DVD/video viewing in children younger than 2 years. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, 161(5): 473–479. doi: 10.001/ archpedi.161.5.473. 133

9 Safety issues in young children’s digital literacy practices at home Stéphane Chaudron, Rosanna Di Gioia and Monica Gemo

Introduction One only needs to witness a few interactions within modern western families to realize how much the experience of childhood has changed. The use of digital technologies often stands out, in terms of its multiple and diverse impacts on childhood and education, raising safety and security concerns. There have been noticeable increases in the internet participation rate of children and young people in all EU and western countries. Very young children aged below 8 years have shown particularly increased patterns of internet use (Ofcom 2017). Although a great deal is known about the digital engagement of teenagers in Europe, thanks to numerous studies and research networks such as EU Kids Online, there is a lack of knowledge about the status and development of young children’s digital skills (Livingstone et al. 2011; Ólafsson, Livingstone and Haddon 2014). Recent investigations on children aged between 0 and 8 and their use of new technologies drew out some tentative findings (Plowman et al. 2012; Holloway, Green and Livingstone 2013; Plowman and McPake 2013; Marsh et al. 2015). We now know a little more about how children engage, learn and play with diverse online activities using a range of internet-connected devices; but safety and security strategies have only been preliminarily explored for young children. In parallel, in 2013, an EU Kids Online report underlined elements that foster children and teenager’s safety and resilient behaviour: Self-efficacy played a crucial role in terms of being proactive, with more self-efficacious children more likely to try to fix the problem. (. . .) [T]here are some indications that [children] who were lower on the ladder of opportunities were less resilient, as they were less likely to talk to somebody when being a victim of online bullying, and they tended to go offline for a while after seeing disturbing sexual images. (d’Haenens, Vandoninck and Donoso 2013: 6) This work references the concept of “ladder of digital opportunities” (Livingstone and Helsper 2007) according to which the more children do online, the more skills they have or the more skills and/or self-confidence children have, the greater the range of online activities they undertake, the more they climb the “ladder of digital opportunities” (Livingstone et al. 2011: 33). 134

Safety issues

Digital literacy, therefore, seems crucial for mitigating risks and increasing opportunities while developing a large set of digital competences, not only safety and security ones. According to the Digital Framework for Citizens (DigComp), elaborated by the JRC (European Commission), to be digitally competent it is necessary to develop attitude, knowledge and skills in five competence areas: information and data literacy, communication and collaboration, digital content creation, problem solving and safety (Vuorikari et al. 2016). In addition to DigComp, the European Union has adopted several initiatives to address cyber skills development and in a Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council (JOIN 2017) states the following: There is a strong education dimension to cybersecurity. Effective cybersecurity relies heavily on the skills of the people concerned . . . teachers and pupils in primary and secondary education should be sensitized to cybercrime and cyber security when acquiring digital competences in schools. (Join (2017) 450 final: 10) The growing importance of developing cyber safety skills is also shown by the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) referencing digital literacy around risks, safeguards and rights in personal data processing, where Art. 57 explicitly cites “awareness raising tasks” by supervisory authorities addressed to citizens and children (GDPR 2016/679: 68). The regulation also emphasizes the importance of data protection and privacy, in particular for vulnerable groups such as children and youngsters. New provisions are introduced to strengthen protection safeguards through clear and explicit informed consent by the users (GDPR 2016/679: 7, 37–38), “privacy by design” and “privacy by default technical and organizational measures” aimed at minimizing personal data processing to only what is necessary (GDPR 2016/679: 48). Many questions remain unanswered about the safety and security of young children’s digital engagement. What might be the physical, mental, emotional and social consequences of internet/digital technology use by young children and their families? What are the safety and security measures needed to ensure smooth and healthy digital lives since early childhood? To provide some answers to these questions, the JRC (European Commission) initiated in 2014 a qualitative study “Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology”. This chapter presents the results of the analysis of the international dataset against three axes of research: (1) understanding in depth both young children’s digital engagements and digital literacy development in the household context, (2) mapping and understanding parental mediation strategies, and (3) identifying possible associated safety and security issues (risks) as well as possible positive opportunities offered by digital media and content. The chapter concludes with recommendations to diverse stakeholders, including parents, teachers, policy makers and the digital industry.

Methodology In line with previous research (Plowman and McPake 2013; Stephen, Stephenson and Adey 2013), a qualitative approach was chosen to facilitate young children’s involvement and to capture the multiple aspects of digital technology usage and habits in the family context. The study considered as digital technology any electronic device, portable or not, internet connected or not, with screen or not, that did not belong to the traditional media category such as TV and radio, i.e. mainly smartphones, tablets, laptops, PCs and game consoles. Traditional TV was not considered at first when the fieldwork started in 2014. Nonetheless, accounts about TV were 135

S. Chaudron, R. Di Gioia and M. Gemo

present in almost every interview, and increased in subsequent fieldwork when more and more households involved in the study were reported to be equipped with Smart TVs enhanced with digital capabilities. The research focus was on children aged 6 to 7 years as most children of this age can express themselves in articulated ways and can play a crucial role with regard to understanding their younger siblings’ digital behaviours. Data were gathered between September 2014 and March 2017 from 234 family interviews in home contexts, with 400 parents and 244 children (129 boys and 115 girls) aged between 6 and 8 years, in 21 countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom). Fifty-eight of those families, located in Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Malta, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and Russia, were recalled for a second interview, one year after their first interview between Autumn 2016 and Autumn 2017 (Chaudron, Di Gioia and Gemo 2018). The sampling included at least ten family semi-structured interviews per country. Each national sample was selected in order to show diversity in terms of children’s ages and gender, family composition and income. Analytical information was derived from these interviews structured in four parts, following a flexible observation protocol that covered a pre-determined set of topics that could be adapted by each research team to make them more relevant to specific contextual needs (e.g. country, culture, family context, etc.) and to enable the exploratory nature of the study. After a short ice-breaking discussion about each family’s typical online activity, parents and children were interviewed separately. One researcher interviewed the parents following the semi-structured interview protocol, while another researcher talked with children about their use of digital technology. To facilitate the child interviews, age-appropriate approaches were used, that is, the children were invited to: play their favourite games or illustrate them through drawing; play an image-based card game through which children showed their preferences about online and offline activities and gadgets; or ethnographic observations were made of their actual digital activity sessions (Irwin and Johnson 2005). Researchers and interviewed family members concluded the session together for final comments, and symbolic thank-you tokens were given to each family. An entire session lasted between one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half hours. All sessions were audio-recorded and pictures were taken, sometimes by the children themselves, if allowed by the family. The (partial) verbatim transcripts of the interviews complete with ethnographic notes taken by the researchers during the interviews and the observations constituted the basis of the data set. Moreover, each interview was contextualized and summarized in anonymized short narratives. The data set was analysed according to a hybrid approach based on thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke 2006) supported by theoretical sampling and coding techniques from grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1990, 1998). Thematic analysis was useful to summarize key features of a large body of data, condensing the extensive data sets to their essence. Similarities and differences across the data set could be highlighted, and used for cross-cultural comparison. This large-scale and multi-language study required strong coordination efforts to ensure coherence, common ground and understanding between teams at each stage of the study, from the definition of the methodology and protocols to the analysis of the very large data set. Although the analysis was conducted separately in each country, the coding of data was based on an analytic protocol jointly constructed by the consortium partners. Regular online and faceto-face meetings attended by members of each research team were key in this process, allowing team members to share and quickly overcome any issues encountered. In the final and crossanalysis stage, the research team could rely only on remote communication while face-to-face meeting would have allowed a quicker and easier convergence. 136

Safety issues

Young children’s digital engagement and digital literacy practices at home Across the sample, researchers discovered that the interviewed children had in general varied and balanced lives, integrating sports, outdoor play and creative activities, with digital activities only a part of their everyday practices. Nonetheless, most children were daily consumers of audio-visual media services via mainly (Smart) TVs, tablets, smartphones, video-game consoles and, to a lesser extent, laptops and PCs. Overall, the study identified four main categories of digital activities in which young children used digital technology to: (1) relax and entertain themselves; (2) get information and learn; (3) create and sustain their creativity; and (4) communicate, mainly with their family. All interviewed children reported that they used digital technologies mainly in leisure time, for relaxing and entertainment. They most commonly watched (online) videos or (on demand) TV programmes and played video-games. Children sometimes shared these activities with siblings and more rarely with adults, but the preference in our data was for individual use, unless the parents proposed family time such as shared film watching or video gaming. Rosie, [Maltese girl aged 6] started using the iPad when she was four years old. She learnt how to use it through observing her parents and on her own. (. . .) Rosie played games and watched YouTube videos on her tablet and took photos with it. (Maltese national report, p. 18) Although learning and getting information was very much present in children’s accounts and observations of their use of digital devices, few interviewed children linked them to clear education purposes. Children attending primary school sometimes used internet and digital technology for learning and studying, particularly for searching information for their homework. This usage increased if supported by school requests as researchers witnessed in Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, where the interviewed families reported the integration of digital technology in the school pedagogy: To a great extent, the way [Lilou, Dutch girl aged 6] uses digital media is influenced by school. For instance, she indicates herself that she enjoys using Ambrasoft, an online platform developed by an educational publisher that allows children to practice school assignments (e.g., arithmetic and reading) at home. Lilou also regularly downloads apps and watches YouTube clips in which schoolwork is explained. Sometimes when a friend comes over to play, they re-enact school at home and involve the tablet in their pretend play, for example by doing pretend arithmetic. (Dutch national report, p. 21) Some interviewed children used digital technology to create digital content, mainly drawings and paintings, pictures and videos and objects created in the virtual world, most of the time thanks to others (parents, siblings, friends) initially showing them how: Synnøve [Norwegian girl aged 7] likes using technology because she wants to be an engineer when she grows up. She made her own robot at a Scientist Factory, which is a recreational facility for children. . . . The girls [sisters aged 7 and 10] use their smartphones and tablets to make animations using a stop motion app. (Norwegian national report, p. 21) 137

S. Chaudron, R. Di Gioia and M. Gemo

Some children used digital technology as communication tools and, in most cases, their use formed part of their families’ communication schemes. Typically, children who lived with some family members abroad would know face-to-face remote communication tools such as Skype or Facetime, with a few of them capable of using them autonomously. Some of the children reported owning smartphones and already using instant chat apps, such as WhatsApp with their parents and close family. They very much liked this tool as they could exchange texts enabled by effective voice recognition, voice messages, emojis, pictures and videos. Others were allowed to use their parents’ Facebook account for the same purpose, which sometimes became a family account, under close mediation by the parents in most cases, but not always. For example, a Norwegian girl aged 10, the older sibling of an interviewed child, clearly expressed concerns about her privacy – “Mum, you didn’t ask me about this, and you don’t have permission. You cannot post these photos here” – while reacting to her mother’s intention to post on her personal social network account a picture of her child. In their report, the researchers contextualized this quote: The girls [sisters aged 7 and 10] explain that the photos cannot be posted on the Internet because they could end up somewhere else. Both the girls and parents independently mention a cousin who the girls had played Just Dance with. They said that the cousin played the game only dressed in her underwear, which the girls considered a bad idea. The girls agree that they need to wear proper clothes when they are online. (Norwegian national report, p. 21) In this particular case, the researchers also reported the older child’s protective attitude and knowledge were clearly influenced by school classes she had benefited from on the topic of internet safety. The image-based game of digital devices developed for this study (Chaudron et al. 2015) allowed children to group and rank digital devices following their preferences. Tablets seem to have been the preference for children aged under 8 years, probably because of screen size, larger than a smartphone, portability, and the ease of use of the touchscreen technology. Interviews and observations of older siblings saw a shift of preference among children aged 8 years and above in favour of smartphones that allow higher mobility, 24/7 availability, and autonomy of choice and use. All such features can be challenging for parents to manage. Although many of the younger interviewed children had not yet mastered reading and writing, they had developed their own strategies to search for content: spelling auto-completion, vocal recognition, and image recognition. Researcher: You love that, don’t you? To sing (. . .) and when you go to YouTube are you writing the song you want? Boy: Yes. But there is also a speaker (Siri) to go in. You say “ah” and you go to “ah”.. Researcher: And can you use this tool? And if it does not work, can you write your favourite song (. . .) Sofia. Can you write Sofia? Boy: Actually, you write “S” and automatically “Sofia” appears. Or some other times when I have my iPad I can see somewhere all the songs I have been listening to, and if I see “Sofia” I click on it. I do not have to write it again. (Spanish national report, p. 43) While generally benefiting from some initial support or troubleshooting support from adults, the young children followed “mirroring” learning strategies to interact with screens, often copying 138

Safety issues

adults’ digital behaviours. By doing so autonomously, they followed a trial and error learning path not exempt from risks, especially when they were using devices that were not tailored for them in the first place. Most of the interviewed children aged between 6 and 8 had good mastery of the digital devices they used, but were not proficient users, and can be described as independent users with a limited range of skills. Moreover, the researchers observed that children were not necessarily capable of “exporting” this know-how from one device to another. For example, if a child knew how to access his/her favourite games or video on a specific device he/she was used to, the child did not necessarily know how to access the same content on another device. Rare were the children in our sample who showed more sophisticated digital literacy skills, but some children were advanced users and digital creators (pictures – video editing, drawings, videos . . .). Researchers observed that those children invested time in digital creation for two main factors: (1) their interest in this form of expression and (2) the active mediation of knowledgeable adults. Children’s interest in the medium was crucial in this process as shown by the following extract: Dad likes it when his girls [aged 10 and 7] they do some of the same things that he does, such as coding computing programs. “You do coding via the internet,” says girl aged 10, “It’s a way to update robots and such,” she says. Dad has tried to teach the girls coding, with not much success though. (Norwegian report, p. 22) Not surprisingly, children’s skills varied greatly. What remained constant, however, was the fact that the more children used digital technologies, the better their skills became. In other words, children performed best with the digital technologies they consumed on a regular basis. In contrast, children were less competent in online activities they seldom performed and, consequently, were more likely to encounter difficulties or to be exposed to inappropriate content. This finding corroborates the concept of “ladder of digital opportunities” referenced earlier. An important point is still to be underlined. Some children showed the capacity to auto-regulate their use of digital technologies, but most expressed the will to use them more if allowed to. A few children (only boys) presented signs of overuse of digital activities, mainly linked to video gaming.

Parents’ perceptions, views and attitudes toward digital technology We saw in the section above that young children’s digital literacy development seems to occur today mainly in the home context and depends in large part on the level of support and engagement they receive from their parents. This support depends on parents’ own perceptions, views and attitudes toward digital technology. Across the interviewed families, most parents agreed on both positive and negative aspects of digital technologies, with the majority feeling that digital media is a useful addition to their children’s lives, and they were ready to invest a lot in digital technologies even if family financial resources were limited. Most parents sensed the educational value inherent in digital technologies and described them as indispensable tools for the future. That is just 2015. (. . .) We are about to go only digital. (. . .) It should not be an issue. (. . .) It should not be a problem that children are on them [digital media]. They should be able to do their own thing. (Dutch mother, 28) 139

S. Chaudron, R. Di Gioia and M. Gemo

Nonetheless, parents did not necessarily have clear views on the scope of digital technologies, especially as educational tools. In practice, the devices were mainly considered as “toys”, “games”, or something to “entertain”, unless their children’s schools had explicitly requested their use to search for information or for particular pedagogical content, app or project. A minority of parents did not see the urgency of digital technology use for very young children, but rather valued and supported “climbing-tree childhood” versus “digital childhood”. Kids don’t play like we used to play. . . On the street. . . They’re not able to make friends because they are constantly looking at their smartphones and tablets. I don’t think they are enjoying their childhood to the fullest. (Portuguese mother, 28) This difference of views put the finger on the main difference among parents: their general attitudes toward technology. Some parents positioned themselves as supporters of technology whereas others displayed a moderate or resistant positioning toward it. Interestingly, regardless of the position they took, most parents agreed on the fact that it is impossible (and inadvisable) to avoid the use of technology in their children’s lives, both at school and at home. Ferneding (2003) refers to this idea as the “discourse of inevitability”; parents’ viewpoints were dominated by the notion that technology is the future and is unavoidable for children: I think it’s important that [my son] has a fluent relationship with technology. Technology is part of our lives today. I don’t think you can avoid technology. I don’t think it’s a good idea to prevent children from using technologies. (Belgian mother, 40) Why then do most parents tend to limit their children’s access and use of digital technologies despite the positive and supportive views they might have? It seems that their limiting strategies are motivated by fears about possible (future) negative effects and the values they attach to offline activities. Indeed, during the interviews, compared to possible positive externalities of the use of digital technology by young children, parents provided generally a more detailed account of their possible negative (side) effects. Parents’ fears first considered the possible impacts on their children’s physical and cognitive health. The more commonly reported concerns were possible damage to eyesight, headaches, the lack of physical exercise, of good sleep, social isolation and negative psychosocial or cognitive consequences such as reduced ability to use their own imagination. They stare at it, become addictive; they spoil their eyesight, that makes no sense. (Croatian mother, 36) Parents were also worried about the consequences on the emotive state of their children. Violent content that children might encounter casually while browsing or being included in images and video they came across that became a source of their nightmares, and/or led to the integration of violence in traditional play. Parents, especially of boys, were also concerned about the effects of video gaming or overuse of screens on their child’s behaviour: frustration, absorption, addiction and/or social isolation: Digital media makes people stupid and lazy and also anti-social. (Belgian mother, 39) 140

Safety issues

Generally though, the parents in our study seemed less concerned about current dangers that might stem from inappropriate content as they felt that their children were too young and not skilled enough to access inappropriate content online. However, our observational data showed clearly that children did occasionally access undesirable material and only a few parents recognized the fact that inappropriate content for their children could be only one click away. The mobile phone can be unsafe because you can press something by accident, that you shouldn’t have, and then there are problems. (Croatian mother, 36) In addition, some parents reported commercial risks present especially in gaming apps and when the device or account children were using was linked to a credit card facility. A few others reported concerns about privacy risks, and the possible misuse or disclosure of personal information exchanged via digital technology. Although the majority of parents were aware of dangers such as cyberbullying and paedophilia, most did not appear to be concerned about them yet. They tended to associate such concerns with their children’s future technology use, believing their children were not exposed to them at such an early age.

Parental mediation and children’s digital safety and security Most interviewed parents put into place protective strategies to limit and control digital access in one way or another, more or less strictly. The analysis of the dataset concludes that parents enacted mediation strategies that they defined according to at least four factors: (1) their own knowledge or experience, (2) their perceptions (including fears), (3) their parenting style (Livingstone et al. 2015), and (4) the degree of penetration and acceptance of the society they lived in toward digital technology. Our analysis seems to show that parents’ own experiences form the basis of their choices regarding their children’s digital safety and security. The primary aim of those strategies is to keep their children healthy in body and mind but also socially (Dias et al. 2016): (1) parents most commonly restrict time of exposure and, to a lesser extent, of content; (2) a minority of parents use technical safety and security guards; (3) parents also put into place rules to keep their children within the social norm. We account here for the most common parental mediation strategies present in the study sample. Parents claimed to keep an eye on the screen consumption of their children while they were themselves involved in other activities, such as cooking. When comparing parents’ and children’s accounts on the subject, it seems that this strategy allowed parents to follow and understand only partially young children’s digital engagement. However, this strategy was challenged by the increasing mobility and individual use of the screens by their young children. Parents chose to limit the exposure, most commonly by limiting their children’s time with digital media and/or Wi-Fi access. In practice, the busy family schedules usually left little time for digital activities before or after school and leisure clubs (sports, music, outdoor activities) and before bedtime. The most frequently encountered rule among the families in this study was to prioritize homework over any other leisure time. Screen time during weekends was less regulated and looser, and these times of digital freedom were very much appreciated by the children. Parents felt their children were safe as they considered them not to be knowledgeable enough to “explore” the digital world by themselves. However, our findings suggested that children are often more knowledgeable than parents think, and unguarded digital activities are among the most risky times for children with regard to encountering inappropriate content, as clearly 141

S. Chaudron, R. Di Gioia and M. Gemo

reported in some interviews. Some parents perceived this risk and chose to safeguard the digital content via TV/VOD child-dedicated channels and/or the VOD auto-play feature or playlists. In practice, dedicated channels and the VOD auto-play feature can still sometimes expose children to inappropriate content. A few parents went further in their safeguarding strategies and chose to use DVDs with which they felt more in control of content (that is, they had no advertisements, no other content available that was only one click away). Remarkably, parental control tools such as filters or automatic usage reports were used by a minority of parents, even though using such tools required a minimum of digital skills and knowledge. Moreover, some parents clearly stated that they valued communication and trust in their children more than “surveillance” tools. Our study saw that parents usually invested in such solutions either because they had an interest or sensibility in digital control solutions (via work) or because they had found a solution to an encountered crisis (access to inappropriate content, overuse). Our interviews and observations of young children also revealed that passwords used as a security wall or safeguard were easily bypassed by young children: This 7-year-old hacker broke into my laptop without knowing my password. I told the sysadmin at my work, and all he could say was that he could not comprehend what was happening with these kids. (Bulgarian mother, 43) Comparing parents’ accounts across the sample, we found that parents who provided the most informed and balanced account of possible risks and opportunities that digital technology can offer to young children were more likely to belong to one of three groups: (1) highly digitally skilled parents given their work in the IT sector; (2) highly educated parents with high incomes who use digital technology extensively; and (3) parents in Nordic countries where the use of digital technology in everyday life is a norm and is very much present at school too. It was also in families of those three groups that the study found accounts of the most active parental mediation strategies: parents taking time to show their children how to use devices or apps; playing console games or games apps teaming up with their children; looking together for information; sharing with their children a digital and creative hobby; and encouraging their children to learn and think critically as they engaged with digital media. The least digitally knowledgeable parents, often of low socio-economic background, tended to restrict more strongly their children’s access to digital technology. A minority of parents enacted a “laisser-faire” strategy that could evolve toward a restrictive or active mediation if an issue in the digital behaviour of the children arose, such as overuse.

Conclusions According to the Oxford dictionary, safety is “the condition of being protected from or unlikely to cause danger, risk, or injury” and security is “the state of being free from danger or threat” or “procedures followed or measures taken to ensure the security of a state or organization”. The parents in our sample across Europe certainly cared for the digital safety and security of their young children. Depending on their experience and knowledge, parents might have various and different ideas on the benefits and dangers of digital technologies. Nonetheless, with some exceptions, the benefits appeared in general to be poorly understood, while concerns about possible physical, cognitive and social negative effects of the use of screens pushed a majority of parents to limit the time of use and the digital content their children had access to. Parental strategies for imposing these restrictions included creating rules about time and content control, 142

Safety issues

remote control, pre- or post-checks of content, and, to a lesser extent, parental control using password-protected access to devices and content. Young children, on their side, learnt to interact with digital technology, build their digital skills and competences mainly in the home context, primarily by mirroring the digital behaviour of surrounding adults and older children, mainly parents and siblings. After some parental guidance, they autonomously followed a trial and error learning path. This was not exempt from risks, especially when they used devices that were not tailored for them in the first place, which frequently happened when parents lent them their personal devices. In their effort to control content, parents might choose auto-play features, playlist for VOD platforms, selected (free) video-game apps; they might think their children are insufficiently skilled to reach inappropriate content, yet this study found that their children are actually more skilled and adventurous than parents think. The young children in this study had very quickly acquired basic technical skills, and most interviewed children had a good level of mastery of the devices, although their knowledge might have been somewhat patchy and uneven. During the interviews, we learnt that most parents who used passwords on their personal or family devices had discovered that, in fact, their children could easily bypass them. Moreover, several children clearly accounted for digital misadventures when they had suddenly accessed shocking content, while only a few parents recognized that their remote control of children’s digital activity might not be enough, and that their young children could be only one click away from encountering inappropriate content. Furthermore, although only reported in a minority of cases, the study saw a rising tendency for parents to invite their children into the schemes of family digital communication. As a result, very young children came in contact with apps and platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Some parents mediated and accompanied their children in the critical and safe use of digital media and content, but some were comparatively unaware of the possible dangers. The study found that the main risks for children occurred when children had enough confidence to interact completely autonomously through apps and platforms. The videos, images and products they consumed, created and exchanged were consequently subject to hardly any control. This type of use, “broadcasting” and content are most likely to put minors at risks of encountering non-adapted and non-desirable content or contacts. Parents’ strategies to limit content, to create restrictive time-on-technology rules and/or to put in place technical safeguards may fail to foster children’s awareness of the need for internet safety and security effectively. Rather than opting for restrictive and limiting strategies, parent– child co-usage of digital technology seems to offer an efficient and active mediation strategy while simultaneously reinforcing family bonds and opening up lines of communication. This type of mediation was found primarily in families with parents knowledgeable about ICT, or parents who were stimulated by the integration of digital technology in the school’s didactics, although they might couple this with some limiting strategies. Thanks to their knowledge and experience, these parents showed less fear and preoccupation toward the possible negative effects of screens on their children, and instead valued their more positive attributes, and were more likely to actively support their young children’s digital activities. Co-usage allowed children to actively integrate not only digital skills but also critical thinking toward digital content and safety measures, and the knowledge they needed to support the development of their resilience. As observed in the study, school can play a major influence on the acquisition of digital competences including safety, but also creativity and problem solving, critical thinking when integrating digital technology meaningfully. This also influences parents’ positive perceptions of digital technology as an efficient learning tool. 143

S. Chaudron, R. Di Gioia and M. Gemo

This research provides an exploratory perspective of lived experiences by children and parents across Europe. Each participant’s disclosure offers a unique and deeply contextualized experience for each personal, family, community and national place. However, in all the investigations it appears that the needs of safety and security can be enhanced by the development of children’s and parents’ digital competences. Digital competence and digital culture are holistic concepts that can be effectively achieved if there is an establishment of collaboration among actors, namely parents, educational entities, policy makers, industries and, of course, children.

Recommendations The findings of our EU-wide analysis includes an abundance of recommendations (Chaudron et al. 2018) with the potential to improve the level of security and safety practices for young children. We believe that to maximize the return from the use of these practices, they need to be efficiently integrated in a digital literacy and digital competences development approach. Here, we summarize key recommendations to enable security measures and safety strategies at different levels: at home, in school, policy making and in the digital industry. This study confirms that young children learn to interact with digital technology in the home context and that parents play the key role of model and mediator in the development of children’s digital literacy. It is therefore crucial that parents acknowledge these roles and recognize the value of investing time in the co-use of digital technology with their children. Indeed, couse seems to contribute, more than limitation strategies, to the development of children’s digital competences and to give parents better control over children’s digital activities in a subtle way. There is evidence that schools can exert a major influence on the acquisition of digital competences, by raising awareness and influencing parents’ positive perceptions and supportive mediation strategies. Policy makers should support the development and integration of the digital literacy curriculum and pedagogies for the education of children from an early age. Furthermore, such action will support a harmonized digital culture, tackle social digital gaps, enhance digital creativity, and build critical thinking and resilience. As the age of autonomous digital technology use is decreasing, privacy by design and privacy by default under new EU GDPR regulation should be implemented by industry. More resources should be invested in participatory projects of cooperation between stakeholders so that digital technology can be used effectively in schools in terms of their pedagogical value and potential, and parents and educators could be supported and guided in their mediation more effectively.

References Braun, V., and Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2): 77–101. Chaudron, S., Beutel, M. E., Černikova, M., Donoso Navarette, V., Dreier, M., Fletcher-Watson, B., et  al. (2015). Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Available at: http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC93239 (accessed 7 August 2018). Chaudron, S., Di Gioia, R., and Gemo, M. (2018). Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology: A Qualitative Study across Europe. European Commission, JRC. Luxembourg: Publication Office. Available at: http:// publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/bitstream/JRC110359/jrc110359_young_children_online. pdf (accessed 7 August 2018). d’Haenens, L., Vandoninck, S., and Donoso, V. (2013). How to Cope and Build Online Resilience? EU Kids Online, London, UK. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/48115/1/How%20to%20cope%20and%20 build%20online%20resilience%20%28lsero%29.pdf (accessed 7 August 2018). 144

Safety issues

Dias, P., Brito, R., Ribbens, W., Daniela, L., Rubene, Z., Dreier, M., et al. (2016). The role of parents in the engagement of young children with digital technologies: exploring tensions between rights of access and protection, from “gatekeepers” to “scaffolders’. Global Studies of Childhood, 6(4): 414–427. https:// doi.org/10.1177/2043610616676024 (accessed 7 August 2018). European Parliament and Council 2016. General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679. Official Journal of the European Union, Luxembourg. Ferneding, K. A. (2003). Questioning Technology: Electronic Technologies and Educational Reform. (Vol. 2003). New York: Peter Lang. Holloway, D., Green, L., and Livingstone, S. (2013). Zero to Eight: Young Children and Their Internet Use. London: LSE, EU Kids Online. Irwin, L., and Johnson, J. (2005, July). Interviewing young children: explicating our practices and dilemmas. Qualitative Health Research, 15(6): 821–831. JOIN (2017). 450 final. Joint Communication to the European Parliament and the Council. Resilience, Deterrence and Defence: Building Strong Cybersecurity for the EU. High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/10101/2017/EN/ JOIN-2017-450-F1-EN-MAIN-PART-1.PDF (accessed 25 May 2019). Livingstone, S., and Helsper, E. (2007). Gradations in digital inclusion: children, young people and the digital divide. New Media & Society, 9(4): 671–696. Livingstone, S., Haddon, L., Görzig, A., and Ólafsson, K. (2011). Risks and Safety on the Internet: The Perspective of European Children. Full Findings and Policy Implications from the EU Kids Online Survey of 9–16 Year Olds and their Parents in 25 Countries. London: LSE, EU Kids Online. Livingstone, S., Mascheroni, G., Dreier, M., Chaudron, S., and Lagae, K. (2015). How Parents of Young Children Manage Digital Devices at Home: The Role of Income, Education and Parental Style. London: EU Kids Online, LSE. Available at: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/63378/ (accessed 7 August 2018). Marsh, J., Hannon, P., Lewis, M., and Ritchie, L. (2015, June). Young children’s initiation into family literacy practices in the digital age. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 15(1): 47–60. Ofcom (2017). Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report 2017. Available at: www.ofcom.org. uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/108182/children-parents-media-use-attitudes-2017.pdf (accessed 7 August 2018). Ólafsson, K., Livingstone, S., and Haddon, L. (2014). Children’s Use of Online Technologies in Europe: A Review of the European Evidence Base. 2nd ed. London: LSE, EU Kids Online. Plowman, L., and McPake, J. (2013). Seven myths about young children and technology. Childhood Education, 89(1): 27–33. Plowman, L., Stevenson, O., Stephen, C., and McPake, J. (2012). Preschool children’s learning with technology at home. Computers & Education, 59(1): 30–37. Stephen, C., Stephenson, O., and Adey, C. (2013). Young children engaging with technologies at home: the influence of family context. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 11: 149–164. Strauss, A., and Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Strauss, A., and Corbin, J. (1998). Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Vuorikari, R., Punie, Y., Carretero, S., and Van den Brande, L. (2016). DigComp 2.0: The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens. Publications Office of the European Union.

145

10 Children’s divergent practices and access to digital media in home, school and neighbourhood communities Mastin Prinsloo

Introduction Research on children’s engagements with digital media can sometimes assume that particular children’s uses of digital media are, in some way or other, representative of all children’s digital literacy practices, because children are, in some kind of loose way, thought of as being more the same as each other than adults are like each other. Kress (2003), in an influential example, suggested some general differences between how children write differently from adults in some key respects, thus implying a commonality among children on the one hand, and adults on the other. Where adults, he said, are more oriented toward what is ‘correct’ and see a readymade path toward meaning-making, children are less constrained, partly because they are less informed about conventional orientations to literacy than adults, but also because they are more willing to work inventively with what is at hand. Kress suggested that children make their meanings, “governed by their interest at the moment of making the sign” (Kress 2003: 155) by drawing on available resources. While Kress acknowledged that children’s interests were undoubtedly socially shaped as well, he was most interested in processes of creative individual design, or selection of items that were used to operate as signs (including circles drawn by a pre-school child to signify a car). In contrast, however, I am more interested in the socially specific aspects of children’s digital and other meaning-making activities. The point that emerges strongly in my research is that children’s digital literacy activities respond to larger dynamics of social class, race, gender, language and place. I am particularly interested in what happens when particular digital resources, designed with certain contexts in mind, or carrying particular expectations regarding their uses, encounter complex, detailed, situated forms of life that differ in particular ways from those anticipated in the design of the multimodal digital resources. I see digital media as translocal resources that operate in local contexts and offer particular kinds of located agency and engagement to young children in ways that are tied up with where they are and who they are. Children and childhoods are not all the same (Reynolds and Orellana 2009) and digital media uses are tied up, along with other resources for performance and representation, with being human in particular ways, so that we cannot assume that these devices are the same thing or that technologies are used in the same way in different settings under different 146

Children’s divergent practices and access

conditions. I turn now to prevalent models for studying children’s early digital literacy activities that shape my research.

Literacy Studies and multimodal studies Literacy Studies, since the early work of Street (1984), Heath (1983) and others, has tried to understand writing and reading, more recently including digital literacies, as social activity, people doing things together or on their own for purposes that are always shaped by what people (children and adults) are doing in relation to each other. The multimodality approach shifts focus slightly and tries to understand how the (socially shaped) tools, with which people do these things, work. These two theoretical orientations have since been drawn on together in literacy and new media studies (e.g., Kress and Street 2006; Pahl and Rowsell 2012), on the basis that they complement each other, although giving “equal recognition” (Street 2012: 1) to these two influences can sometimes be difficult in practice, because of the divergent ways that they focus researcher attention. Kress’s (1997) study of children’s early multimodal sign-making was an innovative and influential example of this approach but he was not much interested in the socio-economic, cultural or placed location of the children studied. A distinctive digital literacies research direction has since emerged in Northern/transAtlantic settings, drawing on both multimodal and social practice approaches, that argues that the multimodal and networking affordances of digital resources have changed the ways that children are encountering and using writing, meaning-making and design. Rowsell and Pahl (2007) developed an approach to the examining of identities in multimodal texts, arguing that children’s texts can be seen as traces of social practice, and as artefacts that have histories. Texts made at home, for example, are constructed in relation to home identities and practices and carry those traces. Wohlwend’s studies (2011, 2015) identify the rich and layered nature of children’s play through the merging of digital and real-life resources, in on-screen along with offscreen action, as children collaboratively and competitively manipulate virtual avatars and other digital resources and artefacts, along with actual toys in peer-play settings, in events that include singing and recited quotations of remembered dialogue, along with mimicry and hand-made puppets in sustained and meaningful play activities. Rowe and colleagues (2014, 2015) along with Rowsell (2017) found that e-book composing with digital tablets and iPads taught children how to move across images and words in story-telling and to draw on information, expertise and languages from both home and school. Flewitt and colleagues (2014, 2015) showed how iPads can enhance school learning, motivating children to make meaning through using a varied repertoire of signs and symbols across print and screen-based media. They describe how children can be creative and fluent across a varied repertoire of signs and symbols. Several studies have gone on to identify a mismatch, however, between children’s out-of-school media engagements and what schools expect from them. Burnett (2010) found digital literacy practices in classrooms to be frequently framed by influences from print literacy as to what was appropriate. Merchant (2009) studied the effects of a virtual world created for students and teachers to engage in virtual world game play at a school in England. He found that teachers’ lack of familiarity with gaming routines meant that the virtual world often mirrored the world of the classroom, digital literacy being marginalized in favour of traditional forms of literacy. SeftonGreen and colleagues (2009) identified a ‘top-down’ conceptualization of digital literacy in formal learning at school and contrasted this with the ‘bottom-up’ understandings of informal and popular cultural processes that children held. Marsh (2006) described how popular culture is integral to children and young people’s engagements in a wide range of literacy practices. She explored reasons why teachers do not use popular culture and popular media texts in their 147

Mastin Prinsloo

teaching and suggested that the education of pre-service teachers should include making them aware of the realities of children’s out-of-school literacy lives, shaped as these are by popular culture, media and new technologies. Related research has drawn specific attention to the relations between digital access and social inequalities in the USA. For example, Warschauer and Matuchniak (2010) presented an overview of issues of access, use and outcomes regarding children and young people’s use of digital media in the USA across socio-economic, racial, ethnolinguistic and gender categories in home, school and community contexts. They conclude that the original digital divide as regards physical access to such media was largely resolved, at least in the United States, in that everyone had some access. However, the divide still resided in the differential abilities of specific groups of youths to use these resources critically, creatively and productively in the new economy. Moje and colleagues (2008) found that for high poverty children in the USA, the digital divide had not closed.

Research on young children’s digital literacies in a Southern context My own research interests have been in what might be called the social life of digital media, the ways that their uses are shaped and distinctive with regard to their embedded uses by situated users in particular settings. I see such variations as shaped in particular by the differences that children, youths and teachers of various sorts bring to the use of digital media and differences in what people are up to more broadly when they are using digital media. My research features accounts of individuals and groups who improvise with the technologies that they have and who use these resources in ways that are novel and that, in particular cases, are sometimes less than successful. Rather than being simply accounts of deficit or disadvantage, however, these studies open up the space for an understanding of how people take hold of digital media resources in out-of-school settings and how these resources work in particular educational settings, most notably those in Southern and African settings that have been less researched. My research, along with students and colleagues, has included a contrastive study of the uses of digital media at home by children from professional-class and underclass families in South Africa. I worked with Polo Lemphane when she was a research student at the University of Cape Town and we researched the digital play of children of unemployed parents living in a shack settlement outside Cape Town, and contrasted their play with children of working professionals living in a middle-class suburb in the same town (Lemphane 2013; Lemphane and Prinsloo 2014; Prinsloo and Lemphane 2014). The research model was that of contrastive ethnographic-style case studies (Heath and Street 2007). Each family was visited by Lemphane on alternate weekends, over a period of several months when both children and their parents were at home. She observed and recorded activities while children played with particular digital media and carried out unstructured and semi-structured interviews. Collected data included recordings of conversations and researcher discussions with children and parents, photographs of children at play in their environment, screenshots of electronic images and text, and field notes. The research shows that social class differences among African children take on globalized cultural dimensions by way of language practices and online media practices, which sharpen differences between middle-class children and poorer children. The children of professionals are seen to absorb the cultural capital that English-language resources, digital hardware, and unlimited broadband Internet connectivity in their homes afforded them by way of connections to global middle-class cultural flows. They do this, however, in ways that are entangled in their particular context, as Black African children from a particular bilingual, sociolinguistic context who participate online in a predominantly White, Northern, Anglonormative social environment. 148

Children’s divergent practices and access

Whatever disadvantages they experience in these encounters, however, seem to matter less than the advantages they get from their emerging facility with the genres, registers and identity practices of globally connected youth culture, that in turn offer them precursory access to more local middle-class identities and practices, in contrast to their poorer peers in the same city who have no access to such participation in global youth culture at all (Lemphane and Prinsloo 2014). Studies of children’s early digital media use in African settings cannot but help study them in the context of complicated race, class, economic, language and cultural imperatives that shape these practices in distinct ways. In our research, Lemphane and I studied children living in a shack settlement on the edge of Cape Town who played with the Internet-connected cell phones of their parents. But such play did not provide any access to more global resources of information and entertainment – partly because the children did not share the sociocultural backgrounds or linguistic resources that are typically taken for granted on websites designed for children, and partly because the environment and their parents limited the children’s access to digital play. This family might be seen as one example of people who have been identified as the ‘precariat’ of the global economy (Standing 2010; Wedekind 2014), with the parents, who migrated to the city from rural areas, poorly educated, largely excluded from formal sector work, lacking income and job security and without predictability or security in their lives. The family home was a shack made from corrugated iron sheets and masonite, about 3½ by 4½ square metres, divided into several rooms by masonite dividers, in which the family of two parents and their five children lived. The children’s mother worked part-time as a char in a home in a middle-class Cape Town suburb and her partner worked infrequently as a labourer on construction sites. The major source of income for the family over the period of research was through child grants provided by the state (R380 per child per month in 2015, or about US$29 at current exchange rates) and they shared this reliance on state welfare with millions of other out-of-work people in South Africa. There were two mobile phones, used interchangeably by the two adults, and used exclusively by them for making and taking voice-calls, and not for texting or for any other purpose. One of the phones had features which included an FM radio app and two preinstalled animated games, which were played by the children when they could get access to the phone. This was not always easy because the phone had a relatively long-lasting battery compared to the other phone and the parents valued it for communicating with their family and friends. As a result, the children were allowed limited access to it. The children had no access to a personal computer, laptop or iPad at all as these were not affordable items for their parents or their neighbours. Their parents’ restrictions regarding the children’s use of mobile phones gave the children limited access to digital play. The conditions of play were also constrained by the limited space available in the home, as well as the parents’ attitudes to children’s noise. The children were never seen to make phone calls nor send SMS messages on the phones but used them to play games and also to examine their functions. When they played inside, the children often had to play silently so as not to annoy their parents or the visitors in the crowded collective space which they all occupied. The children’s digital play consisted mostly of silently playing, and silently watching each other play, on the one available game on the cheaper and older Vodafone 150 phone, to which they had greater access than the better phone, a Vodafone 345 Text that had FM radio access and two preinstalled animated games. In the only game on the older mobile phone, the task in the game was to move three rings from one pole and stack them on the next pole in the same order. Success would lead to the next level with an additional ring, and so on. When they did have space to talk while taking turns to play the game of moving virtual hoops, their talk tended to not be about the game but about other things. In the conversation below, the child Thato imagines having a ‘PlayStation’ while he is playing the rings game on the phone. The other children explore his fantasy with him. 149

Mastin Prinsloo

Thato:  Abanye abantwana esikolweni baphatha iPlayStation badlale yona [Some children take PlayStation to school and play with it] Thabang: Uyaxoka [You are lying] Nthabiseng: Hayibo Mputi [No Mputi] Thabang: Ifakwa etivini iPlayStation [It is connected to a TV] Thabang: Yimalini iPlayStation? [How much is PlayStation?] Thato: Ninety rand [Ninety rand] Thabang: Phi? [Where?] Thato: Apha Machaeneng [There at the Chinese shop] Nthabiseng: Machaeneng [At the Chinese shop] Thabang:  Ewe bendifuna ukudlala, iphum’nento ezinintsi, ifuneka iconnektwe etivini. Xa uzofuna umntu umdlalise wenze imali [Yes, in order to play it, it needs many things, it needs to be connected to a TV. When someone needs to play, make him/her pay and make money] Nthabiseng: Utheng’amagwinya [You buy fat cakes] Thabang: For electricity le abadlala ngayo [For electricity which they play with] Nthabiseng: Hayibo, Ndithenge is’kipa sePirates [No, I buy pirates T-shirt] Thabang:  Umntu xa efuna ukudlala, udlala nge-rand iPlayStation. [Anyone who wants to play, plays the PlayStation for one rand] Nthabisen: Ewe ungena nge-randi [Yes, they will enter with one rand] Thabang: ’Cause umbani [Because electricity] Nthabiseng:  Ewe uyamoshakala umbani ungena nge-randi. [Yes, electricity is used; you have to enter with one rand] ‘PlayStation’ might appear to be a stable signifier here, identifying a globally recognizable copyrighted gaming console plus software, along with all the youthful pleasure and interactive intensity associated with digital gaming. But there are also apparent anomalies here. It is certainly surprising that the ‘PlayStation’ being talked about apparently only costs R90 (less than £6). We also notice that the children talked about it, first and foremost, as a tradeable resource rather than a source of direct pleasure in itself. They imagined the control of access to the PlayStation as a way to other somewhat random, non-virtual items of desire that were particular and localized in nature – these include vetkoek (deep-fried dough-cakes that are a common low-cost for-sale item in their neighbourhood), football club supporter T-shirts (Pirates FC, a soccer club based in Soweto but with a nationwide, mostly Black support base) and electricity which is a valued, expensive and not widely available local resource. The PlayStation, it turns out, is an item that is actually available in their extended social world, unlike a ‘real’ PlayStation, which would be unaffordable and out-of-place here because of that. What they were talking about is a cheap, electronic PlayStation-like console that they had seen on sale locally, at the Chinese shop, with only a few basic games on it, not so unattainable after all, but still out of reach for them at this time. The ‘Chinese shop’ might also have raised echoes for the reader of high-tech global trade but the shop is again something different, one of many thousands of similar small, humble, low-cost outlets scattered throughout poorer urban and residential sites across South Africa (and elsewhere in Africa), often run by immigrant Chinese, selling mostly low-cost, imported items that imitate popular branded commodities to poor people/people who cannot afford the genuine article. We can say that the children’s fantasy about acquiring digital playgoods simultaneously displays both creative agency and also reveals their material and discursive location. In ironic parallel with neoliberal discourse, which places market logic above everything else, the children’s 150

Children’s divergent practices and access

imaginings quickly turn to the exchange value of PlayStations, what might be acquired through trading access to them. The children’s sense that they could barter access to the PlayStation probably reflects the influence of both their parents and their wider neighbourhood, where few people have reliable income sources, everything that has value is considered tradeable. It also points to a problem with digital hardware and its relative (un)availability in this context. Anything that has value is also at risk of being stolen.

Schools and ICTs as valued resources We see the ‘tradeability’ of digital resources again in the troubled efforts to provide a ‘paperless school’ environment in another region of South Africa over the last few years. In March 2014, the roll out of 88,000 digital tablets took place, to primary and secondary schools across the Gauteng Province, which is the industrial heartland of South Africa but also home to millions of poorer people, or members of the precariat, living in shack settlements or the townships or dormitory suburbs previously designed by the apartheid government to house the Black workforce for the urban industrial centres. The rollout focused first on the poorest and least resourced schools, which would also get Internet connectivity to a Department of Education Portal that would include curriculum material based on the most recent curriculum framework. “The project will have a significant impact on the delivery of quality and equitable education in Gauteng”, said Gauteng Department of Education spokesperson Phumla Sekhonyane (Southern Courier 2014: 1). The department hoped to roll the project out to all Gauteng township and rural schools by the end of the 2017/2018 financial year at an estimated cost of R17 billion (more than a billion euros) that included the provision of WiFi and 3G connectivity to schools. In May 2015, the department announced it was withdrawing all 88,000 tablets because they were being stolen in large numbers. Gauteng Education top official, Panyaza Lesufi said: “There’ve been a series of burglaries to our schools to steal the tablets that we’ve given to schools. So, the 88,000 tablets that we gave to our schools, unfortunately, regrettably, we’re withdrawing them now” (Business Tech, 20 May 2015). Later in 2015, 17,000 of the tablets were again installed in 4,000 classrooms, predominantly in township and rural schools, this time with heightened security features, along with 1,800 3D LED interactive whiteboards (IWBs) as part of a ‘paperless schools’ project. IWBs are large, touch-sensitive screens that control a computer that is connected both to a digital projector as well as to the Internet, where this is available. Users control the computer via the screen, using a pen, finger or stylus. Developed first in the early 1990s by a Canadian technology company for corporate meeting, seminar, and training purposes, IWBs were subsequently marketed internationally for educational purposes, introduced into schools on varying scales and offered as a major resource for teaching and learning activities that include talk, print, image and sound along with digital connectivity. Although heightened security features were in place, these devices were still vulnerable to theft and damage during sometimes violent ‘service and delivery’ and other protests that took place periodically in some areas, as well as theft by organized criminals who, in the case of one school, used guns, wore bulletproof vests, pistol-whipped the security guard and used angle grinders to systematically remove IWBs from the walls (IOL 2015). A reporter for The Economist (19 October 2015) summed up a critical view of the rollout: Critics wonder if South African schools might do better to get the basics right first. Technology is no help if teachers aren’t competent in their subjects. They also must be trained up to properly use education technology. And while some schools are getting tablets, many others lack sanitary lavatories. An audit by the advocacy group, Equal Education, 151

Mastin Prinsloo

found that the conditions of toilets at some Gauteng township schools are worse than in South Africa’s overcrowded prisons. In 2012, pupils in Limpopo province failed to even receive textbooks. In 2017, the paperless school project was only being implemented for Grade 12s (the final year of schooling for youths who are upwards of 16 years old) in Gauteng. This time Lesufi said: “Since the installation of paperless classrooms the level of thuggery and vandalism has taken an ugly turn and we are worried. We are calling on the police to assist us, but we are not going to be deterred by this kind of thing” (EyeWitness News, 25 June 2017). Apparently passionately committed still to the idea of the ‘paperless school’ which he had initiated in Gauteng, in December 2017, Lesufi declined nomination to the ANC’s National Executive Committee, the highest decision-making body of the ruling party in South Africa, saying that he could not leave the ‘paperless school project’ as ‘unfinished business’. He was quoted earlier as saying: “We know that where schools have a library, ICT, connectivity and quality teaching resources, pupils do better” (Brainstorm, 7 August 2017). According to this government official driving the paperless schools project, the decision to radically introduce ICT in Gauteng schools was to ensure young people participate in the digital economy. This generalized notion of an undifferentiated global economy and undifferentiated young people is clearly a problem, though, particularly in a country which is often described as being among those with the highest levels of social inequality worldwide (World Bank 2018). Policy interventions concerned with ‘levelling the playing fields’ for children from poorer social backgrounds sometimes assume that technologies have an effect on practices that is predictable, moving those practices closer to the model of middle-class schooling which is sometimes thought of as a neutral model for everyone else, rather than as situated, ideological practices that help to entrench elite groups in a host of ways, not least by marginalizing other forms of life. My interest then continues to be: What happens when particular digital resources, designed for one purpose, or carrying particular expectations regarding their uses, encounter complex, detailed, situated forms of life that differ in particular ways from those anticipated in the design of the digital resource? In earlier work, with the same concern, I argued that we should study digital media and digital literacies as ‘placed resources’ (Prinsloo 2005; Snyder and Prinsloo 2007; Prinsloo and Rowsell 2012). In an example of children encountering desktop computers in a school ‘computer lab’ (Prinsloo and Walton 2008) I showed with a colleague that the assumption by the teacher that literacy learning was a drill-and-practice activity was consistent with the software the class had access to, which gave strong emphasis to skills-based phonics packages delivered by computers. The teacher’s view was that such activities taught children fine-motor skills and eye–hand co-ordination, reflecting her own understanding of the reading-readiness ideas from earlier behaviourist models of how children learn literacy. The teacher said that the following term she was going to teach the children how to get in and out of a programme, but now they were starting with pre-reading exercises. We made the point then, in discussing this setting, that rolling out newer and better machines and more up-to-date software would not mean that digital resources would suddenly start to work ‘as they were supposed to’ in such contexts as the school studied here if they were thought of as simply marginal or deviant contexts rather than as distinctive ones (see also Lynch and Redpath (2014) on tensions in iPad use in an Australian preparatory classroom). In a more recent study with a research student who worked as a primary school principal, we examined IWB use in a Cape Flats primary school (Prinsloo and Sasman 2015). The research I describe here (Prinsloo and Sasman 2015) posed the question of how IWBs travel as resources across social spaces and how they get “taken hold of” (Street 2009: 24) by language and literacy teachers and their students in sub-elite school settings in the global South. We studied their 152

Children’s divergent practices and access

situated use not as evidence of what affordances they might carry across contexts but as resources that get assembled and adapted in distinctive ways (Prinsloo and Rowsell 2012). In analysing recorded video data on classroom teaching, we argued that IWBs in our study were functioning as boundary objects rather than having the transformative impact on classroom pedagogy that their more enthusiastic advocates were claiming. Boundary objects in Actor Network Theory are objects that are engaged with across varying networks of people and things (Bowker and Star 1999). They do not change or stabilize those practices in pre-given ways across different groups of people or communities of practice but instead are flexible enough to embed in or become part of those practices across varying or contrasting social locations, while still being recognized as ‘the same thing’ across contexts. We could similarly think about mass schooling as a generalized social technology as being a boundary object. While it might appear to be ‘the same thing’ in different contexts, there is no doubt that it is not so across very different social contexts, even though curriculum developers and centralized testing bodies continue to work on the assumption that it is or should be the same thing regardless of context. Our attention therefore should be less on their design features, what their designers intend digital resources to do, and more with how they are engaged with by children and adults whose meaning-making activities are profoundly informed by concrete, material, located, historically shaped social dynamics. The research took place at a primary school in Mitchells Plain on the Cape Flats, a suburb which grew through apartheid government planning as a ‘Coloureds’-only dormitory suburb for people evicted from designated ‘Whites’-only suburbs of Cape Town in the middle decades of the 20th century. In the contemporary, hierarchically stratified schooling market in Cape Town where the demand for equal education for all remains unrealized, the school recruits mostly lower middle-class and working-class children from the immediate vicinity as well as from elsewhere on the Cape Flats. I will just give one brief example here from that study of an experienced and engaged early primary school teacher who had taken hold of the IWB as a teaching resource and used it to teach in ways that were consistent with how she had learnt to teach over the years. In her use of the IWB and software as a ‘big book’ in the data extract below she followed closely a well-established model of teacher-led ‘big book’ reading that preceded the IWBs in this setting and was part of entrenched classroom literacy-learning activities, where children sit on the carpet facing the teacher and the screen and engage in a teacher-led reading and question-answer engagement. The software used for this exercise similarly mimics the predigital ‘big book’ classroom activity where an actual book was previously used. The software design includes sets of vocabulary activities that are done by students and teacher, often with the children going up to the IWB. The heart of the lesson is an extended reading-out-loud activity.

Reading Goldilocks The teacher brings the class to order before continuing. She sets the colour of the IWB pen to yellow and reveals the next page. She reads the sentence to the students and asks them to read it with her. She also breaks from reading to reinforce spelling and vocabulary work, using the IWB. Teacher.: I’ve got a big word and it starts with a “g”. What is it? Students: Goldilocks! Teacher: I am asking Erin, do you know where’s Goldilocks? Find me the word of Goldilocks and colour it in with your yellow hand. (To the students) Ssh and be quiet, you see she’s doing a great job. Colour in girl, colour in, daar’s hy (that’s right). Lovely! Give her a nice round of applause. 153

Mastin Prinsloo

The teacher deactivates the colour and draws her students into the deactivating activity. They agree there is no more magic and the yellow has disappeared. She continues with the next page and reads the sentences to them. The students complete the sentence. The teacher instructs them to write the word hot in the air. She asks them which sound they heard first and which sound they heard last. The students answer in unison. Teacher: Student: Teacher:

Why did she choose to sit on baby bear’s chair? She was too heavy. (First repeats what student said) Why did she want . . . why does she want to sit on baby bear’s chair? Student: Because it was just right. Teacher: (First repeats what student said) But why . . . why not mommy or daddy’s chair? Students: Cause the chair’s too hard or too soft! Teacher: Too hard and too soft so that one is just right. How did the chair break? Students: She’s too heavy! She’s too big! She ate too much porridge! Teacher: She could have eaten too much porridge. What do you say? Student: She’s too small but she can’t fit on the chair. Teacher: She can’t fit on the chair. So . . . what . . . what do Faith normally do when she sits on that chair? Now what does she normally do? Student: She rocks on it. In this extract from a Grade 1 class (children’s first year of primary schooling) we see the teacher is working through a familiar nursery story. It shows an early childhood activity that must have been carried out in related fashion over many decades in the Anglo-American world and it is perhaps not surprising to see it here in a postcolonial setting with a long connection to the British Empire. Nonetheless, the story about a little blonde-haired girl’s encounter with a family of bears is not a local story, neither in the girl’s distinguishing feature (her hair colour) nor in the bears that are not African animals at all. The IWB contributes some features, the ‘magic yellow pen’ and the enhanced variety of teacher as well as student boardwork being the most obvious. The teacher-run Initiation-Response-Evaluate (IRE) discourse sequences clearly signal to her children what she wants them to absorb, learn, and reproduce, where students get signals as to what counts as successful reading and language use in school and how to perform the persona of ‘good student’. While primary schools such as this one in Mitchells Plain are urged to manage the tasks of teaching Standard Language and basic decoding and encoding skills more effectively, and their students are increasingly subjected to annual testing to see how well they are doing this, it is necessary, I suggest, to see language and literacy as historically based, context-bound communicative practices and to see language and literacy learning not just as technical skills but also as prescriptions about what counts as school knowledge and how to display it (Cook-Gumperz 2006; Freebody and Freiberg 2008; Krause and Prinsloo 2016). The IWB as a teaching resource does not redirect the orientation to teaching language and literacy that the teacher brings to her work but adapts to it and adds the novelty for the children of screen-based reading. Because the focus is on a form of reading and textual engagement that precedes the introduction of multimedia resources into the classroom, the visual and interactive dimensions brought to the activity by the IWB serve primarily illustrative functions that support the language and literacy learnings. They do not introduce any new dimensions of reading, writing, or language use that might be associated with the affordances of digital media and with digital media practices. Nor do they draw from any out-of-school repertoire that the 154

Children’s divergent practices and access

children might be developing. This point is also made in Mills and Exley’s study (2014) which contrasts the limited forms of writing demanded by national and statewide curricula and assessment regimes with the multimodal texts produced by primary school children. Maybin (2013) similarly identified the narrow focus on textual comprehension in the Progress in Reading Literacy Survey (PiRLS) tests carried out in England in 2011 as missing out on the multimodal, imaginative and dialogic engagement with reading and writing of the children she studied in informal and non-testing contexts. Hamilton et al. (2015) present a range of rich ethnographic studies that make the case for allowing children in educational settings to access a fuller range of semiotic modalities, arguing that this would give rise to expanded communication and identity options for children as well as teachers. Constructions of literacy teaching as primarily comprised of print-based code-recognition and comprehension activities of a limited kind are deeply embedded in the history as well as contemporary design of primary school curricula in South Africa and elsewhere. While promising so much more resourcefulness than the older blackboards for maintaining student attention because of their ability to stream the outside world in the form of images and videos with sound and colour, the potential of IWBs to enhance learning is constrained by the prevailing schooling ideologies. As regards the language practices of schooling, the bilingual, heteroglossic resources that characterize everyday language in this strongly bilingual community get displaced by an insistence on a boundaried Standard English-language, monolingual classroom discourse around often alien learning content (Prinsloo and Krause 2019).

Conclusion Writing in a UK context, Merchant (2009: 39) identified a tendency in educational research to look at educational uses of new technology in terms of their capacity to enhance the learning of traditional literacy skills. He saw that in some classrooms this was manifest in some uses of IWBs and in the research community in a restricted view “of what is at stake”. He urges that our attention turn toward developing our understandings of how new multimedia and networked literacy practices are impacting the lives of children and youths and identifies the challenge for the classroom as a way to make educational use of the new literacy practices. The incorporation of digital and multimedia resources in literacy teaching within a linear and singular model of literacy, policed by high stakes testing and other accountability measures, might have to give way to more permeable models of curricula that bring on board more of children’s out-of-school worlds and linguistic resources (Dyson 2008). While I am broadly supportive of these suggestions, my wider research also raises questions about the sometimes context-free models of how children’s out-of-school engagements are rich and enabling, as well as how digital technologies can enhance schoolwork. In a world of rising income and social inequalities, the early digital experiences of middle-class and Northern children should not be treated as universal models for all children.

References Bowker, G., and Star, S. (1999). Sorting Things Out: Classification and its Consequences. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brainstorm, The Business Technology Magazine. 7 August 2017. New e-learning scheme in Gauteng beset by old problems. Available at: www.brainstormmag.co.za/12-in-depth-analysis/12930-newe-learning-scheme-in-gauteng-beset-by-old-problems (accessed May 2018). Burnett, C. (2010). Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings: a review of the research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10: 247. 155

Mastin Prinsloo

Business Tech. 15 May 2015. Gauteng withdraws 88,000 tablets from schools because of theft. Available at: https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/87334/gauteng-withdraws-88000-tablets-from-schoolsbecause-of-theft/ (accessed May 2018). Cook-Gumperz, J. (2006). The social construction of literacy. In: J. Cook-Gumperz (ed.), The Social Construction of Literacy, 2nd ed. (pp. 1–18). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dyson, A. H. (2008). Staying in the (curricular) lines: practices, constraints and possibilities in childhood writing. Written Communication, 25(1): 119–159. Flewitt, R., Kucirkova, N., and Messer, D. (2014). Touching the virtual, touching the real: iPads and enabling literacy for students experiencing disability, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 37(2): 107–116. Flewitt, R., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2015). New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. Freebody, P., and Freiberg, J. (2008). Globalised literacy education: intercultural trade in textual and cultural practice. In: M. Prinsloo and M. Baynham (eds.), Literacies: Global and Local (pp. 17–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hamilton, M., Heydon, R., Hibbert, K., and Stooke, R. (eds.) (2015). Negotiating Spaces for Literacy Learning: Multimodality and Governmentality. London: Bloomsbury. Heath, S. (1983). Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Heath, S., and Street, B. (2007). On Ethnography: Approaches to Language and Literacy Research. Columbia: Teachers College Press. Independent Online (IOL). 28 July 2015. Criminals target new digital classrooms. Available at: www.iol. co.za/news/crime-courts/criminals-target-new-digital-classrooms-1891836 (accessed May 2018). Krause, L., and Prinsloo, M. (2016). Translanguaging in a township primary school: policy and practice. Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 34(4): 347–357. Kress, G. (1997). Before Writing: Rethinking Paths to Literacy. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2003). Perspectives on meaning-making: the differential principles and means of adults and children. In: N. Hall, J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 154–166). London: Sage. Kress, G., and Street, B. (2006). Multi-modality and literacy practices: foreword to. In: K. Pahl and J. Rowsell (eds.), Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies: Instances of Practice (pp. 1–14). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Lemphane, P. (2013). A contrastive ethnographic study of children’s digital literacy practices in two homes in Cape Town. Masters Minor Dissertation, School of Education, University of Cape Town. Lemphane, P., and Prinsloo, M. (2014). Global forms and assemblages: children’s digital literacy practices in unequal South African settings. In: C. Burnett, J. Davis, G. Merchant and J. Rowsell (eds.), New Literacies around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy (pp. 1–32). Abingdon: Routledge. Lynch, J., and Redpath, T. (2014). Smart technologies in early years literacy education: a meta-narrative of paradigmatic tensions in iPad use in an Australian preparatory classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 14(2): 147–174. Marsh, J. (2006). Popular culture in the literacy curriculum: a Bourdieuan analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 41(2): 160–174. Maybin, J. (2013). What counts as reading? PIRLS, EastEnders and The Man on the Flying Trapeze. Literacy, 47(2): 59–66. Merchant, G. (2009). Literacy in virtual worlds. Journal of Research in Reading, 32(1): 38–56. Mills, K., and Exley, B. (2014). Time, space, and text in the elementary school digital writing classroom. Written Communication, 31(4): 434–469. Moje, E. B.;Overby, M., Tysvaer, N., and Morris, K. (2008). The complex world of adolescent literacy: myths, motivations, and mysteries. Harvard Educational Review, 78(1): 107–154. Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2012). Literacy and Education. 2nd ed. London: Sage. Prinsloo, M. (2005). The new literacies as placed resources. Perspectives in Education, 23(4): 87–98. Prinsloo, M., and Krause, L.-S. (2019). Translanguaging, place and complexity. Language and Education, online first. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.2018.1516778 Prinsloo, M., and Lemphane, P. (2014). What counts as the social in a social practices approach to the study of children’s engagement with electronic media, language and literacy in a context of social diversity? In: C. Sanford, T. Rogers and M. Kendrick (eds.), Everyday Youth Literacies: Critical Perspectives for New Times (pp. 129–143). New York: Springer. 156

Children’s divergent practices and access

Prinsloo, M., and Rowsell, J. (2012). Digital literacies as placed resources in the globalised periphery. Language and Education, 26(4): 271–277. Prinsloo, M., and Sasman, F. (2015). Literacy and language teaching and learning with Interactive Whiteboards in early schooling. TESOL Quarterly, 49(3): 533–554. Prinsloo, M., & Walton, M. (2008). Situated responses to the digital literacies of electronic communication in marginal school settings. In: N. Pecora, E. Osei-Hwere and U. Carlsson (Eds.), Yearbook 2008: Youth and Media, vol. 2 (pp. 101–118). Stockholm, Sweden: International Clearinghouse on Children, Youth and Media. Reynolds, J., and Orellana, M. (2009). New immigrant youth interpreting in white public space. American Anthropologist, 111(2): 211–223. Rowe, D. W., and Miller, M. E. (2015). Designing for diverse classrooms: using iPads and digital cameras to compose e-books with emergent bilingual/biliterate 4-year-olds. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 16(4): 425–472. Rowe, D. W., Miller, M. E., and Pacheco, M. B. (2014). Preschoolers as digital designers: composing dual language e-books using touchscreen computer tablets. In: R. S. Anderson and C. Mims (eds.), Handbook of Research on Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K–12 settings (pp. 279–306). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. Rowsell, J. (2017). Be the “I” in iPad: iPads and the children who love them. In: D. Harwood (ed.), Crayons and iPads: Learning and Teaching of Young Children in the Digital World (pp. 6–15). London: Sage. Rowsell, J., and Pahl, K. (2007). Sedimented identities in texts: instance of practice. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(3): 388–404. Sefton-Green, J., Nixon, H., and Erstad, O. (2009). Reviewing approaches and perspectives on “digital literacy”. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(2): 107–125. Snyder, I., and Prinsloo, M. (2007). Young people’s engagement with digital literacies in marginal contexts in a globalised world. Language and Education, 21(3): 171–179. Southern Courier. 20 March 2014. e-Learning Solution Programme in schools: schools will receive tablet computers in efforts by Gauteng Education department to mend the digital divide. March 20. Available at: https://southerncourier.co.za/25483/e-learning-solution-programme-in-schools/ (accessed May 2018). Standing, G. (2010). The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class. London: Bloomsbury. Street, B. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Street, B. (2009). The future of social literacies. In: M. Baynham and M. Prinsloo (Eds.), The Future of Literacy Studies (pp. 21–37). Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan. Street, B. (2012). Literacy and Multimodality. Unpublished paper. STIS Lecture: Inter-Disciplinary Seminars O Laboratório SEMIOTEC, da FALE/UFMG Faculdade de Letras, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 9 March 2012. The Economist. 19 October 2015. South Africa’s paperless classrooms lead to computer theft. Available at: www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/21676368-meanwhile-basics-sanitary-lavatoriesare-neglected-south-africas-paperless (accessed May 2018). Warschauer, M., and Matuchniak, T. (2010). New technology and digital worlds: analyzing evidence of equity in access, use, and outcomes. Review of Research in Education, 34: 179–225. Wedekind, V. (2014). Education, training and the ‘precariat’: an overview of the South African education and skills landscape. In: BRICS and Africa: Partnership for Development, Integration and Industrialisation, Papers of the 5th BRICS Academic Forum (pp. 108–116). Pretoria: Department of Internal Relations and Cooperation. Wohlwend, K. E. (2011). Playing their Way into Literacies: Reading, Writing, and Belonging in the Early Childhood Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Wohlwend, K. E. (2015). One screen, many fingers: young children’s collaborative literacy play with digital puppetry apps and touchscreen. Theory into Practice, 54: 154–162. World Bank (2018). Overcoming poverty and inequality in South Africa: an assessment of drivers, constraints and opportunities. Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/ Overcoming-Poverty-and-Inequality-in-South-Africa-An-Assessment-of-Drivers-Constraints-andOpportunities (accessed May 2018).

157

11 “You know what’s glitching?” Emergent digital literacies in video game play Edward Rivero and Kris D. Gutiérrez

Introduction In this chapter we examined how glitching – a digital practice that arises in video game play – mediated the development of emergent digital literacies (Marsh et  al. 2015) for Richard, an eight-year-old child. Glitching in video game play involves the identification of video game system errors, or glitches (Gee 2007; Consalvo 2009; Meades 2013), and appropriating them in ways that allow players to transform and expand how they participate within these games. Glitches arise in video games through software unpredictability or miscalculations made by game designers that cause a small malfunction in the game system. These system errors, or glitches, allow players to alter their game environments in ways that were not intended by the creators of these games. For example, players can exploit a glitch in a game system to make their avatars invisible, indestructible, or go through walls. Glitching is often leveraged by players to gain an unfair advantage over other players. As such, discourses on glitching as a destructive form of cheating have been articulated by video game corporations as a problem that needs to be eliminated (Meades 2013). However, our focus in this chapter shifts the gaze on glitching by centering the ingenuity (McDermott and Raley 2011) and resourcefulness children enact as they learn about this practice. Through this lens, we examined the emergent digital literacies that one eight-year-old child developed as he learned about glitching in video games within and across multiple digital platforms. Learning to glitch is a process that goes beyond playing the games themselves and is distributed across texts, communities of gamers, and digital spaces. Our focus on learning allowed us to see how Richard leveraged the relational agency of online gamers to engage in expansive forms of learning (Engeström 2001, 2016), allowing him to transform the way he participated in his gaming ecology. Drawing on Edwards’ (2017) concept of relational agency, we explain how children collectively aligned their motives to tinker with systems of play through the practice of glitching. In our findings, we foreground how the community of gamers Richard engaged with documented and shared the glitches they found on YouTube, transforming glitching from an individual to a collective endeavor. As such, though glitching can be leveraged by individuals to gain an advantage over others, we found that the object of glitching as a collective activity was not always oriented toward that end. With a focus on the transformative aspects of glitching 158

“You know what’s glitching?”

as a video game practice that mediates emergent digital literacies, our interest in glitching was driven by the following questions: what are the emergent digital literacies that children develop when they appropriate game system errors and learn to glitch? What tools, digital spaces, and technologies mediate learning about glitching? Toward what end do children engage in the collective activity of glitching?

Conceptual framework: third-generation cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) Our study stems from a multi-sited ethnography conducted by a network of researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder and the University of California Berkeley, that examined the everyday new media practices of fourteen families from fourteen families (Gutiérrez et al. 2017). This chapter drew on third-generation cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) to explore the everyday digital practices of a focal child, Richard, as he played and engaged with video games across multiple media platforms. Central to a cultural-historical perspective is the idea that human beings interact with their worlds primarily through mediational means, that is, cultural tools, symbols, and artifacts (Vygotsky 1978; Cole and Engeström 1993; Cole 1996). Through this framework, we focused on the tools and mediating artifacts that were used by the child as he engaged in digital activity and how he effected a change in the object, or motivation, of his activities (Engeström 2001). We employ the idea that internal contradictions, or doublebinds, are the driving force of change and development in activity systems. As Engeström (2016) points out, “contradictions are historically accumulating structural tensions within and between activity systems” (p. x). Along these lines, we categorize the conditions that lead to the practice of glitching as driven by the internal contradictions of the activity systems within video games. These contradictions are created by game designers who want to give players a sense of autonomy in their virtual worlds, while simultaneously maintaining control of what is possible within these worlds. These conditions create a double-bind wherein children’s collective agency in virtual worlds is constrained by the structural limitations of the video game design. We argue that as children work through the inner contradictions of video game systems, they collaborate to travel through zones of proximal development by appropriating glitches that allow them to go beyond the boundaries of the video game design and create “historically new forms of activity” (Engeström 2001, 2016). In our findings, we elaborate Richard’s engagement with glitching and how it transformed the way he participated in gaming communities in novel and nuanced ways. Our analyses also draw on Bateson’s (1972; as quoted in Engeström 2001) notion of Learning I, Learning II, and Learning III to differentiate between the different types of emergent digital literacies that the child in our study developed as he learned to appropriate glitches in video games. According to Bateson, Learning I refers to the acquisition of rules and responses deemed “correct” within a given context. We viewed Learning I happening as the child learned how to play video games within the rules, norms, and regulations of the game design. Learning II occurs when children begin to acquire “the deep-seated rules and patterns of behavior” (Bateson 1972; as quoted in Engeström 2016), or the hidden curriculum, of their learning ecologies. In our findings, we illustrate how the process of finding “Easter eggs”, or hidden secrets within games set out by game designers for players to find, is an example of Learning II. Finally, we draw on Bateson’s notion of Learning III – where a person begins to radically question the sense and meaning of the context to construct a wider alternative context – to explore how glitching is a collective endeavor wherein children seek alternative ways of participating in their gaming environments. 159

Edward Rivero and Kris D. Gutiérrez

Our focus on glitching allowed us to center how Richard deviated from normative forms of play by engaging with a network of gamers, YouTube videos, and digital tools that operated in the “unofficial” spaces of video game play. Within the tradition of the third generation of CHAT, we take as a unit of analysis the plurality of different activity systems that mutually interact and the boundary crossings that occur between these activity systems (Engeström 2001, 2016). This unit of analysis allowed us to see how Richard navigated within and across multiple digital and non-digital spaces to engage with the practice of glitching. The three interrelated activity systems that we focused on were Richard’s home, the video game’s virtual environment, and the community of gamers that he engaged with on YouTube. These interlocking systems of activity provide the context for how Richard learned about glitching and provide insight to the affordances and constraints of this video game practice.

Learning through transmedia intertextuality in video game play We draw on cultural-historical conceptions of play (Vygotsky 1978) to understand the various forms of learning observed as the focal child engaged with the process of finding glitches in video games. Within this tradition, play is a leading activity that serves as a central context for reorganizing performance for children, and within which psychological processes develop to pave the way for children’s transition to higher levels of development (Griffin and Cole 1984). The rule-based, and goal-directed character of play allows children to stretch the imagination beyond the boundaries of their actual development in everyday life (Vygotsky 1978). However, though play is rule-governed, the rules, goals, and boundaries of play can be contested by children involved in the activity. Along these lines, we identify glitching in video game play as a form of “line-stepping” (Gutiérrez et al. 2017) – a type of boundary crossing that allows individuals to experiment and negotiate with the boundaries of activities. In this case, glitching allowed children to play with the structural design of video games and to push against the boundaries of the rules of the game. Rather than taking a deficit-approach to glitching that renders it a type of cheating, we highlight the affordances of this practice to argue that glitching generates new learning contexts for children to develop emergent digital literacies. The kinds of actions enacted by children as they search for glitches speaks to the ways that definitions of literacies have evolved to include multiple ways of working with a variety of screen-based media to engage with texts (Burnett 2010; Barron et al. 2011; Wohlwend 2015). Children learning to glitch navigate YouTube tutorials, online websites, and cooperate with others in virtual worlds to learn about glitches in the games they play. Through the processes of finding glitches, children begin to think about video games as a set of interconnected texts that make up a larger system. Systemic thinking is critical for a child’s digital literacy development as they begin to see the connections between texts across modes and modalities (Squire 2011). For example, in our findings, we discuss how Richard finds “Easter eggs”, or hidden secrets within games, that video game producers set out for players to find. Easter eggs have been defined as “little surprises” with intentionally hidden messages, images, or secret features within video games (Gee 2007). Although Easter eggs are different from glitches in that game developers intend for Easter eggs to be found by players, we focus on the act of finding Easter eggs and glitches as exemplary examples for how children engage digital textual landscapes in deeper ways (Carrington and Marsh 2005). We argue that when children search for Easter eggs or glitches on various digital platforms, they begin to see the intertextual relationships between digital texts that make up the entire video game experience. Therefore, as children search for 160

“You know what’s glitching?”

glitches and Easter eggs, learning occurs across various digital spaces including the video game system, YouTube, blogs, and other gaming websites. Our study is best understood in the context of the rapid digitalization of literacy practices in the 21st century and how this expansion has led to a “digital turn” in literacy studies (Mills 2015; Wohlwend 2015). Following Marsh (2011), we use the term “digital” literacies to reflect on the way in which reading and writing practices are mediated by technologies in the new media age. In the digital era, new learning ecologies have emerged, requiring children to develop new capabilities and knowledge assets for them to participate effectively in a society that continues to digitize information (Razfar and Gutiérrez 2013). For example, touch-screen apps, such as iPads, have created multimodal and sensorial ways for children to engage with texts before they learn to write formally on paper (Burnett 2010). It is in this regard that we explored how our focal child’s language and communicative practices extended across modes beyond the written word as he learned to glitch video game systems. Furthermore, of relevance to our work, scholars have argued that transmedia intertextuality connects texts across modes, media, and activity allowing children to engage with meaning-making processes in multiple digital contexts (Kinder 1991; Jenkins 2003; Kress 2003; Costanza-Chock and Castells 2014). We see how learning about glitches in video games in online spaces extends video game play from the video game console to other types of media (Steinkuehler 2006, 2010). We also observed the child in our work engaged with video game texts through multiple modes and modalities as he collaborated with others who were part of his online gaming communities. As such, we found that knowledge of glitches is mediated by digital tools and distributed across various actors and platforms. In line with theories on horizontal forms of learning, we attend to how practices are transformed and hybridized as they move across physical and virtual contexts, rather than merely reproduced or applied (Gutiérrez et  al. 2017). Glitching, we argue, is not solely an individual accomplishment, but rather, a collective endeavor that is distributed across multiple tools, media, and actors.

Methods: a multi-sited ethnography of video game play We situate the practice of glitching in the everyday routines of the Gonzalez (pseudonym) family, an immigrant Mexican family that was a part of our multi-sited ethnography (Marcus 1995; Gutiérrez and Vossoughi 2010). The original data were collected by researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder and included a large corpus of video data of the everyday practices of the family, as well as a range of surveys and interviews. Our role as researchers from the University of California, Berkeley was to further analyze these data, adding a new lens to the research that had been conducted. This multi-sited study followed children who were a part of El Pueblo Mágico, an afterschool social design experiment that was modeled after Las Redes 5th Dimension and La Clase Mágica (Schwartz and Gutiérrez 2015), across multiple contexts. The video data collected for this study included documenting the everyday new media practices of families from non-dominant communities, particularly Latinx families who came from a Latinx, immigrant, and working-class background. Our analyses focus on the everyday media practices of one family – a family consisting of a mother, a father, and two brothers, aged sixteen and eight, with a specific focus on an eightyear-old focal child and his engagement with video games. After many hours of observing Richard’s activity across four weeks of activity in the home, we identified video-gaming as a central activity for him. In addition, through analyses of video data and subsequent interviews, we identified his search for glitches in the video games he played as one of his favorite activities at home. As reported in a recorded interview, Richard revealed that his favorite activity to 161

Edward Rivero and Kris D. Gutiérrez

do after school was to “play video games or go on YouTube to look up glitches” (Recorded 22 May 2014). Given our analytical focus, we explored the ingenuity and funds of knowledge (Gonzalez et al. 2005) at work in the literacy practices of this child. Through analyses of activity logs, video data, video observations, interviews, and survey data, we were able to code the instances in which Richard searched for glitches to enhance his video game play. In addition, we documented learning across participation frameworks, as Richard’s learning about glitches was mediated by various digital platforms across time and space. This focus on the new media practices of the focal child in our study involved following Richard’s movement and learning in physical and virtual spaces in and out of school.

Developing emergent digital literacies through glitching Our data analyses begin with an illustration of Richard finding “Easter eggs” – hidden secrets set out by video game designers in game environments – to examine Richard’s awareness of hidden texts in video game design. Drawing on Bateson’s notion of Learning I, II, and III, we categorize learning about Easter eggs in video games as a form of Learning II. Although Easter eggs are not the same as glitches, Richard’s search for Easter eggs revealed the various networks of people and digital tools Richard appropriated to develop a deeper understanding of the video games he played. Easter eggs are digital artifacts that require certain familiarity and a higher level of expertise to find, often requiring knowledge of hidden codes to instantiate. In the example we provide, we saw how Richard leveraged the online communities which he was a part of to learn more about Easter eggs. Through the practice of finding Easter eggs, Richard was resourceful in leveraging various digital communication services, online communities, and digital platforms to develop expertise within the game. In one of the videos, we documented Richard speaking to one of his online peers through his Xbox headset to find out more about Easter eggs within the game. In the following interaction between our focal child and his online friend “LegitMender” from his gaming community, we learned how knowledge about Easter eggs was distributed among peers. Richard: Richard: Richard:

I don’t know . . . what’s the Easter egg? ((LegitMender talks over the headset)) Ok let’s do it What? Where is the Easter egg? ((LegitMender talks over the headset)) ((Richard enacts a code that allows his avatar to explore a new area))

Although it is unclear what “LegitMender” is telling Richard, we deciphered, through Richard’s actions, that he informed Richard how to find an Easter egg in the game. The video data showed how Richard input a code into the game, via his controller, to explore an area that was inaccessible to other players that did not know about the Easter egg. In this example, Richard used his Xbox headset to be in communication with an online member of his gaming community to learn about the eggs. We foreground this example to illustrate how, for Richard, learning about the hidden intricacies of game designs was accomplished by appropriating digital communication tools and the knowledges of others in his online gaming community. Although Richard’s interactions with a network of tools and actors from his online gaming community showed us how he became deeply embedded in the games he played, searching and finding Easter eggs was still within the acceptable rules and norms set out by the game designers. However, in our next examples, we focused on how Richard navigated through this 162

“You know what’s glitching?”

network to learn about glitching from a community of gamers that challenged and subverted the intentions of the game designers. Richard’s learning about glitching was mediated by YouTube video tutorials posted by other players. By moving from the online gaming virtual world to YouTube, Richard displayed emergent digital literacies including: (1) knowing how to access information about glitches across modes and modalities, (2) learning how to know who (Edwards 2017) knew about glitches in video games and, (3) the learning involved as children cross and challenge boundaries, or line-step (Gutiérrez et  al. 2017) game systems. Through these three findings, we highlight how glitching is video game practice imbued with transformative potential as it positions children as active producers rather than passive consumers of their gaming experiences. Our first example of glitching draws on our video data to highlight how Richard looked up a YouTube video called “Black Ops Glitches – Secret Room on Summit DGX Random.” This video instructed him how to appropriate a glitch to access an invisible room in his online gaming environment. Finding this glitch gave players an advantage over others as it allowed them to conceal their location from everyone else. Beyond that, learning this glitch allowed the child in our study to see that there were spaces in the game that existed outside the realms of the constraints that the system designers intended for players to inhabit. As such, Richard not only learned how to gain an advantage over other players, but also saw how others in the community of gamers he was a part of were able to transcend spatial boundaries within games. Figure 11.1 shows how Richard learned about the “invisible room glitch.” Of importance to our work, we emphasize that the video Richard watched on YouTube to learn about the “invisible room glitch” was created by another member in the Call of Duty: Black Ops online community. Here, YouTube served as a pedagogical tool for our focal child and illustrates how knowledge about the game was distributed among members of a community of practice. Moreover, Richard went beyond the video game console to engage with the games that he enjoyed playing, demonstrating his ability to read video game texts across modes and modalities. This type of learning is an important aspect of digital literacy development that focuses on multimodal semiotics that incorporate the visual and spatial elements to augment, enrich, and modify texts (Jewitt 2008; Painter et al. 2013). It is this type of metalevel thinking about texts that Richard displayed that is critical in a digital age in which reading texts transcends various modes, beyond the written word. In this case, the glitch our focal child learned about traveled from the gaming community, to the YouTube video, and back onto the game, as the child in our study instantiated the glitch. As previously mentioned, glitching can give an advantage to players who know how to use them within video games. This is the case with the “invisible room glitch” that Richard

Figure 11.1  Richard watches “invisible room glitch” video. 163

Edward Rivero and Kris D. Gutiérrez

learned about. However, there are some forms of glitching that do not necessarily give a player an advantage over others. We present another example of a YouTube video that Richard found, to argue that some forms of glitching are done to line-step (Gutiérrez et al. 2017) and push on boundaries of video games. For example, Figure 11.2 shows Richard looking up the “McDonald’s glitch”, a glitch that allowed players to put a McDonald’s emblem on their screen as they played along. According to the player who posted the YouTube video Richard watched, glitching to put the McDonald’s emblem on the screen took him over seven hours. Therefore, the amount of work and time that the player committed to find, document, and distribute the glitch to an online community of gamers demonstrates how glitching is not always about gaining unfair advantages over other players. Rather, when players share glitches on YouTube, they create opportunities for children, such as Richard, to learn how to experiment with the system. As such, glitching becomes a collective rather than individual form of boundary crossing. The previous two examples reveal how Richard is deeply engaged with the discourses and practices of the game and learns how to operate within the cracks and fissures, or glitches, of the video game code. We argue that it is through these ruptures of the code that children who learn to glitch explore new possibilities within their virtual worlds that allow them to enact new forms of activity. The examples illustrate how Richard draws on the expertise of those who find glitches in video games and post them on YouTube to learn how to glitch himself. It is worth noting that there are varying levels of expertise between video game players that originally find and post the glitch and those that learn to glitch through YouTube tutorials. Nonetheless, through a process mediated by YouTube video tutorials, Richard reoriented the object of his activity from playing the video games within the rules toward finding ways to circumvent these rules through glitching. In other words, Richard was not only motivated by the pleasure of playing these games but sought out ways that allowed him to tinker with and redesign how he participated within the gaming world. In this sense, learning to glitch for Richard involved expansive learning – a type of learning in which the learners construct and implement a radically new, wider, and more complex object and concept for their activity (Engeström 2016).

Figure 11.2  Richard looking up “McDonald’s glitch”. 164

“You know what’s glitching?”

When our focal child searched for and enacted glitches, he reoriented the object of the video game activity by challenging the way that the designers intended for the game to be played. Through our video and interview data, we found that television, video games, and going on YouTube were the type of media that Richard interacted with the most. In the following interview, Richard explains why he finds these activities interesting: Researcher: Why do you think this/these activities are so interesting? Richard:  The video games because of the storyline, and how they keep it going, yeah, the storyline and ah, like what’s it called, the graphics are good. YouTube because you can see, like, glitches for Black Ops. You know what’s glitches? We foreground this interview between the researcher and the child in our study for two main reasons. First, Richard pointed out how he enjoys video games because of their storyline and how the authors of video games keep the game going. However, we want to emphasize how through the practice of searching for glitches, as well as other hidden secrets, such as “Easter eggs”, within the games he plays, Richard also played a major role in extending his video game play by “keep[ing] it going” beyond the video game console. In this sense, we saw how Richard co-authored his gaming experience alongside the creators of the video games that he played. Through his mobile activity and transmedia engagement with video games, Richard learned more about the video games he played as he moved across digital spaces. Additionally, the interview revealed how Richard’s primary reason for going on YouTube was to learn about glitches in the video games that he played. Here, we draw on Edwards’ (2017) notion of relational agency to illustrate how Richard learns how to know who knows about glitching. Richard is ingenious in his search for glitches as he realizes that glitching is a collective accomplishment mediated by YouTube video tutorials posted by an online community of gamers. As such, Richard aligned the object of his video game activity with others who shared the motivation to transcend the rules and regulations of the game design. We argue that learning how to know who and where to look up information is an essential digital literacy in the digital era and the practice of glitching is a potential site of study for how children can potentially develop these literacies.

Glitching: learning by line-stepping boundaries In the interview example above, Richard asked the researcher “you know what’s glitches?”, wondering if the researcher knew about this practice. Richard is proud of knowing how to glitch video games and is willing to share this with others, including the researchers. A central finding in our case study is that Richard leveraged glitching to negotiate with the rules, roles, and norms of gameplay. Due to the transgressive nature of glitching, we saw how the practice of glitching reflected the agency of players as they collectively played with boundaries of games. The collective agency of gamers was mediated by YouTube as a digital platform that afforded an unofficial space where a “counterscript” (Gutiérrez et  al. 1995) of video game play could exist. In this counterscript, children and other gamers where part of a collective effort that experimented with the boundaries of game design. As the child in our study learned more about glitches, he was able to perform actions that were outside of the norms that the game designers had envisioned. Another key relationship we explored between glitching and emergent forms of digital literacy is that it is a practice that allowed the child in our study to think about the video games he played at a metalevel. Gee (2003) states that one of the affordances of video games is that it 165

Edward Rivero and Kris D. Gutiérrez

allows players to engage in “critical learning”, or the ability to attend to, reflect on, critique, and manipulate the design grammars of video games. Our data reveal that Richard engages in critical learning, as he learns to rearrange the game environment through the glitches that he finds online. As Engeström (2001) suggests, a subject’s critique of an activity creates contradictions in the activity that often lead to more expansive forms of that activity. In this case, the child understood that though video games are designed by others, he had agency in redesigning his gaming experiences by collaborating with others that knew about system errors and hidden secrets in the games he played. Moreover, the child’s participation with glitching allowed him to engage with video games as systems and experiment with the codes of these games. This is a critical component for the development of emergent digital literacies as children begin to understand how gaming systems work. Squire (2011) points out that “players learn the basic facts of their games (the names of pieces, the maps, the terms) but, more important, they learn the emergent properties of the game as a system” (p. 15). Children who learn to glitch know that there are often errors in systems that they can leverage to create space for new possibilities. The practice of glitching then allows children to learn and tinker with system errors to make something new.

Discussion: glitching and learning from design errors Our study demonstrates that glitching in video games is an important part of the development of emergent digital literacies for an eight-year-old child. Richard was personally invested in video game play and was particularly motivated to engage in the interest-driven practice of glitching. These analyses should be of interest to designers of both online and offline learning ecologies, notably those that privilege digital tools in consequential learning activity. We argue that the practice of glitching has affordances for promoting productive forms of learning including: extending the imagination by challenging of rules of codes and system designers, learning within and across multiple modes and modalities, appropriating various digital tools, and employing ingenious means to leverage the relational expertise of online community members. Moreover, by focusing our lens on glitching as an emergent digital literacy, we center the agency of learners and examine the unintended productions when children tinker with digital designs. Finally, we argue that glitching supports the emergent digital literacies of children and increases the possibility of sustained engagement through connected learning. According to Ito et al. (2013), connected learning is socially embedded, interest-driven, and oriented toward educational, economic or political opportunity. In this chapter, we highlighted how the practice of glitching is “interest-driven”, as observed in the voluntary nature of the child’s participation and the amount of time that he spends searching for glitches. Glitching is also “peer-supported”, as it requires children to collaborate with online communities of practice. We propose that learning about glitches can also be academically oriented if educators leverage the practice as a syncretic text (Gutiérrez 2008) to talk about the coding involved in game design. In our case, Richard was part of a 5th Dimension program called El Pueblo Mágico where his final project was to design a video game by utilizing a software called AgentSheets (Repenning 1991) to learn how to code and animate the characters in his video game. While his activities at El Pueblo Mágico helped him learn the structural design of video games, our child’s participation with the practice of glitching at home allowed him to learn how to rearticulate the errors of video game code. The practice of glitching helped Richard engage with a variety of online communities, platforms, blogs, and websites to search for hidden meaning within the video games he played. Moreover, since this was a practice that Richard engaged at home, glitching could serve as a syncretic practice that would allow children to see how they have agency in how they choose 166

“You know what’s glitching?”

to interact with the codes embedded in their everyday lives. As such, glitching provides a space for researchers to learn more about how children appropriate errors in design in agentic and productive ways. In this regard, we encourage researchers to continue exploring how children learn to glitch systems and the implications this has for learning from error and failure when designing robust learning ecologies.

References Barron, B., Cayton-Hodges, G., Bofferding, L., Copple, C., Darling-Hammond, L., and Levine, M. (2011). Take a Giant Step: A Blueprint for Teaching Children in a Digital Age. New York: The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. Burnett, C. (2010). Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings: a review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(3): 247–270. Carrington, V., and Marsh, J. (2005). Digital childhood and youth: new texts, new literacies. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26: 279–285. Cole, M. (1996). Putting culture in the middle. In: M. Cole. Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline (pp. 116–145). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cole, M., and Engeström, Y. (1993). A cultural-historical approach to distributed cognition. In: G. Salomon (ed.), Distributed Cognitions: Psychological and Educational Considerations (pp. 1–46). New York: Cambridge University Press. Consalvo, M. (2009). Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Costanza-Chock, S., and Castells, M. (2014). Out of the Shadows, into the Streets! Transmedia Organizing and the Immigrant Rights Movement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Edwards, A. (2017). Working Relationally in and across Practices: A Cultural-historical Approach to Collaboration. New York: Cambridge University Press. Engeström, Y. (2001). Expansive learning at work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. Journal of Education and Work, 14(1): 133–156. Engeström, Y. (2016). Studies in Expansive Learning: Learning What Is Not Yet There. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 1(1): 20–22. Gee, J. P. (2007). Good Video Games + Good Learning: Collected Essays on Video Games, Learning, and Literacy. New York: Peter Lang. González, N., Moll, L. C., and Amanti, C. (2005) Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates. Griffin, P., and Cole, M. (1984). Current activity for the future: the Zo-ped. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 1984(23): 45–64. Gutiérrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a sociocritical literacy in the third space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2): 148–164. Gutiérrez, K., Rymes, B., and Larson, J. (1995). Script, counterscript, and underlife in the classroom: James Brown versus Brown v. Board of Education. Harvard Educational Review, 65(3): 445–472. Gutiérrez, K. D., and Vossoughi, S. (2010). Lifting off the ground to return anew: mediated praxis, transformative learning, and social design experiments. Journal of Teacher Education, 61(1–2): 100–117. Gutiérrez, K., Cortes, K., Cortez, A., DiGiacomo, D., Higgs, J., Johnson, P., et  al. (2017). Replacing representation with imagination: finding ingenuity in everyday practices. Review of Research in Education, 41: 1–17. Ito, M., Gutiérrez, K., Livingstone, S., Penuel, B., Rhodes, J., Salen, K., et al. (2013). Connected Learning: An Agenda for Research and Design. Irvine, CA: Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. Jenkins, H. (2003). Transmedia storytelling: moving characters from books to films to video games can make them stronger. MIT Technology Review. Retrieved January 8, 2018 from www.technologyreview. com/s/401760/transmediastorytelling/ Jewitt, C. 2008. Multimodality and literacy in school classrooms. Review of Research in Education, 32(1): 241–267. Jurow, S. (personal communication). On Consequential Learning. November 17, 2017. Kinder, M. (1991). Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley: University of California Press. 167

Edward Rivero and Kris D. Gutiérrez

Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. New York: Routledge. Marcus, G. E. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world system: the emergence of multi-sited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24: 95–117. Marsh, J. (2011). Young children’s literacy practices in a virtual world: establishing an online interaction order. Reading Research Quarterly, 46(2): 101–118. Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J. C., Lahmar, J., Scott, F., and Thornhill, S. (2015). Exploring play and creativity in pre-schoolers’ use of apps: Final project report. Technology and Play. Retrieved January 22, 2018 from www.techandplay.org. McDermott, R., and Raley, J. (2011). Looking closely: toward a natural history of human ingenuity. In: E. Margolis and L. Pauwels (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods (pp. 372–391). New York: Sage. Meades, A. (2013). Why we glitch: process, meaning and pleasure in the discovery, documentation, sharing and use of videogame exploits. Well Played Journal, 2(2): 79–98. Mills, K. A. (2015). Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material and Sensory Lenses. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Painter, C., Martin, J. R., and Unsworth, L. (2013). Reading Visual Narratives: Image Analysis of Children’s Picture Books. London: Equinox. Razfar, A., and Gutiérrez, K. (2013). Reconceptualizing early childhood literacy: the sociocultural influence and new directions in digital and hybrid mediation. In: J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy, 2nd ed. (pp. 52–80). London: Sage. Repenning, A. (1991). Creating User Interfaces with Agentsheets. In: Symposium on Applied Computing, Kansas City, MO, IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, 190–196. Schwartz, L. H. and Gutiérrez, K. D. (2015). Literacy studies and situated methods: exploring the social organization of household activity and family media use. In: J. Rowsell and K. Pahl (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Literacy Studies (pp. 595–612). Abingdon: Routledge. Squire, K. (2011). Video Games and Learning: Teaching and Participatory Culture in the Digital Age. New York: Teachers College. Steinkuehler, C. A. (2006). Massively multiplayer online video gaming as participation in a discourse. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 13(1): 38–52. Steinkuehler, C. (2010). Video games and digital literacies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 54(1): 61–63. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). The role of play in development. In: L. Vygotsky, Mind in Society (trans. M. Cole) (pp. 92–104). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wohlwend, K. E. (2015). One screen, many fingers: young children’s collaborative literacy play with digital puppetry apps and touchscreen technologies. Theory into Practice, 54(2): 154–162.

168

Part III

Young children’s digital literacy practices in early education settings

12 Digital and media literacy-related policies and teachers’ attitudes Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen, Sascha Trültzsch-Wijnen and Kjartan Ólafsson

Introduction Technological developments in the media sector have broadened concepts of literacy, which historically focused on printed texts (Livingstone et al. 2008). Literacy now involves emerging cultural techniques (Siegert 2017) related to audio-visual and digital media, and this has led to new terms for specific forms of literacy, with information literacy, media literacy and digital literacy extending the traditional concept of print literacy and providing broader definitions that can be applied to diverse media (Livingstone et al. 2008; Kasinskaite-Buddeberg et al. 2013). The difference between information literacy and media literacy lies in their focus and different disciplinary backgrounds. While access and skills tend to be central to information-based approaches, the emphasis in media-based literacy concepts is on understanding and critically evaluating media content (Wilson et al. 2011; Fraillon et al. 2013; Kontovourki et al. 2017). In view of the various challenges related to information and communication technologies (ICTs), it is often argued that these two approaches need to be integrated (Lankshear and Knobel 2003; Burnett 2010; Wilson et al. 2011; Kasinskaite-Buddeberg et al. 2013). This development is apparent in UNESCO literacy policies. For example, in the Paris Declaration on Media and Information Literacy in the Digital Era (Frau-Meigs et al. 2014), the merging of information literacy and media literacy is made explicit. The authors of the UNESCO Declaration come from multiple disciplines and various countries inside and outside of Europe. They refer to this development as a milestone in the exploration of media and information literacy (Frau-Meigs et al. 2014). In practical terms, media literacy (as a comprehensive and all-embracing concept) has become prevalent in both academic research and education policy. Besides the social science tradition (see Livingstone 2004; Livingstone et al. 2008, 2014; del Mar Grandio et al. 2017; TrültzschWijnen et  al. 2017), a cultural studies tradition (see Tyner 1998; Buckingham 2003, 2009; Kontovourki et al. 2017; Marsh et al. 2017) and a semiotic tradition (see Pérez Tornero and Varis 2010) can be identified. The EU, as well as UNESCO (Wilson et al. 2011; KasinskaiteBuddeberg et  al. 2013), is making efforts to develop recommendations for the promotion of media literacy, and individual member states have complied with these recommendations to greater or lesser degrees by integrating various media education approaches into national 171

Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen et al.

education policies (Trültzsch-Wijnen et al. 2017). In this context, discussions of media literacy focus on the promotion of life-long learning, cultural self-expression and personal fulfilment (Livingstone et al. 2008). The policy of the European Commission (EC 2016, 2017, 2018a, b) has moved the focus in Europe from a holistic perspective on media literacy toward a more technical focus on digital literacy (Drotner et al. 2017; Trültzsch-Wijnen et al. 2017). The concept of digital literacy was originally introduced by Gilster (1997) (see Intrator 2001; Bawden 2008) in response to the increasing importance of digital technologies (Kellner and Share 2005; Belshaw 2012). It often focuses on technical skills and the ability to participate in society using digital media. At the international political level (e.g. EU Digital Literacy Expert Group, see Lemos and Nascimbeni 2016), the focus of literacy has been on social inclusion (‘e-inclusion’) and social engagement (citizenship), with a tendency to equate digital literacy with media literacy (Ala-Mutka 2011; Ferrari 2013; Fraillon et al. 2013; Kampylis et al. 2015; Brečko and Ferrari 2016; Fielder et  al. 2016; Vuorikari et  al. 2016; Carretero et  al. 2017). Sefton-Green et al. (2016) state that, in this context, discourses on education policy, curriculum development and teacher education frame digital literacy as a set of skills that enable an individual to ‘read and write’ digital media. They criticize this skills-based approach for its focus on theories of language acquisition without considering different literacy practices related to digital media environments. In relation to the sociolinguistic and social semiotic discourse on the multimodality of texts (Kress 2003; Burn 2009; Stein 2009) and the field of New Literacies Studies (e.g. Street 1995; Lankshear and Knobel 2003), Sefton-Green et al. (2016) stress a multimodal approach to digital literacy and favour the plural term ‘literacies’, rather than the singular term ‘literacy’, to highlight the diversity of literacy practices and activities in a digital media environment. This multimodal and multiliteracies approach (New London Group 1996; Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Bearne and Wolstonecroft 2007; Narey 2008; Bazalgette and Buckingham 2013) strengthens the focus on literacy as a social and cultural practice. In this sense, digital literacies can be defined as a set of “social practice[s] that involve[s] reading, writing and multimodal meaning-making through the use of a range of digital technologies. It describes literacy events and practices that involve digital technologies, but which may also involve non-digital practices” (Sefton-Green et al. 2016: 15). This holistic definition of digital literacies – and particularly the integration of digital as well as non-digital practices – chimes with the definition of media literacy as an all-embracing concept in line with the UNESCO Declaration’s (2013) definition of media and information literacy. In this chapter we follow this dominant use of media literacy by the EU and UNESCO, which appears to be a useful analytical concept, particularly with regard to the specific policy contexts that we will be looking into. Such a complete definition of media literacy is also common to the field of media and communication studies. It includes both a set of skills and competencies as well as social and cultural practices (see also Livingstone et al. 2014; Trültzsch-Wijnen et al. 2017). This is in line with Erstad’s (2010) view that “[t]here are different terms used in this field of research [. . .]. There are several problems with many of the terms linking technology and literacy, and [. . .] [we] therefore prefer media literacy” (p. 57). In the context of this chapter, we further distinguish between digital literacy and media literacy. In our understanding, the former refers to skills, competencies and cultural practices related to digital media, while the latter encompasses the complete digital and non-digital media spectrum. Although much of the research and most education policies relate to digital and media literacy in the context of young people aged eight or over, it is important not to overlook children younger than eight who are engaging with media and using digital devices and the Internet at increasingly young ages (Chaudron 2015). Hence, we examine public policies for media and digital literacy and their implementation in primary schools and kindergartens by focusing 172

Policies and teachers’ attitudes

on the European context and presenting examples from Iceland, Germany and Austria. This selection highlights commonalities and differences between two EU countries with a common language and similar traditions of critical media literacy discourse, but different education systems (centralist in Austria, federalist in Germany). The inclusion of Iceland allows exploration of these traditions of Nordic discourses by investigating specific policies in Iceland. We discuss commonalities and differences in support of teachers and the importance of their motivation for promoting digital and media literacy.

Context: digital literacy and media literacy education in Europe At the policy level, there seem to be many commonalities in Europe, with many EU member states adopting the definition of media literacy in the EC communication A European Approach to Media Literacy in the Digital Environment (EC 2007). Therefore, our overview focuses on developments following the publication of this EC communication. Leaving aside national specificities, media literacy, in this context, can be understood as a conscious and critical approach to media, with respect to both the production and use of media content. This European concept includes both technical skills and abstract abilities (e.g. critically reflecting media). On the one hand, media literacy is regarded as a goal, and on the other, it is considered a right and an ability that must be imparted to young people (Buckingham 2007; EC 2007; 2018b; for similar discourses in the US see e.g. Hobbs 1998; Tyner 1998). However, there are different emphases among member states (del Mar Grandio et al. 2017; Kontovourki et  al. 2017; Trültzsch-Wijnen et  al. 2017), with: (1) approaches to media literacy that differ between skills-based technical and more holistic approaches, which include media-related social and cultural practices; (2) approaches where the emphasis is on different roles within the communication process; and (3) different expectations from media-competent individuals and different social, civic and cultural media literacy objectives (Uusitalo 2010). These approaches depend on the cultural context and can be understood as different ways of pursuing a common goal (Livingstone et al. 2014). According to the EMEDUS report (Hartai 2014: 57), media literacy is mentioned explicitly in 64 per cent and implicitly in 36 per cent of EU member states’ national curricula (primary and lower secondary level, there are no data for kindergartens; Hartai 2014: 63). However, media-related subjects are scarce and not compulsory. In addition, vague formulations and the absence of guidelines lead to inconsistencies and patchy integration into education settings (Hartai 2014). In Europe, only Finland and Denmark have a full legal framework for media literacy education, in which media literacy is a cross-cutting theme in various policy areas, including “general education policy [. . .] and early childhood education” (del Mar Grandio et al. 2017: 123–127). Both countries offer special programmes for educators and their respective age groups (here relevant up to 8 years old). According to del Mar Grandio et al. (2017), the UK, France, Germany, Ireland and Spain have reached an advanced stage of implementation, but lack specific programmes for early childhood (Iceland was not included, Austria is included only in Hartai (2014), with a negative evaluation). The case of digital literacy is different because technical skills and online safety tend to be prioritized by educational policies and have found their way more into schools and teacher education, particularly in the field of informatics as a specific school subject. According to the TRANSLIT/COST “Transforming Audiences. Transforming Societies” research project on mapping media literacy policies (Frau-Meigs et al. 2017), support for teachers’ media literacy is lacking at all school levels in the form of pre-service and in-service training across Europe (del Mar Grandio et al. 2017). In a qualitative analysis of the 28 national reports 173

Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen et al.

resulting from the TRANSLIT/COST project, McDougall et al. (2017) find no clear relation between the state of implementation of media and digital literacy in the curriculum and the teacher training provided in European countries. Furthermore, most countries have no guidelines regarding the qualifications or expertise needed to teach media literacy (Hartai 2014). In those countries with dedicated degrees or media education credits (e.g. Sweden, France, Italy, Slovenia, Slovakia, the United Kingdom), Hartai (2014) argues that what is needed is university media faculties, the decentralization of schools, specific funding, a good balance of private and public schools and willingness among teachers. Although McDougall et al. (2017) highlight the absence of strategies to reinforce teachers’ motivation in most countries, the personal engagement of teachers appears to be a critical factor in evidence-based good praxis. Pedagogical expertise seems to depend largely on teachers’ personal interest and engagement in taking advantage of media literacy training.

Digital and media literacy in Germany Since Germany has a federal constitution, educational politics, as part of cultural politics, is subject to its 16 federal states, while the federal government only makes recommendations. The federal states are free to choose the outline of educational institutions as well as programmes. Germany has a distinct tradition of media education, with a focus on media competence (Medienkompetenz) going back to Baacke (1996, 1998; see Süss et al. 2018: 113–119), who defined four dimensions of media competence: critical reflection of media; knowledge about media and the media system; handling media; and creating media content. Since the late 1990s, and with a focus on technical skills, digital and information literacy and online privacy (e.g. Trepte et al. 2015) have gained increasing attention among politicians and academics. Following this trend, safeguarding aimed at ‘protecting’ children from negative media influences is prominent in public discourses in Germany (especially Spitzer 2007, 2012). Reductionist approaches that see a direct negative influence of screen media and particular digital media on mental health and cognition are criticized by academics (see LMZ 2012; Süss et al. 2018). However, public authorities, such as the German Federal Centre for Health Education, do not recommend the use of screen media for children under three, video-gaming for those under six, mobile or smartphone use for those aged under nine and no unsupervised Internet use until 12 years of age (BZgA 2015). In contrast, most other federal institutions take a more positive stance toward media education for children, following the 2009 Manifesto No Education Without Media, initiated by German academic societies and media education research centres. This set out guidelines and goals for positive and productive perspectives on children’s media use and related skills and knowledge. The Manifesto claims to integrate media education in all education sectors (including kindergarten and preschool), and as a cross-subject in all classes, and to improve the quality of media education by educating pedagogues (KBoM 2009; see Süss et al. 2018). At the policy level, this led to the Enquête Commission Internet and Digital Society (2010–2013) covering a special media competence task force (Deutscher Bundestag 2011; Süss et al. 2018). Accordingly, in 2012, the Council of Federal States Cultural Secretaries (KMK) published a joint media education strategy paper (an adaptation of a 1995 paper, revised in 2016) (Kammerl and Hasebrink 2013; KMK 2016). This provides common guidelines for the promotion of digital literacy across all subjects from primary education (6–10 years) onwards – children aged less than six are referred to in a footnote (KMK 2016). It describes competencies such as processing and critical reflection of information, problem-solving, first steps in content production, communication and collaboration, and online safety (KMK 2016: 15–18). However, implementation of this policy strategy is 174

Policies and teachers’ attitudes

left up to the discretion of the 16 federal states. Education politics from preschool to university level is determined by the federal states, the federal government can only provide guidelines and make recommendations. So far (2018), for elementary and primary levels, teacher training is available in five states only (MLB 2018), with North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW; 18 million inhabitants) and Saxony-Anhalt (LSA; 2.3 million inhabitants) among the first to implement the programmes. Therefore, NRW and LSA, which are quite different with regard to size, inhabitants, ethnic plurality and economic welfare, will serve as our examples in the following. NRW set strategies for implementing media education in kindergartens and primary schools in 2007. Besides integrating media education into teacher training curricula, a variety of training programmes and materials are available to educators; they explain the aims of media education and reflect the media content for children (Six and Gimmler 2007) in accordance with the KMK guidelines. However, research shows that kindergarten staff lack the necessary competencies and rarely attend training sessions (Six and Gimmler 2007), and as a result, a special training project for kindergartens was launched in 2013. This focused on the integration of media education into everyday routines (Eder et al. 2013) and included special media days for children involving joint projects between trainers and educators to ensure quality (Eder et al. 2013). The aims of these projects were to improve these respective competencies with a range of everyday media use and children’s critical perspectives in daily kindergarten praxis; however, these special projects were rarely integrated into regular kindergarten days. Nonetheless, similar projects have been established for primary school level (6–10 years), but they have not yet been systematically reviewed. In June 2017, the LSA Education Ministry published a strategy paper (LSA 2017) based on the KMK, stressing the importance of media education in primary schools, but devoting very little space to younger children. In LSA, media literacy is defined as reflection and selfdetermined use of media, in the context of social responsibility and societal demands (LSA 2017). It was recommended that media education should be integrated across curriculum areas (only partly evaluated, see MLB 2018), as well as being offered as an optional discrete subject: ‘modern media worlds’ (introduced in 1999). In addition, a regional network of teachers and academics should provide information and training for educators at all levels (NMK 2017), with media literacy integrated into pre-service as well as in-service training of primary and kindergarten teachers. However, this strategy does not include any evaluation. Alongside media education in formal settings, NGOs and public service media also provide approaches and platforms for the youngest age group. For example, internet-abc.de, a platform targeting children aged 6–12 years, provides information, videos and questionnaires to test digital literacy beyond technical skills, and includes material for parents and teachers with some materials designed for kindergarten age. The search engine Blinde-kuh.de provides safe games for children and links to learning materials aimed at 8–12-year-olds, though these can be used and understood by younger ages. Also, the German insafe awareness node (klicksafe.de) provides information, courses and help for kindergarten-aged children and material for parents and educators. Neuß (2013) analysed how media education is integrated into early childhood education and teacher training in different federal states and found huge differences, ranging from first attempts to full integration on an everyday basis (MLB 2018), and it is recognized that it will take time to see the impact of the aforementioned policy strategies and educational programmes (Kammerl and Hasebrink 2013). The examples from NRW and LSA integrate media education into teacher training and everyday practice in kindergarten and primary schools, yet the actual integration of media education into single subjects, active participation in training programmes and the use of educational resources offered by NGOs depend on teachers’ personal interest, motivation and willingness. 175

Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen et al.

Digital and media literacy in Austria In Austria, media education has been discussed at the theoretical level only very rarely in recent decades. The standard reference concerning theory was and still is the German media education community; international approaches beyond that are not common. Furthermore, academic discourse on media education has had little influence on practice in and beyond schools. In 2001, a media education decree (Grundsatzerlaß Medienerziehung) was introduced based on Baacke’s (1996) holistic approach to media literacy, which established media education as an interdisciplinary objective for all subjects and all school curricula; it was updated in 2012 to include new ICTs (BMBF 2014). Although this interdisciplinary approach (addressing all kinds of media, with media education as part of every school subject) is very positive in theory, it has turned out to be problematic in practice because the vague wording of the decree results in most teachers not feeling responsible for teaching media literacy. This is exacerbated by media literacy education not being a central part of pre-service and in-service teacher training. The situation is similar in the case of kindergartens. In 2009, a nationwide curriculum (Bildungsrahmenplan) was published, in which the term literacy (as English term) is mentioned only in relation to reading books; there is one paragraph on media and the value of achieving media competence (Medienkompetenz) at an early age, but no suggestions as to how this might be realized. Due to a restructuring within the Ministry of Education in 2013, policy shifted from a holistic approach to media literacy to a narrow focus on ICT and e-learning. This restructuring makes it particularly difficult to understand Austria’s situation for those who are not very familiar with it. A confusing fact may be the existence of two independent departments which dealt with media education before the restructuring of the Ministry of Education. One department was dedicated to the promotion of the media education decree and its holistic and hands-on concept of media education, while the other department focused on the teaching of informatics and the promotion of ICT skills. Both departments launched parallel policy strategies independent of each other. Before the restructuring of the ministry, the media education perspective was stronger, but now the focus on informatics and ICTs is dominant. The media education decree (updated in 2012 and 2014) is still valid and relevant for schools and teachers, but its promoters in the ministry have been outflanked by those who are dedicated to the field of informatics and technical skills. This leads to a separation between media education initiatives offered outside school (focus on creativity; freedom of expression; participation; citizenship) and in school (focus on computer literacy; technical skills) (Trültzsch-Wijnen 2014, 2018, forthcoming). At the beginning of 2017, the Ministry of Education published a new policy strategy, from primary school to university level, called school 4.0 (Schule 4.0), which is supported by huge technological investment (e.g. equipping primary schools with tablets and secondary schools with notebooks), in order to invest in the future workforce and economic competitiveness. With a focus on digital literacy, which is in this context understood (by the ministry) as promoting computational thinking (Wing 2011; Bocconi et  al. 2016) such as problem-solving, understanding algorithms and technical skills, this strategy draws on the ministry’s former functionalistic approaches with regard to ICTs and e-learning (introduced by the informatics department) that date from the 1980s and 90s (e.g. ECDL, EPICT, eLSA, IT@VS, etc.). As part of this school 4.0 initiative, a pilot project was launched by the ministry including 200 schools in the school year 2017–18. The project focused on the implementation of programmable IoToys (BeeBots, LegoWeDo) in primary schools (for pupils aged 6–10) and aimed to teach the principles of robotics and coding from the first school year onwards (Himpsl-Gutermann 176

Policies and teachers’ attitudes

et al. 2017). In addition, starting from the school year 2018–19, the ministry plans to require teachers to become digitally literate through the announcement of a list of ICT-related competencies that must be mastered by student teachers (primary and secondary levels) in order to get a full teaching assignment following their teaching studies. Despite that, so far, media education has only been marginally integrated into teacher training curricula and in in-service teacher training programmes. Thus, teachers are largely left on their own to achieve these competencies. The school 4.0 policy has yet to affect daily school routines, and time will show if it ever does so. One less successful example from the past was a similar national policy strategy (eFIT), introduced in 2000, drawing on the EC’s Lisbon strategy. Apart from improving the technical infrastructure, that initiative had little effect on daily school life because it focused too narrowly on technical skills and was only promoted by the community of informatics teachers, without motivating the majority of teachers with fewer ICT skills and less enthusiasm. Rather than overcoming the pessimism about media among teachers, the eFIT strategy increased it, because the holistic view of media education was lost (Trültzsch-Wijnen 2014). The narrow focus of the new school 4.0 strategy on digital skills and computational thinking, and the ministry’s approach of forcing teachers to acquire technical skills, might produce similar results; and rather than convincing teachers to integrate media literacy education into their classes, it might increase their resistance. However, besides the school 4.0 strategy that only focuses on new media developments, broader approaches to media education do exist, too. They draw on the aforementioned media education decree, which still offers relevant guidance to schools and teachers. This kind of media education mostly depends on the initiative of individual teachers or individual schools, and it is realized through school projects that are often supported by NGOs in the field of media education or community media. Such initiatives mainly focus on hands-on, creative and holistic media projects. Unfortunately, these projects are mostly found at secondary school level, with only a few projects addressing younger children (especially 3–8 years). This may reflect traditional and protectionist concepts of childhood and be rooted in inoculative media education approaches (Masterman 1986, 1988) that are still supported by parents and teachers when it comes to younger children. These concepts approach primary and nursery schools as walled gardens free from (digital/screen) media and are fed by reductionist and media pessimistic discourses (e.g. see Spitzer 2007, 2012). A notable exception is the media education strategy of the Municipal School Council of Vienna, which takes a holistic approach to media education and promotes an interdisciplinary pedagogy, including all media from print to IoToys, starting from kindergarten (MeKi – Medienkindergarten), with a focus on hands-on media experience in multimodal media environments.

Digital and media literacy in Iceland Media education is not prominent in Icelandic school curricula (Þórarinsdóttir and Pálsdóttir 2015) and is not a systematic part of teacher education (Jökulsson 2003; Jónsson 2008). This apparent lack of focus on media education contrasts with an overall enthusiasm in Icelandic schools for information technology, which dates back to the 1980s (Wilde 2011). Following individual teacher initiatives, ‘computer science’ as a subject appeared in the 1989 primary school curriculum, aimed at teaching the technical skills required to use operating systems, word-processing programs and spreadsheet software. Access to computers was limited and not always available for teaching purposes (Wilde 2011). Nevertheless, the efforts of these early innovators convinced many in the education system that not only should ICTs be integrated in the school system but also that a clear government 177

Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen et al.

policy was needed. In 1996, the Icelandic Ministry of Education issued the first comprehensive policy document on information technologies (Menntamálaráðuneytið [Ministry of Education] 1996; IBM Consulting 2002), which highlighted the importance of digital technology for the future economy. Not only was it considered important for schools to teach students how to use new technologies, they were also to be used as tools in all subjects on the school curriculum. ICTs should be both a new subject and an integral part of all other school subjects. This was, at least partly, implemented in the new general national curricula for kindergartens, primary schools and junior colleges in Iceland, issued in 1999 (Arnardóttir 2007; Wilde 2011). Two things are noteworthy here: first, the emphasis on the importance of ICT for the future economy and the accompanying emphasis on equipping students with the technical skills required to use a computer; and second, the specific curriculum requirement for computers to be available in all kindergartens. Administration and funding for both kindergartens and primary schools is, however, the responsibility of local authorities. Therefore, there was considerable variability in the extent to which such policies actually resulted in funding being provided to buy the necessary equipment. Furthermore, all of the 1999 curricula emphasized that children should be encouraged to cooperate when using computers and every child should be given the opportunity to use a computer, since not all children would have access to a computer at home (Menntamálaráðuneytið [Ministry of Education] 1999a). This gave teachers considerable freedom in how they used computers in their classrooms. A study examining the use of ICT in six kindergartens showed a wide variety of uses and extents to which children were allowed to experiment with using computers (Norðdahl and Jónsdóttir 2005). The specific reasons for the requirement in the 1999 curriculum for kindergartens to make computers available to children are not stated. In any case, digital literacy (or related concepts) was not mentioned explicitly in the curriculum for kindergartens. For primary schools, the goals were more clearly defined, with the 1999 primary school curriculum being highly prescriptive and characterized by standardized education outcomes, national testing and accountability as means of improving education (Sigþórsson 2008). One of the outcomes was computer literacy, which was defined broadly as the ability to use ICT (Menntamálaráðuneytið [Ministry of Education] 1999b). Five years after the introduction of the 1999 curriculum, students at the Icelandic University of Education investigated the implementation of the new curriculum by interviewing teachers and undertaking participant observation in schools (Johannsdottir and Gudmundsdottir 2004). They concluded that although many teachers were enthusiastic about the possibilities offered by ICT, they found it difficult to put theory into practice because of practical limitations, such as the low number of available devices and the poor quality of Internet connections, and because training in ICT had not been part of their teacher education. The first decade of the new millennium saw the publication of a succession of new and revised strategic plans to strengthen and define the role of ICT in schools and in the education system as a whole. The 1996 plan, entitled Through the Power of Information, was followed in 2001 by A Head Start for the Future and in 2005 by Boldness with Responsibility (Menntamálaráðuneytið [Ministry of Education] 2005). All these policy directives emphasized the value of information technology for the economy, but digital literacy received little attention. The 2008 financial crisis that hit the world economy was felt particularly hard in Iceland and not only diverted government institutions’ attention away from developing effective strategic plans, but virtually wiped out school budgets for staff development and the renewal of equipment. At the same time, the general debate on the education system was becoming

178

Policies and teachers’ attitudes

heavily influenced by the 2003 and 2006 PISA studies, which showed a decline in reading comprehension compared to 2001. The result was a 2014 policy document which, rather pessimistically, called for a ‘back-to-basics’ approach and improvements to Iceland’s education system (see Mennta – og menningarmálaráðuneytið [Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs] 2014). Quite paradoxically, however, at about the same time, a steering group was convened to establish a plan for the increased use of digital technologies in kindergartens, primary schools and junior colleges (Capacent 2014). Subsequently, many municipalities set their own agendas. For example, the city of Reykjavík, in a 2014 policy document, published its vision of school becoming a ‘digital environment rather than just a building’ (Reykjavíkurborg 2014). The second largest municipality in Iceland, Kópavogur, decided to provide all primary school students with iPads. Iceland is, thus, in a curious position: early enthusiasm has been replaced not so much by pessimism, but rather by conflicting policy guidance, regional variation in the provision of resources and considerable confusion about the way forward.

Conclusion: policy visions, implementation and teacher attitudes The conceptualization of media literacy and digital literacy is currently rather controversial on the academic as well as on the policy level; in our analysis we followed the dominant definitions of the EU and UNESCO. Comparing approaches to media education in the three countries discussed in this chapter, some general trends across Europe can be identified, including a shift in policy wording from ‘media’ toward ‘digital’ literacy, with vague formulations and guidelines, inconsistencies, patchy implementation in kindergarten and classroom settings and insufficient support for teachers. This is especially marked in Germany, where education is devolved to the 16 federal states, resulting in profound differences in media, or digital, education. There are also many commonalities between federalist Germany and Austria, which has a centralist school system, and some differences with Iceland. While the promotion of digital literacy and the introduction of new media developments was pushed forward in Iceland for many years and declined after 2008, this approach started later in Germany and Austria, but it is a priority in today’s media education policies of these two countries. And while teachers in Germany and Austria tend to play a waiting game when it comes to the realization of such policies in class, Icelandic schools and teachers seem to be more progressive. This raises questions about the reasons for these commonalities in the German-language area and the differences with Iceland. Similar to McDougall et al. (2017), we identified teachers’ personal engagement and willingness as critical for the successful implementation of media and digital literacy policies. The three countries discussed formally acknowledge that media and digital literacy are important – but without clearly distinguishing definitions. In Germany and Austria, top-down strategies for implementing digital literacy and media education exist, but they require teachers to search actively for support and materials that provide guidance on how to integrate this in their daily classroom teaching. Research has shown that kindergarten and primary school teachers often adopt a critical and protectionist position regarding children’s media use (see Six and Gimmler 2007; Böttcher et al. 2017). This is accompanied by a general lack of personal interest in and motivation for engaging with new technologies – especially in the case of teachers older than 45, who lack media literacy training and are less active users of digital devices (Six and Gimmler 2007; Böttcher et al. 2017). This age group is still the majority among teachers in Germany (Six and Gimmler 2007; Böttcher et al. 2017), as well as in Austria.

179

Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen et al.

In contrast, in Iceland, strong policies were in place until the 2008 economic crisis, after which digital literacy and media education were much less visible in the curriculum. Nevertheless, teachers and parents have been found to be willing to enable children to engage with ICT at school through innovative approaches promoted by engaged teachers and communities, despite the absence of media education from kindergarten and primary school curricula (Ágústdóttir 2013; Arnarsdóttir et  al. 2014). Furthermore, while many Austrian teachers appear to have no feeling of responsibility to teach media literacy due to the vague formulation of the media education decree (Trültzsch-Wijnen 2014), Iceland’s teachers share the enthusiasm for media exhibited in Iceland and other Nordic countries since the mid-1990s. Our findings are particularly surprising, given that media education is (at least partly) integrated in pre-service teacher training in Austria (Trültzsch-Wijnen 2014) and Germany (Kammerl and Hasebrink 2013), but not in Iceland. In Iceland, teachers seem to have a great interest in new media developments (see, for example, Jakobsdóttir et al. 2014), although not being educated like in Germany or Austria. In Austria, in-service teacher training focused on digital literacy, which is often dependent on the number of teachers interested and motivated to attend relevant courses, has to be cancelled frequently. Similarly, in Germany, only a few teachers attend further training in media and digital literacy (Six and Gimmler 2007). Six and Gimmler (2007) also reveal a gap between teachers’ disclosed and actual (measured) media and digital literacy skills, and show a lack of teaching strategies. Although we were not able to test these arguments empirically (it would be a promising direction for future research), there are some hints about the reasons for these differences. One explanation can be found in studies on the ‘media habitus’ of teachers, referring to Bourdieu’s (1979) field theory, conducted in Germany (Biermann 2009; Kommer 2010) and Austria (Mutsch 2012; Swertz 2012). In both countries, it appears that many teachers and student teachers regard screen media as ‘inappropriate’ – especially for younger children. Research on student teachers in primary (Mutsch 2012) and elementary (Swertz 2012) education shows that this negative attitude is part of an internalized professional habitus as a future teacher. Thus, it seems that media pessimism is not so much a question of age, but rather a question of professional habitus as a teacher. Even student teachers, who use smartphones and tablets in their private lives, have been found to consider screen media frivolous and, therefore, believe they should be avoided in kindergarten and primary school settings (Mutsch 2012; Swertz 2012). This leads to the question of whether there is a kind of culturally constructed professional habitus that is passed from one teacher generation to the next, and whether the characteristics of this habitus (concerning media in particular) differs across countries and cultures – in our case, between Nordic and German-speaking countries. The notion of a legacy attitude passed from generation to generation might explain the case of Austria where, before 2007, student teachers were educated by practising teachers. However, this does not apply to Germany and Iceland and, possibly, other countries (as mentioned in del Mar Grandio et al. (2017) and McDougall et al. (2017); see above). Another explanation for the differences in teachers’ attitudes and engagement in Iceland, Germany and Austria might be the different concepts of childhood prevailing in Nordic countries and in the German-language area. In Germany and Austria there is a rather conservative concept of childhood which considers kindergarten as a walled garden, free from media, while in Iceland postmodern concepts of childhood tend to dominate, as argued in the respective sections of the chapter. Trültzsch-Wijnen and Zezulkova (forthcoming) show that notions of childhood in relation to specific political, societal and cultural developments can promote media anxiety and media pessimism (see also Barker and Petley 1997; Drotner 1999; Buckingham 2011). Further research is needed to explain such cultural differences more fully. Iceland, 180

Policies and teachers’ attitudes

Germany and Austria serve as illustrative examples of the many inconsistencies throughout Europe and beyond. This chapter argues for a holistic approach to media literacy that refers to information-based and media-based literacy concepts alike and includes skills and competencies, as well as cultural practices, with regard to media. The actual tendency of equating digital literacy with media literacy is criticized because children, adolescents and adults use both digital as well as non-digital media and have to become media-savvy in all life contexts – on- and offline. The examples from Iceland, Germany and Austria show that media literacy policies do not sufficiently address children at an age younger than eight. Furthermore, it turns out that policy strategies, teacher education and political action can only succeed in promoting high-quality media and digital literacy education if teachers are enthusiastic and have positive attitudes toward new media developments. This could perhaps also serve as an explanation why McDougall et al. (2017) could not identify a relation between the implementation of media and digital literacy in the curriculum as well as in daily school life and the training of teachers. Actively lived media education at school seems to depend to a large extent on teachers’ motivation. However, teachers’ attitudes may have cultural roots and might be difficult to change by enforcing policy. It is a difficult and sensible task that must be addressed in long-term strategies that might vary according to different countries and cultures.

References Ágústsdóttir, V. F. (2013). Upplýsingatækni í grunnskólum. Reykjavík: Samband Íslenskra Sveitarfélaga. Ala-Mutka, K. (2011). Mapping Digital Competence: Towards a Conceptual Understanding. Luxembourg: EU. Arnarsdottir, A. V., Gretarsdottir, A., Gylfadottir, E. D., Leifsdottir, H. H., and Kristjansdottir, S. (2014). Tillögur að stefnu um nýtingu upplýsingatækni í uppeldis og menntastarfi leikskóla Hafnarfjarðar. Hafnarfjordur, Sveitarfelagid Hafnarfjordur. Arnardóttir, H. (2007). Verkfæri, miðill, samskiptatól eða kennari: Hugmyndir um notkun tölvunnar í skólastarfi síðustu 30 ár. Netla – Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun. Baacke, D. (1996). Medienkompetenz als Netzwerk. Reichweite und Fokussierung eines Begriffs, der Konjunktur hat. medien praktisch – Zeitschrift für Medienpädagogik, 20(2): 4–10. Baacke, D. (1998). Medienkompetenz: Herkunft, Reichweite und strategische Bedeutung eines Begriffs. In: H. Kubicek (ed.), Lernort Multimedia (pp. 22–27). Heidelberg: Decker. Barker, M., and Petley, J. (1997). Ill Effects: The Media/Violence Debate. London: Routledge. Bawden, D. (2008). Origins and concepts of digital literacy. In: C. Lankshear and M. Knobel (eds.), Digital Literacies: Concepts, Policies and Practices (pp. 17–32). New York: Peter Lang. Bazalgette, C., and Buckingham, D. (2013). Literacy, media and multimodality: a critical response. Literacy, 47(2): 95–102. Bearne, E., and Wolstonecroft, H. (2007). Visual Approaches to Teaching Writing: Multimodal Literacy. London: Paul Chapman. Belshaw, D. (2012). What is “digital literacy”? A pragmatic investigation. Dissertation, Durham University. Biermann, R. (2009). Der mediale Habitus von Lehramtsstudierenden: Eine quantitative Studie zum Medienhandeln angehender Lehrpersonen. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. BMBF (2014). Unterrichtsprinzip Medienerziehung – Grundsatzerlass. Vienna: Bundesministerium für Bildung und Frauen. Available at: https://bildung.bmbwf.gv.at/schulen/unterricht/uek/medienerziehung_5796.pdf (accessed 29 April 2019). Bocconi, S., Chioccariello, A., Dettori, G., Ferrari, A., and Engelhard, K. (2016). Developing Computational Thinking in Compulsory Education: Implications for Policy and Practice. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. Böttcher, S., Kohte, W., Winge, S., and Busch, D. (2017). Evaluation des Gesetzes zur Förderung und Betreuung von Kindern in Tageseinrichtungen und in Tagespflege des Landes Sachsen-Anhalt. Halle: ZSH. Available at: http://padoka.landtag.sachsen-anhalt.de/files/drs/wp7/drs/d1855lun.pdf (accessed 20 October 2017). 181

Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen et al.

Bourdieu, P. (1979). La distinction: critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Éditions de Minuit. Brečko, B., and Ferrari, A. (2016). The Digital Competence Framework for Consumers. Luxembourg: EU. Buckingham, D. (2003). Media Education: Literacy, Learning and Contemporary Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Buckingham, D. (2007). Beyond Technology: Children’s Learning in the Age of Digital Culture. Cambridge: Polity. Buckingham, D. (2009). The future of media literacy in the digital age: some challenges for policy and practice. In: P. Vernier (ed.), EuroMeduc. Media Literacy in Europe. Controversies, Challenges and Perspectives (pp. 13–24). Brussels: EuroMeduc. Buckingham, D. (2011). The Material Child: Growing Up in the Consumer Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Burn, A. (2009). The case of rebellion: researching multimodal texts. In: J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear and D. J. Leu (eds.), Handbook of Research on New Literacies (pp. 151–178). London: Routledge. Burnett, C. (2010). Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings: a review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(3): 247–270. BZgA (Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung) (2015). Kinder durch die Welt der Medien begleiten. Available at: www.kindergesundheit-info.de/themen/medien/mediennutzung/medienerziehung/ (accessed 20 October 2017). Capacent (2014). Skýrsla starfshóps um upplýsingatækni í skólastarfi – tillögur til úrbóta. Reykjavík: Capacent. Carretero, S., Vuorikari, R., and Punie, Y. (2017). The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens: With Eight Proficiency Levels and Examples of Use. Luxembourg: EU. Chaudron, S. (2015). Young Children (0–8) and Digital Technology: A Qualitative Exploratory Study across Seven Countries. Luxembourg: JRC. Cope, C., and Kalantzis, M. (eds.) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. Melbourne: Macmillan. del Mar Grandio, M., Dilli, S., and O’Neill, B. (2017). Legal frameworks for media and information literacy. In: D. Frau-Meigs, I. Velez and J. Flores Michel (eds.), Public Policies in Media and Information Literacy in Europe: Cross-Country Comparisons (pp. 116–129). London: Routledge. Deutscher Bundestag Drucksache (2011). Zweiter Zwischenbericht der Enquete-Kommission “Internet und digitale Gesellschaft”: Medienkompetenz. Berlin: Bundestag Drucksache 17/7286. Available at: http://dipbt. bundestag.de/doc/btd/17/072/1707286.pdf (accessed 20 October 2017). Drotner, K. (1999). Dangerous media? Panic discourses and dilemmas of modernity. Paedagogica Historica, 35(3): 593–691. Drotner, K., Frau-Meigs, D., Kotilainen, S., and Uusitalo, N. (2017). The double bind of media and information literacy: a critical view on public policy discourses about MIL. In: D. Frau-Meigs, I. Velez and J. Flores Michel (eds.), Public Policies in Media and Information Literacy in Europe: CrossCountry Comparisons (pp. 269–283). London: Routledge. EC (2007). A European Approach to Media Literacy in the Digital Environment: Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. Available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A52007DC0833 (accessed 19 July 2016). EC (2016). A New Skills Agenda for Europe: Working together to strengthen human capital, employability and competitiveness. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2016/EN/1-2016-381EN-F1-1.PDF (accessed 10 July 2018). EC (2017). Strengthening European Identity through Education and Culture: The European Commission’s Contribution to the Leaders’ Meeting in Gothenburg, 17 November 2017. Available at: https://ec.europa. eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/communication-strengthening-european-identity-educationculture_en.pdf (accessed 10 November 2018). EC (2018a). Proposal for a Council Recommendation on Key Competences for LifeLong Learning. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/education/sites/education/files/recommendation-key-competences-lifelonglearning.pdf (accessed 10 July 2018). EC (2018b). Communication on the Digital Education Action Plan. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/education/ sites/education/files/digital-education-action-plan.pdf (accessed 10 July 2018). Eder, S., Lehmann, A., Lenich, A., Roboom, S., Seiler, G., and Wentzel, J. (2013). Medienkompetenz – KiTas NRW. Düsseldorf: LfM. Erstad, O. (2010). Educating the digital generation: exploring media literacy for the 21st century. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 5(1): 56–72.

182

Policies and teachers’ attitudes

Ferrari, A. (2013). DIGCOMP: A Framework for Developing and Understanding Digital Competence in Europe. Luxembourg: EU. Fielder, A., Vuorikari, R., Rodríguez-Priego, N., and Punie, Y. (2016). Background Review for Developing the Digital Competence Framework for Consumers: A Snapshot of Hot-button Issues and Recent Literature. Luxembourg: EU. Fraillon, J., Schulz, W., and Ainley, J. (2013). Information Literacy Study: Assessment Framework, Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Available at: https://research.acer. edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=ict_literacy (accessed 18 July 2018). Frau-Meigs, D., Arnoldi, P., Berger, G., Bevort, E., Bruillard, E., Celot, P., et  al. (2014). UNESCO Paris Declaration of Media and Information Literacy. Available at: www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/ MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CI/CI/pdf/In_Focus/paris_mil_declaration_final.pdf (accessed 24 June 2016). Frau-Meigs, D., Velez, I., and Flores Michel, J. (eds) (2017). Public Policies in Media and Information Literacy in Europe: Cross-Country Comparisons. London: Routledge. Gilster, P. (1997). Digital Literacy. New York: Wiley. Hartai, L. (2014). EMEDUS Report on Formal Media Education in Europe. Available at: https://eavi.eu/ wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Media-Education-in-European-Schools-2.pdf (accessed 2 February 2018). Himpsl-Gutermann, K., Brandhofer, G., Bachinger, A., and Steiner, M. (2017). Das Projekt “Denken lernen – Probleme lösen (DLPL)”: Etablierung von Education Innovation Studios (EIS) in Österreich zur Stärkung der informatischen Grundbildung mit Schwerpunkt Primarstufe. Medienimpulse 2/2017. Available at: www.medienimpulse.at/pdf/Medienimpulse_Das_Projekt__Denken_lernen___Probleme_loesen__ DLPL__Himpsl_Gutermann_20170620.pdf (accessed 2 February 2018). Hobbs, R. (1998). The seven great debates in the media literacy movement. Journal of Communication, Winter 1998: 16–32. IBM Consulting (2002). Úttekt á verkefninu um íslenska upplýsingasamfélagið. Reykjavík: Forsætisráðuneytið. Intrator, S. (2001). Teaching the media child in the digital swarm. Arts Education Policy Review, 102(6): 25–27. Jakobsdóttir, S., Hjartarson, T., and Þórhallsdóttir, B. (2014). Upplýsingatækni í skólastarfi. In: G. G. Óskarsdóttir (ed.), Starfshættir í grunnskólum (pp. 277–321). Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan. Johannsdottir, T., and Gudmundsdottir, K. (2004). Væntingar og veruleiki. Notkun upplýsingatækni í námi og kennslu í nokkrum grunnskólum á Íslandi haustið 2003. Netla – Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun. Available at: http://netla.hi.is/greinar/2004/012/index.htm (accessed 6 May 2019). Jökulsson, S. (2003). Táknvísi. In: F. H. Jónsson (ed.), Rannsóknir í félagsvísindum IV (pp. 139–147). Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan. Jónsson, I. (2008). Miðlafræðsla: Að ala börn upp í heimi margmiðlunar. B.Ed. thesis, Faculty of Education, University of Iceland. Kammerl, R., and Hasebrink, U. (2013). Media and Information Literacy Policies in Germany. Available at: http://ppemi.ens-cachan.fr/data/media/colloque140528/rapports/GERMANY_2014.pdf (accessed 12 December 2017). Kampylis, P., Punie, Y., and Devine, J. (2015). Promoting Effective Digital-Age Learning: A European Framework for Digitally-Competent Educational Organisations. Luxembourg: EU. Kasinskaite-Buddeberg, I., Boade, G., and Grizzle, A. (2013). Global Media and Information Literacy Assessment Framework: Country Readiness and Competencies. Paris: UNESCO. KBoM (Keine Bildung ohne Medien) (2009). Medienpädagogisches Manifest: Keine Bildung ohne Medien! Available at: www.keine-bildung-ohne-medien.de/medienpaedagogisches-manifest/ (accessed 2 February 2018). Kellner, D., and Share, J. (2005). Toward critical media literacy: core concepts, debates, organizations, and policy. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26(3): 369–386. KMK (Kultusministerkonferenz) (2016). Bildung in der digitalen Welt Strategie der Kultusministerkonferenz. Bremen: KMK. Available at: www.kmk.org/fileadmin/Dateien/pdf/PresseUndAktuelles/2016/ Bildung_digitale_Welt_Webversion.pdf (accessed 12 October 2017). Kommer, S. (2010). Kompetenter Medienumgang? Eine qualitative Untersuchung zum medialen Habitus und zur Medienkompetenz von SchülerInnen und Lehramtsstudierenden. Opladen: Budrich UniPress. Kontovourki, S., Garoufallou, E., Ivarsson, L., Klein, M., Korkeamaki, R. L., Koutsomiha, D., et  al. (2017). Digital Literacy in the Early Years: Practices in Formal Settings, Teacher Education, and the Role of Informal Learning Spaces: A Review of the Literature. COST ACTION IS1410. Available at: http:// digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/WG2-LR-March-2017-v2.pdf (accessed 11 July 2018).

183

Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen et al.

Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Lankshear, C., and Knobel, M. (2003). New Literacies, Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning. Buckingham: Open University Press. Lemos, G., and Nascimbeni, F. (eds.) (2016). ELINET Position Paper on Digital Literacies. Available at: www.eli-net.eu/fileadmin/ELINET/Redaktion/Amsterdam_conference/ELINET_Digital_Literacy_ Position_Paper.pdf (accessed 14 August 2018). Livingstone, S. (2004). Media literacy and the challenge of new information and communication technologies. Communication Review, 7(1): 3–14. Livingstone, S., Van Couvering, N., and Thumin, N. (2008). Converging traditions of research on media and information literacies: disciplinary, critical, and methodological issues. In: J. Coiro, M. Knobel, C. Lankshear and D. J. Leu (eds.), Handbook of Research on New Literacies (pp. 103–132). New York and London: Routledge. Livingstone, S., Wijnen, C. W., Papaioannou, T., Costa, C., and Grandío, M. (2014). Situating media literacy in the changing media environment: critical insights from European research on audiences. In: N. Carpentier, K. C. Schroder and L. Hallett (eds.), Audience Transformations: Shifting Audience Positions in Late Modernity (pp. 210–227). New York and London: Routledge. LMZ (Landesmedienzentrum Baden-Württemberg) (2012). Der Spitzer geht um: Stellungnahme zu Thesen Spitzers. Available at: www.lmz-bw.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Medienbildung_MCO/ handouts/2012_09_12_Stellungnahme_zu_Thesen__Spitzer.pdf (accessed 20 October 2017). LSA (Land Sachsen-Anhalt) Ministerium für Bildung (2017). Bildung in einer digitalen Welt durch den Einsatz digitaler Medien und Werkzeuge an den Schulen des Landes Sachsen Anhalt: Entwurf für ein Landeskonzept. Magdeburg: MfB. Available at: https://mb.sachsen-anhalt.de/fileadmin/Bibliothek/Politik_und_ Verwaltung/MK/MK/Dokumente/Landeskonzept_Digitale_Bildung.pdf (accessed 12 October 2017). Marsh, J., Kontovourki, S., Tafa, E., and Salomaa, S. (2017). Developing Digital Literacy in Early Years Settings: Professional Development Needs for Practitioners. A White Paper for COST Action IS1410. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/WG2-LR-jan-2017.pdf (accessed 12 July 2018). Masterman, L. (1986). Teaching the Media. London: Comedia. Masterman, L. (1988). The Development of Media Education in Europe. Strasbourg: Europarat. McDougall, J., Türkoglu, N., and Kanizaj, I. (2017). Training and capacity-building in media and information literacy. In: D. Frau-Meigs, I. Velez and J. Flores Michel (eds.), Public Policies in Media and Information Literacy in Europe: Cross-Country Comparisons (pp. 130–158). London: Routledge. Mennta- og menningarmálaráðuneytið (2014). Hvítbók um umbætur í menntun. Reykjavík: Mennta- og menningarmálaráðuneytið. Menntamálaráðuneytið (1996). Í krafti upplýsinga: Tillögur menntamálaráðuneytisins um menntun, menningu og upplýsingatækni 1996–1999. Reykjavík: Menntamálaráðuneytið. Menntamálaráðuneytið (1999a). Aðalnámskrá leikskóla. Reykjavík: Menntamálaráðuneytið. Menntamálaráðuneytið (1999b). Aðalnámskrá grunnskóla. Reykjavík: Menntamálaráðuneytið. Menntamálaráðuneytið (2005). Áræði með ábyrgð: Stefna menntamálaráðuneytis um upplýsingatækni í menntun, menningu og vísindum 2005–2008. Reykjavík: Menntamálaráðuneytið. Monitor Lehrerbildung (MLB) (2018). Lehramtsstudien in der digitalen Welt – Professionelle Vorbereitung auf den Unterricht mit digitalen Medien?! Available at: www.che.de/downloads/Monitor_Lehrerbildung_ Broschuere_Lehramtsstudium_in_der_digitalen_Welt.pdf (accessed 28 June 2018). Mutsch, U. (2012). Der mediale Habitus von Volksschulkindern und ihren Lehrerinnen und Lehrern: Eine empirische Studie zur Genese schulischer Medienkultur als Aushandlungsprozess habituellen Medienhandelns. Dissertation, University of Vienna. Available at: http://othes.univie.ac.at/23971/1/2012-10-18_0104284.pdf (accessed 29 April 2019). Narey, M. (ed.) (2008). Making Meaning: Constructing Multimodal Perspectives of Language, Literacy, and Learning through Arts-Based Early Childhood Education. New York: Springer. Neuß, N. (2013). Medienkompetenz in der frühen Kindheit. In: Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend (ed.), Medienkompetenzförderung für Kinder und Jugendliche: Eine Bestandsaufnahme. Berlin: BMfSFJ. Available at: www.bmfsfj.de/blob/94296/9ba82610849b8d50ee3117286f96ee56/ medienkompetenzfoerderug-fuer-kinder-und-jugendliche-data.pdf (accessed 20 October 2017). New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1): 60–92. NMK (Netzwerk Medienkompetenz) (2017). Netzwerk Medienkompetenz Sachsen-Anhalt. Available at: www.medien-kompetenz-netzwerk.de/ (accessed 12 October 2017).

184

Policies and teachers’ attitudes

Norðdahl, K., and Jónsdóttir, S. (2005). Notkun upplýsinga- og samskiptatækni í sex leikskólum. Netla – Veftímarit um uppeldi og menntun. Reykjavík: Rannsóknastofnun Kennaraháskóla Íslands. Pérez Tornero, J. M., and Varis, T. (2010). Media Literacy and New Humanism. Moscow: UNESCO. Available at: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0019/001921/192134e.pdf (accessed 19 July 2016). Reykjavíkurborg (2014). Notkun snjalltækja í skólastarfi. Fundargerð skóla- og frístundasviðs. 67. fundur / fskj. 2.1 Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., and Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a Research Agenda for the Digital Literacy Practices of Young Children. A White Paper for COST Action IS1410. Available at: http:// digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/DigiLitEYWP.pdf (accessed 2 February 2018). Siegert, B. (2017). After the media: the textility of cultural techniques. In: M. T. Cruz (ed.), Media Theory and Cultural Technologies: In Memoriam Friedrich Kittler (pp. 1–21). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholar Press. Sigþórsson, R. (2008). Mat í þágu náms eða nám í þágu mats: Samræmd próf, kennsluhugmyndir kennara, kennsla og nám í náttúrufræði og íslensku í fjórum íslenskum grunnskólum. PhD thesis. Reykjavík: Kennaraháskóli Íslands. Six, U., and Gimmler, R. (2007). Die Förderung von Medienkompetenz im Kindergarten: Eine empirische Studie zu Bedingungen und Handlungsformen der Medienerziehung. Berlin: Vistas. Spitzer, M. (2007). Vorsicht Bildschirm: Elektronische Medien, Gehirnentwicklung, Gesundheit und Gesellschaft. 4th edition. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta. Spitzer, M. (2012). Digitale Demenz: Wie wir uns und unsere Kinder um den Verstand bringen. Munich: Droemer Knaur Verlag. Stein, P. (2009). Multimodal instructional practices. In: D. Frau-Meigs, I. Velez and J. Flores Michel (eds.), Public Policies in Media and Information Literacy in Europe: Cross-Country Comparisons (pp. 871–898). London: Routledge. Street, B. (1995). Social Literacies: Critical Approaches to Literacy in Development, Ethnography and Education. London: Longman. Süss, D., Lampert, C., and Wijnen, Christine W. (2018). Medienpädagogik: Ein Studienbuch zur Einführung. 3rd edition. Wiesbaden: Springer. Swertz, C. (2012). Mit Medien bewusst umgehen: Förderung von Medienkompetenz im Kindergartenalter. Linz: Verlag Unsere Kinder. Þórarinsdóttir, Þ. T., and Pálsdóttir, Á. (2015). Information literacy instruction: theory and practice. In: H. Ólafs and T. Heijstra (eds.), Rannsóknir í félagsvísindum XVI (pp. 1–12). Reykjavík: University of Iceland. Trepte, S., Teutsch, D., Masur, P. K., Eicher, C., Fischer, M., Hennhöfer, A., and Lind, F. (2015). Do people know about privacy and data protection strategies? Towards the “Online Privacy Literacy Scale” (OPLIS). In: S. Gutwirth, R. Leenes and P. de Hert (eds.), Reforming European Data Protection Law (pp. 333–365). Dordrecht: Springer. Trültzsch-Wijnen, Christine W. (2014). Media and Information Literacy Policies in Austria (2013). National Report ANR/TRANSLIT/COST “Transforming Audiences/Transforming Societies”. Available at: http://ppemi.ens-cachan.fr/data/media/colloque140528/rapports/AUSTRIA_2014.pdf (accessed 29 April 2019). Trültzsch-Wijnen, C. W. (2018). Schule 4.0 – Digitale Bildung aus österreichischer Perspektive. Medien + erziehung, 62(5): 34–37. Trültzsch-Wijnen, C. W., and Zezulkova, M. (forthcoming). Anxiety, preservation and censorship as hints to understanding media panic discourse: case of German-speaking countries. In: L. Tsaliki and D. Chronaki (eds.), Discourses of Anxiety about Childhood and Youth across Cultures. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Trültzsch-Wijnen, C. W., Murru, M. F., and Papioannou, T. (2017). Definitions and values of media and information literacy in a historical context. In: D. Frau-Meigs, I. Velez and J. Flores Michel (eds.), Public Policies in Media and Information Literacy in Europe: Cross-Country Comparisons (pp. 91–115). London: Routledge. Tyner, K. (1998). Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information. London and Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Uusitalo, N. (2010). Constructing media literacy as a civic competence. In: S. Kotilainen and S. B. Arnolgs-Garnlund (eds.), Media Literacy Education: Nordic Perspectives (pp. 67–69). Gothenburg: Nordicom.

185

Christine W. Trültzsch-Wijnen et al.

Vuorikari, R., Punie, Y., Carretero, S., and van den Brande, L. (2016). DigComp 2.0: The Digital Competence Framework for Citizens. Update Phase 1: The Conceptual Reference Model. Luxembourg: EU. Wilde, M. A. G. (2011). Tölvu- og netvæðing menntakerfisins: Frá upphafi til aldamóta. M.A. thesis in history, Reykjavík, University of Iceland. Wilson, C., Grizzle, A., Tuazon, R., Akyempong, K., and Cheung, Chi-Kim (2011). Media and Information Curriculum for Teachers. Paris: UNESCO. Wing, J. M. (2011). Research Notebook: Computational Thinking-What and Why? The Link. Available at: www.cs.cmu.edu/link/research-notebook-computational-thinking-what-and-why (accessed 12 July 2018).

186

13 Pedagogical approaches to digital literacy in early years education Stavroula Kontovourki and Eufimia Tafa

Since the beginning of the 2000s, there has been much discussion about the role of digital technologies in early years education – in both early childhood educational settings and early primary classrooms (e.g. Plowman and Stephen 2003; Burnett 2010). While public discourse often focuses on the risks and (in)appropriateness of digital media use by young children, professional groups and researchers have been calling for the integration of digital tools and practices in early years education, drawing mostly on two lines of reasoning. First, it is argued that digital technologies are already part of children’s family and community lives and that the integration of technology in early education classrooms would therefore help to bridge the gap between children’s out-ofschool and in-school literacies (e.g. Parette et al. 2010; Szmodis and Columba 2013; Edwards 2016; Palaiologou 2016). Second, the inclusion of digital technologies and diverse symbolic resources in early years education is seen as an imperative for children’s later learning and participation in an ever-changing digital world (Forzani and Leu 2012; Laidlaw and Wong 2016). Ensuring access for all children, regardless of their personal and social characteristics, is then a matter of their preparation for the future as well as of educational equity (Husbye et al. 2012; Wohlwend 2015, 2017). Nevertheless, knowledge about pedagogical practices that support the integration of digital technologies in early years educational settings remains limited, especially when compared to research on older children and young people (e.g. Burnett 2010; Rhoades 2016; Kontovourki et al. 2017). This chapter contributes to filling this gap, by identifying from what is known particular pedagogical principles and teaching practices that are linked to digital media and technologies in early years classrooms. In this review, three issues have emerged as significant: first, the need to expand understandings of “appropriateness”, which featured as a key pedagogical principle across reviewed studies; second, the emphasis on reaffirming long-held pedagogical assumptions about early childhood education; and, third, the differential use of digital technologies and devices, and their pedagogical potentials. The consideration of these three issues provides the basis for discussing how early childhood literacy pedagogies may be reconfigured through the digital.

Identifying relevant research This chapter synthesizes research published from 2010 to 2017, mostly peer-reviewed journal articles, that were identified through the following keywords: digital literacy, digital 187

Stavroula Kontovourki and Eufimia Tafa

technologies, digital tools, early literacy, teaching practices, preschool, kindergarten, early childhood education. Boolean operators and truncation were used to combine keywords, while the databases of Scopus (EBSCO), ProQuest (Education and Social Sciences), and various information databases (including Google Scholar, the DigiLitEY WG5 database, and the EECERA Digital Childhoods SIG website), were used for initial and focused searches for articles. These were screened to a list of approximately 80 articles that met the following criteria: articles described research studies conducted in formal early childhood educational settings (preschools, kindergartens, early primary grades); focused on teaching practices and pedagogical approaches; and discussed the pedagogical potentials of particular digital tools and devices. This focus on pedagogies and teaching practices in formal learning spaces signifies an attempt to move beyond the consideration of stand-alone technologies and the ways those facilitate the development of particular aspects of literacy that has dominated relevant research (Burnett 2010), and rather, to also consider the ways in which such technologies help think anew key issues concerning the formal education of young literacy learners. This examination is grounded in sociocultural perspectives on literacy, which have gradually shifted researchers’ attention from the psycholinguistic processes relating to reading and writing to the acknowledgement of multiple literacies and their emergence in local and broader sociocultural contexts (Barton and Hamilton 2000). More recently, researchers have suggested that literacies and meaning-making, more broadly, may rely on multiple rather than verbal-only modes, combine print and nonprint media, fluidly cross boundaries of physical and virtual spaces, and are inextricably linked to the enactment of identities in discourse communities (Lewis et al. 2007; Baynham and Prinsloo 2009; Burnett et al. 2014; Stornaiuolo et al. 2017). Accordingly, literacy learning and pedagogy have shifted from an emphasis on the development of particular skills and competences related to reading and writing in school classrooms to the examination of the multiple dimensions that comprise meaning-making and communication across contexts. To offer an example, Green’s (2012) re-articulated 3D model posits that any literacy act simultaneously involves three dimensions: the operational-technical, which refers to the particular ways in which language, other modes, and technologies are used to make sense; the cultural-discursive, which incorporates one’s participation in discourse communities through a variety of relevant texts and technologies; and the critical-reflexive, which considers how power works, and how texts and technologies are linked to the production of selves and worlds. This model is utilized in this review, along with its expansion by Sefton-Green et al. (2016) who located the multidimensionality of literacy on micro-, meso-, and macro-levels of action: namely, the individual child with their interests and competences, the immediate family and community settings, and the broader societal, cultural, and political contexts in which practice takes place. This framework is used in the discussion of the three issues that emerged as key in this review and are presented below.

Appropriateness and digital literacy in early years education The notion of appropriateness emerged as a key pedagogical principle and was ascribed different meanings in various studies that discussed the possibilities of engaging young children in digital literacy practices. For instance, Bird and Edwards (2015) connected it primarily to the relationship between play and technology use in early childhood education. Play was, in turn, linked to developmental appropriateness, which may refer to the age-, social-, and culturally-appropriate learning activities organized for children to foster particular developmental paths despite individual differences (Hesterman 2013). Yet, as commodified in official policies and curricula, developmental appropriateness refers to those activities that enhance children’s learning as defined in 188

Pedagogical approaches to digital literacy

pre-determined programmes (Hesterman 2013). This often leads to cautions against the use of digital media and technologies in early years education, because such use is perceived to exceed children’s cognitive capacities and to hinder their imagination, social development, and play (e.g. Kerckaert et al. 2015). Researchers have countered cautions and appeared to reclaim the interconnectedness of developmental appropriateness and young children’s digital use in different ways. One group of studies focused on particular tools and applications, claiming that those actually fostered rather than hindered children’s engagement with specific aspects of the curriculum. For instance, in studies of ‘gamified’ applications it was found that these support children’s practice with specific literacy and numeracy content through interactive tasks in animated multimedia interfaces (Lynch and Redpath 2012; Laidlaw and Wong 2016; Papadakis et al. 2016; see also sections below). These studies might still imply a notion of developmental appropriateness that rests on structured curricula, fosters young children’s direct engagement with basic skills and content, and thus reinforces a rather operational-technical conceptualization of literacy. The educational potential of digital technologies is nevertheless acknowledged, and such acknowledgement counters cautions against the inappropriateness of digital use in early years education. In a second set of studies, an operational understanding of literacy that foregrounded the child as an individual with particular competencies and interests was also evident, especially in researchers’ attempts to identify specific age-appropriate practices. These included the manipulation of physical and virtual objects, and children’s reflection on this experience (Berson et al. 2014; Hsin et al. 2014); the provision of opportunities for all children to discover, make choices, explore, imagine, construct knowledge, and problem-solve, especially through multiple modes of representation – audio, music, moving and still images – and interactive technologies (Beschorner and Hutchison 2013; Fenty and Anderson 2016; Lu et al. 2017). Across studies (e.g. Hesterman 2011; Hsin et al. 2014; Lu et al. 2017), age-appropriate practices were linked to children’s development of not only cognitive but also social skills through peer and adult–child collaboration, as well as human–non-human interaction. This implies that developmental appropriateness is individual and concurrently social and that literacy learning may thus incorporate a cultural-discursive as well as an operational-technical dimension. The understanding of appropriateness as concurrently individual and social also emerged in studies that focused on play as vital to children’s learning, especially when connected to pedagogical principles such as children’s active, hands-on engagement with a variety of materials, and social interaction (Morgan 2010; Bird and Edwards 2015; Palaiologou 2016). Reviewed studies can be divided into two subsets: those where play was facilitated and supported by adults’ explicit mediation through the design of play-based experiences (e.g., Bird and Edwards 2015; Edwards and Bird 2015; Edwards 2013, 2016); and those that centred on children’s playful engagement and meaning-making with a variety of media, including digital ones. While in the former group play was rendered as a cornerstone for children’s learning that was individually appropriate and socioculturally situated; in the latter, developmental appropriateness appeared to be linked to the acknowledgement of play in children’s learning. An example of the first subgroup of studies features in Bird and Edwards’ (Bird and Edwards 2015; Edwards and Bird 2015) description of the Digital Play Framework as a tool for educators to identify ways in which play mediates learning with digital technologies. Drawing on Vygotsky’s notion of tool mediation and Hutt’s (1966) research on children’s play with novel objects (both cited by Bird and Edwards (2015) and by Edwards and Bird (2015)), these researchers identified particular steps that children potentially followed in mastering the use of devices through play: the random use of the device, the operation of its distinct functions, the relating of particular actions to what a device does, and the intentional use of the device to achieve planned actions. Further, Edwards 189

Stavroula Kontovourki and Eufimia Tafa

(2016) suggested that play might be understood as both traditional and converged (i.e. play that incorporated some sort of digital media, texts, and devices). She thus proposed a web-mapping tool to help teachers observe, plan, and implement play-based learning by focusing their attention to children’s (in-school and out-of-school) playful interactions with digital devices, nondigital means, spaces, and popular culture texts. The second subgroup of studies moves beyond the utilization of play-based experiences and the direct mediation of adults, and rather focuses on the provision of multiple opportunities to children (through inquiry, storytelling, dramatic play, as well as children’s playful engagement with digital and non-digital tools and texts) to access cultural expertise with the language, literacies, knowledge, and social practice that they gain through their everyday living (e.g. Wohlwend 2017). In such studies, the emphasis was placed on children’s digital play as childowned and participatory. For Leinonen and Sintonen (2014), this understanding of learning implied a two-phased process, wherein children first interpreted and then produced media material with an improved sense of ownership and strong participatory experiences. For Lynch and Redpath (2012), children were constituted as authoritative self-directed creators through open-ended production applications (e.g. drawing and audio recording applications, ubiquitous social networking tools). For Wohlwend (2015, 2017), children’s prior knowledge of digital media, texts, and devices was brought to school and facilitated through the teacher’s timely mediation not only to scaffold children’s potentials but to also facilitate their experimentation with worlds and identities. This latter understanding of developmental appropriateness implies a move across the microlevel of children’s interests and capacities, the meso-level of the immediate social context, and the macro-level of the broader sociopolitical and cultural contexts. Such understanding further renders children’s experiences with technologies differential and makes the critical examination of worlds and identities a key aspect of literacy learning where those technologies are used. Hence, discussions on play and developmental appropriateness rest on understandings of children as curious and energetic, and, yet, as potentially able to engage in political acts; namely, acts that relate to the ways in which children understand and re-appropriate social worlds and identities through digital and non-digital – indeed, converged, play.

Pedagogical principles and early digital literacy learning In reviewed studies, play and appropriateness were linked to child-centred pedagogies or curricula (e.g. Berson et al. 2014; Lu et al. 2017). However, researchers attributed different meanings to child-centredness, which may be recognized to adhere, on one hand, to sociocultural understandings of learning and, on the other, to inquiry-based learning. Closer to the first is the work of Bird and Edwards, discussed in the previous section. This approach focused on teachers’ explicit mediation through the design of play-based activities to expand children’s experiences with material and immaterial aspects of technology and culture (e.g. the Internet, computers, tablets, toys, or a community’s celebrations). Inquiry-based literacy learning appears in the literature as another instantiation of childcentred pedagogies and relies on a different set of principles, including children’s participation, ownership, and collaboration. These are considered key for pursuing children’s interests and questions by engaging them in a multiplicity of practices that combine different modalities and cross the boundaries of classrooms and other social spaces (e.g. Alper 2011; Hesterman 2011, 2013; Berson et al. 2014; Rhoades 2016). To offer an example, Hesterman (2011) described how children in a Reggio Emilia preschool developed a project to remake Star Wars, a favourite popular culture text. In doing so, children actively transferred what they had known from 190

Pedagogical approaches to digital literacy

popular culture to design a new movie sequel, resourcing their learning “through connecting with people (piano teachers, IT specialist, school community, family), place (school, home, public library, Tesori), technologies (computers, digital and video cameras, light tables, overhead projector, blue and white screen), and natural and processed materials (costumes, props, diorama)” (Hesterman 2011: 94). Such an approach is premised on principles like the recognition of children as resourceful meaning-makers, who cross the boundaries of media, spaces, and available designs, and co-create shared texts that link their in-school experiences with immediate and broader sociocultural contexts. Implicit above is that all children’s digital, playful learning and inquiry (either adult-directed or open-ended) is concurrently multimodal, as well as blurring the boundaries of the digital and non-digital (e.g. Wolfe and Flewitt 2010; Alper 2011; Lynch and Redpath 2012; McKee and Heydon 2014). The multimodality of texts and of the meaning-making process, and the flow among digital and non-digital means appear as principles of different pedagogies enacted in classrooms where the digital is part of literacy learning. This multiplicity and crossing were particularly evident in studies that focused on the pedagogical potentials of multiliteracies in early years classrooms (Hesterman 2011, 2013; Heydon et al. 2014; Rhoades 2016). Bringing multiliteracies to inquiry-based learning therefore appeared to expand both the modalities and the contexts of young children’s meaning-making processes; conversely, bringing inquiry-based learning to multiliteracies seemed to ensure a concrete pedagogical framework for the implementation of the pedagogical moves that were originally proposed (overt instruction, situated practice, critical framing, and transformed practice) and later reaffirmed as key knowledge processes: experiencing the known and the unknown, conceptualizing by naming and through theory, analysing functionally and critically, and applying appropriately and creatively (Cope and Kalantzis 2009). As Hesterman (2013) suggested, multiliteracies can be considered a most effective way to integrate technologies in early childhood education, because of the principles upon which it relies: a broadened definition of literacy and the utilization of technology to support individual cultural purposes and contributing to wider sociocultural knowledge. Studies that bring together inquiry-based learning and multiliteracies appear to also rely on interdisciplinarity as a principle that adheres to the organization of school knowledge. For instance, Rhoades (2016) points to the ways in which literacy learning, arts-based teaching, and processes of inquiry were facilitated through digital technologies in a multi-age preschool classroom of 3–5-year-olds in a Midwestern city in the United States. Playfulness, collectiveness, and experimentation were central in children’s appropriation of a classic book. At the same time, such learning was based on linking different disciplines and experts, including classroom teachers, artists, and librarians. The integration of new media and technologies was also evident in Husbye et al.’s (2012) study of filmmaking in preschools, kindergarten, and first grades as the space and practice for playful early literacy curricula. In these contexts, children collaborated in spontaneous and other groups to create a shared text that referenced popular culture. In this example, playful literacy pedagogies are less structured or goal-oriented than those inferred in open-ended, inquiry-based curricula. Much like in the case of inquiry-based, multiliteracies pedagogies, playful pedagogies are premised on principles that govern both the definition of text and the construction of children. Text gains meaning from and mediates context (including cultural constructions of identities), while it is concurrently materialized in drawing, writing, making prompts, pretending, animating puppets, playing with toys, and operating digital technologies; children are seen as active participants and co-producers of social meanings in shared spaces. However, in contrast to studies of inquiry-based learning (e.g. Hesterman 2011; Rhoades 2016), Husbye et al.’s (2012) study presents these spaces as not just social but also as replete with power given that children 191

Stavroula Kontovourki and Eufimia Tafa

continually negotiated the content of their shared texts, their position in the particular discourse community, and the identities they encountered and enacted in and out of school.

Digital tools and teaching practices In the previous sections, we centred on different meanings of appropriateness and pedagogy in an attempt to discuss long-held assumptions about early literacy learning and principles of early childhood education, in their transaction with the digital. In this section, we expand this discussion by focusing on teaching practices that are facilitated by particular digital tools, media, and devices. This special interest stems from the acknowledgement of the abundance of studies that have focused on the pedagogical potentials of digital tools and devices, thus foregrounding the operational-technical dimension of literacy learning (see e.g. Burnett 2010; Kontovourki et al. 2017). Even when such a dimension is emphasized, this review of the pedagogical potentials of particular tools (specifically, the Internet, the interactive whiteboard, educational computer games, e-books and applications for writing, and the tablet) indicates that differential practices and hence learning processes associated with particular tools are possible. Research has shown that although young children might be familiar with the Internet, they have different opportunities to use and learn about it. Thus, they need help to understand the purposes and functions of online resources and communication as an informational and social space (Dodge et al. 2011). By using websites, children can come to understand that these sites offer “multiple pathways [. . .] to communicate and collaborate with others” (Fantozzi 2012: 42) and allow them to connect with places they could not otherwise access, such as other classrooms in their school or beyond. To illustrate this point, Fantozzi (2012) discussed how VoiceThreads, a voice/audio recording web-based tool, offered children the opportunity to speak and/or write their comments and thus develop communication, social, and emergent literacy skills. Positive effects on children’s performance across developmental domains were also identified in Hsin et al.’s (2014) review of 87 relevant studies, where digital technologies, including web-based tools, were found to enhance children’s collaboration and interaction with others. Their review showed that in the computer area of the classroom, young children learned useful information through social interaction with their peers, which materialized in parallel play and in verbal conflicts or in the exchange words of agreement or disagreement (Lim 2012, as cited in Hsin et al. 2014). Access to the Internet is often connected with the use of interactive whiteboards in the early years classroom, and these are considered useful tools for enhancing young children’s learning. For example, Berson et al. (2014) found that by using whiteboards in a preschool classroom, children were supported to learn about a topic of interest (panda bears) that was beyond their physical reach. The researchers argued that whiteboards lent themselves to existing pedagogical practices to facilitate young children’s participation in active learning processes. Teck’s (2013) study on teachers’ uses of interactive whiteboards expanded those as she identified multiple ways in which the particular tool was used for science teaching with 5–6-year-old children in Australian schools. She noticed that whiteboards were used for introducing and presenting content, in addition to facilitating child–teacher interaction, and promoting group or individual evaluation. Similarly, Kyriakou and Higgins’ (2016) review of 16 studies of whiteboard technology affirmed the wide variation in the ways whiteboards were used in the classroom. They further found that this variation partly related to teachers’ training and support; a point which is in sync with Beam and Williams’ (2015) suggestion that children’s engagement with digital technologies was supported through teachers’ own development of digital skills.

192

Pedagogical approaches to digital literacy

The integration of computer games in early literacy learning, which appeared in many reviewed studies, was also connected to teachers’ digital knowledge and skill. Acknowledging the comparative absence of such use and related studies in early years settings, Vangsnes et al. (2012) identified different types of computer game practices that were associated with differential degrees of teacher participation. These researchers found that when educational computer games were freely implemented in kindergarten classrooms the teacher’s role was “a peripheral theme” and when computer games “[we]re brought into learning contexts, the teacher becomes a vital participant” (p. 1140); a point that indicated that the practices associated with one particular tool either challenged or reaffirmed the teacher’s traditional role. Likewise, Laidlaw and Wong (2016) discussed how gamified applications often replicated traditional teaching/learning practices, yet in a novel and more attractive format. In this sense, the gamification of early literacy practices does not necessarily realize the creative potentials of digital games in education (e.g. Gee 2003) or of more open-ended resources that may be used in less structured ways (e.g. Lynch and Redpath 2012). Nonetheless, several studies have shown that research-informed applications can help young children to create and write stories and personalized texts (Kucirkova et al. 2014; Åberg et al. 2015). Åberg et al. (2015) described how young children created digital narratives with images from the Storybird application, by selecting images and orally telling a story while the teacher recorded the children’s narrative productions. Here, the teacher’s role was found to be crucial in children’s story making; in fact, it was the teacher’s scaffolding that enabled the fulfilment of the task. Kucirkova et al. (2014) observed how 41 Spanish 4- and 5-year-olds utilized the researchinformed Our Story story-making application, along with colouring and drawing applications in order to examine children’s learning engagement with these applications during free-choice time. They concluded that children were best supported by being engaged in exploratory talk, joint problem-solving and collaborative learning, and argued that open-ended rather than drilland-practice applications facilitated children’s creative collaboration with peers. Exploratory talk, joint problem-solving, and collaborative learning were also evident in studies of children’s writing and production with photo-story software, as evident in Beam and Williams’s (2015) study in a kindergarten in the United States. Despite challenges concerning access to particular devices, including cameras and portable laptops, teachers involved in this study appreciated how thoughtful use of these applications supported children’s development of particular skills and knowledge. Children were motivated to use digital and multimodal technology; had opportunities to collaborate during drawing and writing, and to interact socially with peers; willingly participated in literacy activities; and understood that they could record their speech in drawing. Similarly, Luke et  al. (2015) showed how, by using digital cameras, children were motivated to create their own photographs and write captions representing their thoughts, observations, and understandings. Shuker and Terreni (2013) focused on young children’s production of self-authored e-books and suggested using PowerPoint as a readily accessible tool to enhance their literacy and language development, as it offered flexibility in changing arrangements and representations, linking concrete and symbolic resources, providing feedback, and dynamically linking diverse representations (Shuker and Terreni 2013: 21). The use of PowerPoint to create self-authored e-books allowed children to juxtapose photos, images, and videos with written text, and therefore made the story-writing experience more interactive and personal. While most of this research has focused on oral, visual and written text production, similar conclusions have been reached in studies on the use of digital storybooks and e-books for reading (Morgan 2013; Shuker and Terreni 2013; Brueck and Lenhart 2015). Across these studies,

193

Stavroula Kontovourki and Eufimia Tafa

emphasis was placed on how digital tools and technologies facilitated children’s motivation, engagement, and development of diverse skills, leading to expanded understandings of literacy across media. However, Brueck and Lenhart (2015) cautioned that as teachers today begin to use e-books, they should consider how to merge them in developmentally appropriate ways as potentially powerful curricular resources. Morgan (2013) suggested a variety of strategies that teachers could apply toward this end and especially in order to provide support for children with reading difficulties. Those included the provision of more opportunities for children to derive meaning from the text through multiple formats given that digital devices “encourage[d] student to learn visually but also kinesthetically” (p. 479). Accordingly, pedagogical practices found to be effective were those that made reading easier and enjoyable, while minimizing distracting features that impeded children’s understanding of texts. A final set of devices, iPads and tablets, have been found to offer distinct opportunities and benefits for literacy learning (Couse and Chen 2010; Sandvik et al. 2012; Flewitt et al. 2014) and for young children’s development of mathematical competencies (Haggerty and Mitchell 2010; Simpson et  al. 2013; Carlsen 2013; Papadakis et  al. 2016), even though there is no extensive research on their use in early years classrooms. Beschorner and Hutchison (2013) showed how iPads helped young children to work either independently or collaboratively to develop subject knowledge while reading and writing in digital contexts. Indeed, iPads have been connected to the achievement of literacy curriculum goals (Flewitt et al. 2014), including traditional print-based literacy skills and self-contained gamified literacy. This was possible for children of diverse ability levels, including those with moderate to complex cognitive and physical impairments (Lynch and Redpath 2012; Flewitt et al. 2014). In this regard, the specific affordances of different digital devices facilitated children’s learning, such as touch-screen sensitivity that prompted the development of fine motor skills and the coordination of movement and gesture. Access to online resources through digital devices also fostered children’s increased familiarity with locating, launching, and operating particular applications. These studies thus suggest that digital media can be used effectively in the early years classroom to support children’s communication and collaborative interaction, and to promote their independent, pleasurable, and inquiry-based learning. Even though acknowledging the pedagogical potentials of tablet technologies, researchers concurrently invited scholars and educators to consider the complexities of understanding young children as users of those (Rowsell and Harwood 2015). Accordingly, children should not be seen merely as users and producers of digital texts, but also as consumers of artefacts and popular culture media and images; a point that is also raised in the ways developmentally appropriate play and playful pedagogies were articulated by Wohlwend (2015, 2017) and Husbye et al. (2012), respectively. Rowsell and Harwood (2015: 145) concluded that “as educators and people who think about education, it is about sitting back, letting it go, and radically changing our ways of teaching and learning”. In the same way, Wohlwend (2015: 161) argued that a key to teaching the new basics of collaborative and productive digital literacies is the recognition that even the youngest students already bring significant knowledge about current technologies to school and that teachers need to reframe literacy curricula to build on these strengths. This clearly signals the need for pedagogues to acknowledge children’s active role in their own learning, and serves as a reminder that the teacher’s role remains central in facilitating children’s learning by ensuring a supportive, child-centred environment as well as developmentally appropriate practices, which may be differentially defined and supported. 194

Pedagogical approaches to digital literacy

Discussion Across the review of principles and pedagogies of early literacy learning and of practices linked to particular digital tools, media, and devices, it is evident that the integration of digital technologies in early years classrooms is associated with considerations not only of the medium but also of premises that undergird the education of young children. This implies the need to reconfigure early literacy pedagogy through a dual move: through thinking anew and concurrently returning to long-held assumptions about early childhood education, such as the need for appropriate, child-centred, inquiry-based, playful, interdisciplinary learning. In thinking anew, researchers have argued that early literacy pedagogy can be dynamically expanded by adapting and adopting new media and digital technologies (Rhoades 2016). However, the review of teaching practices associated to particular digital tools indicates that the actual (digital) device is not necessarily effective in expanding early literacy pedagogy. Rather, one needs to examine the ways in which it is used, in order to ensure that the device or software promotes, for instance, children’s independent, interdisciplinary learning that could potentially cross the boundaries of spaces and rely on a variety of meaning-making resources. Similarly, studies on digital devices, such as tablets and interactive whiteboards, present inconclusive findings in regard to how these might or might not facilitate meaningful learning (e.g. Laidlaw and Wong 2016; Papadakis et al. 2016). Yet, there is consistent agreement that open-ended applications and devices (including mobile devices) can motivate and engage children in creative, collaborative, exploratory, problem-solving, interactive processes of learning and can promote their socialization in their immediate environments and in broader societal contexts. This review of literature can therefore offer a number of conclusions with regard to effective pedagogical approaches to integrating digital technologies in early literacy learning: 1

2 3

children are (or should be) seen as active learners, who negotiate their own literacy learning in interaction with others and with a range of traditional print and non-traditional digital literacy resources; teachers’ role is (or should be) reframed to be that of the mediator of learning by supporting and expanding children’s meaning-making repertoires; teachers should further ensure that all children are provided opportunities to pursue their interests and to engage in open-ended creation of shared texts that traverse space-time and disciplinary boundaries.

Evident across studies was that teachers should be supported in their own learning and use of new technologies and digital media (e.g. Hesterman 2013; Beam and Williams 2015: Kerckaert et al. 2015). While this lies beyond the scope of this review, one might also notice that teachers’ work should be considered within local school environments and broader social contexts which form particular material conditions for the integration of new technologies in early literacy classrooms. The interdisciplinarity and the crossing of classroom and social boundaries, as well as the need to acknowledge children as active producers and agentive consumers of meanings also necessitates a reconfiguration of children, schooling, and pedagogy. In studies reviewed in this chapter (e.g. Alper 2011; Bird and Williams 2015; Wohlwend 2017), this reconfiguration was directly offered as a response to institutional and official policy discourses that reinforce traditional pedagogies (Bruce and Casey 2012), turn kindergarten into the new first grade, funnel children’s learning to print-intensive curricula (Husbye et al. 2012), and prioritize particular types of (traditional) toys over new forms of playing (Edwards 2016). Counter to that, researchers have suggested that pedagogical principles that have long undergirded early childhood education should 195

Stavroula Kontovourki and Eufimia Tafa

be reinforced: children’s learning should involve active, hands-on engagement and social interaction (e.g. Morgan 2010; Palaiologou 2016), as well as rely on developmentally appropriate and personally meaningful practice, including their playful engagement with one another, the curriculum, and the social world (e.g. Parette et al. 2010; Alper 2011; Wohlwend 2015). Researchers explicitly made this point by appropriating the work of theorists who have long provided the basis for early childhood pedagogies: for instance, Bird and Edwards (2015) alluded to Vygotsky’s notion of mediation and to Hutt’s (1966) research on children’s play with novel devices to offer a framework for thinking about developmentally appropriate digital play; similarly, Alper (2011) returned to theorists such as Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky whose work has constituted the basis for the design and enactment of child-centred, inquiry-based early literacy curricula. The adoption and adaptation of these pedagogical principles in classrooms where digital tools and media are integrated in a broader repertoire of literacy practices suggests that those classrooms are both similar to and different from those where understandings of literacy as verbocentric and print-based prevail. The review of studies leads to, at least, three points that comprise this difference and, when combined, suggest a more dynamic view of literacy and literacy learning. First, literacy resources are both digital and non-digital; similarly, texts, media, and technologies are flexibly defined and fluidly shifting as children use them across spaces and in continual motion. Second, children are necessarily viewed not only as active learners but also as consumers and negotiators of meanings. This complicates the construction of children as a social category by foregrounding how they act at micro-, meso-, and macro-levels as they pursue their interests, interact with others, and critically engage with the world and their identities. Such a view of children expands understandings of their agency (e.g. Husbye et al. 2012; Leinonen and Sintonen 2014). Studies on inquiry-based and playful curricula suggest that this agency is facilitated through open-ended applications and learning processes. In addition, the review of the pedagogical potentials of different tools and devices links to understandings of agency as also involving non-human actors such as those very tools (Lafton 2015). Third, this review of studies points to classroom space as fluid and flexible, given that Internet devices and digital communication technologies make it possible for children to move across physically bounded spaces. Burnett (2011) discussed this shift in spaces in children’s interactions with text to claim that space should, therefore, be seen as continually rebounded by action. This very notion of space is indeed a point of thinking about early years pedagogies anew, as it extends beyond the blurring of in- and out-of-school spaces witnessed, for instance, in culturally relevant research (e.g. Moll et al. 1992) and, rather, calls for the consideration of children’s movement and subjectivity in and out of classrooms. This was particularly evident, for instance, in Rowsell and Harwood’s (2015) call to understand children as active consumers of digital media. This reconfiguration of early literacy leads to a set of questions and directions for future research. Analyses exist that follow through or theorize children’s agency and in-school digital practices, especially in ways in which those are connected to cultural constructions of childhood and children’s identities (e.g. Rowsell and Harwood 2015; Wohlwend 2015, 2017). However, there are relatively fewer such studies than ones focusing on the pedagogical potentials of tools and devices. Put differently, there is much research on the operational-technical dimensions of literacy and the ways this facilitates children’s development at a micro- and meso-level; be that through inquiry- or play-based learning. Yet, much less is known about the utilization of a broad definition of pedagogies that extends to the critical as a means, space, and goal of early literacy pedagogies. One might wonder, then, what happens in classrooms where the digital, in its co-existence with non-digital means, facilitates functional and critical analysis (to use Cope and Kalantzis’ (2009) words)? How is the notion of criticality implicated with pleasures associated with digital play? How are children positioned in this intersection of the critical and the personal? 196

Pedagogical approaches to digital literacy

It is further interesting to wonder about who the children with access to digitally infused pedagogies are, given that few, if any, of the studies considered issues of children’s identity markers. In fact, in those few cases, children’s ability was the characteristic that gained more attention (e.g. Flewitt et  al. 2014). It is imperative, then, to ask: are there differences across national borders (especially given that focusing on research published in English is a limitation of this chapter and review), across the social class spectrum, across spaces of cultural, linguistic, and other diversity, across public and private sectors, and so on? Research on such topics has both pedagogical and theoretical significance, as it can help to imagine educational practice and also reframe the very notion of appropriateness as a cultural norm and notion. This would concurrently necessitate an expansion of the theoretical constructs through which such complexity is examined and maintained. Providing answers to these questions would further complicate and refine understandings of young children and in-school pedagogies in digital times.

References Åberg, E. S., Lantz-Andersson, A., and Pramling, N. (2015). Children’s digital storymaking: the negotiated nature of instructional literacy events. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 9(3): 170–189. Alper, M. (2011). Developmentally appropriate New Media Literacies: supporting cultural competencies and social skills in early childhood education. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 13(2): 175–196. doi: 10.1177/1468798411430101. Barton, D., and Hamilton, M. (2000). Literacy practices. In: D. Barton, M. Hamilton, and R. Ivanic (eds.), Situated Literacies (pp. 7–15). New York: Routledge. Baynham, M., and Prinsloo, M. (eds.) (2009). The Future of Literacy Studies. Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Beam, S., and Williams, C. (2015). Technology-mediated writing instruction in the early literacy program: perils, procedures, and possibilities. Computers in the Schools, 32(3–4): 260–277. doi: 10.1080/ 07380569.2015.1094320. Berson, I., Cross, M., Ward, J., and Berson, M. (2014). People, places, and pandas: engaging preschoolers with interactive whiteboards. Social Studies and the Young Learner, 26(4): 18–22. Beschorner, B., and Hutchison, A. (2013). iPads as a literacy teaching tool in early childhood. International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science and Technology, 1(1): 16–24. Bird, J., and Edwards, S. (2015). Children learning to use technologies through play: a Digital Play Framework. British Journal of Educational Technology, 46(6): 1149–1160. doi: 10.1111/bjet.12191. Bruce, B. C., and Casey, L. (2012). The practice of inquiry: a pedagogical ‘sweet spot’ for digital literacy? Computers in the Schools, 29(1–2): 191–206. Brueck, J. S., and Lenhart, L. A. (2015). E-Books and TPACK. The Reading Teacher, 68(5): 373–376. Burnett, C. (2010). Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings: a review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(3): 247–270. Burnett, C. (2011). Shifting and multiple spaces in classrooms: an argument for investigating learners’ boundary-making around digital networked texts. Journal of Literacy and Technology, 12(3): 2–23. Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2014). The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(1): 90–103. doi: 10.1080/01596306.2012.739469. Carlsen, M. (2013). Mathematical learning opportunities in kindergarten through the use of digital tools: affordances and constraints. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 8(3): 171–185. Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: new literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3): 164–195. doi: 10.1080/15544800903076044. Couse, L. J., and Chen, D. W. (2010). A tablet computer for young children? Exploring viability for early childhood education. Journal of Research on Technology in Education, 43(1): 75–96. Dodge, A. M., Husain, N., and Duke, N. K. (2011). Connected kids? K-2 children’s use and understanding of the Internet. Language Arts, 89(2): 86–98. Edwards, S. (2013). Digital play in the early years: a contextual response to the problem of integrating technologies and play-based pedagogies in the early childhood curriculum. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 21(2): 199–212. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2013.789190. 197

Stavroula Kontovourki and Eufimia Tafa

Edwards, S. (2016). New concepts of play and the problem of technology, digital media and popularculture integration with play-based learning in early childhood education. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 25(4): 513–532. doi: 10.1080/1475939X.2015.1108929. Edwards, S., and Bird, J. (2015). Observing and assessing young children’s digital play in the early years: using the Digital Play Framework. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 15(2): 158–173. doi: 10.1177/1476718X15579746. Fantozzi, V. B. (2012). Exploring elephant seals in New Jersey: preschoolers use collaborative multimedia albums. YC Young Children, 67(3): 42–49. Fenty, N. S., and Anderson, E. (2016). Creating digital narratives: guideline for early childhood educators. Childhood Education, 92(1): 58–63. doi: 10.1080/00094056.2016.1134243 Flewitt, R., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2014). New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. doi: 10.1177/1468798414533560. Forzani, E., and Leu, D. J. (2012). New literacies for new learners: the need for digital technologies in primary classrooms. The Educational Forum, 76(4): 421–424. Gee, J. P. (2003). What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Green, B. (2012). Subject-specific literacy and school learning: a revised account. In: B. Green and C. Beavis (eds.), Literacy in 3D: An Integrated Perspective in Theory and Practice (pp. 2–21). Victoria, Australia: ACER Press. Haggerty, M., and Mitchell, L. (2010). Exploring curriculum implications of multimodal literacy in a New Zealand early childhood setting. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 18(3): 327–339. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2010.500073 Hesterman, S. (2011). Multiliterate Star Warrians: the force of popular culture and ICT in early learning. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 36(4): 86–95. Hesterman, S. (2013). Early childhood designs for multiliteracies learning. The Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 36(3): 158–168. Heydon, R., Crocker, W., and Zhang, Z. (2014). Novels, nests and other provocations: emergent literacy curriculum production in a childcare centre. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 46(1): 1–32. doi: 10.1080/00220272.2013.803158 Hsin, C. T., Li, M. C., and Tsai, C. C. (2014). The influence of young children’s use of technology on their learning: a review. Educational Technology & Society, 17(4), 85–99. Husbye, N. E., Buchholz, B. A., Coggin, L. S., Wessel-Powell, C., and Wohlwend, K. E. (2012). Critical lessons and playful literacies: digital media in the PK–2 classroom. Language Arts, 90(2): 82–92. Kerckaert, S., Vanderlinde, R., and van Braak, J. (2015). The role of ICT in early childhood education: scale development and research on ICT use and influencing factors. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 23(2): 183–199. Kontovourki, S., Garoufallou, E., Ivarsson, L., Klein, M., Korkeamaki, R. L., Koutsomiha, D., et  al. (2017). Digital literacy in the early years: practices in formal settings, teacher education, and the role of informal learning spaces: a review of the literature. COST ACTION IS1410. Available at: http://digilitey.eu/wpcontent/uploads/2017/01/WG2-LR-March-2017-v2.pdf (accessed 12 December 2017). Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K., and Fernandez Panadero, C. (2014). Children’s engagement with educational iPad apps: insights from a Spanish classroom. Computers & Education, 71: 175–184. Kyriakou, A., and Higgins, S. (2016). Systematic review of the studies examining the impact of the interactive whiteboard on teaching and learning: what we do learn and what we do not. Preschool and Primary Education, 4: 254–275. Lafton, T. (2015). Digital literacy practices and pedagogical moments: human and non-human intertwining in early childhood education. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 16(2), 142–152. doi: 10.1177/1463949115585657. Laidlaw, L., and Wong, S. (2016). Literacy and complexity: on using technology within emergent learning structures with young learners. Complicity: An International Journal of Complexity and Education, 13(1): 30–42. Leinonen, J., and Sintonen, S. (2014). Productive participation: children as active media producers in kindergarten. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 9(3): 216–236. Lewis, C., Enciso, P., and Moje, E. (eds.) (2007). Reframing Sociocultural Research in Literacy: Identity, Agency, Power. New Jersey, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Lu, Y.-H., Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A. T., Ding, A.-C., and Glazewski, K. (2017). Experienced iPad-using early childhood teachers: practices in the one-to-one iPad classroom. Computers in the Schools, 34(1–2): 9–23. doi: 10.1080/07380569.2017.1287543. 198

Pedagogical approaches to digital literacy

Luke, N., Tracy, K., and Bricker, P. (2015). Writing captions as a means of blending text features and digital stories. The California Reader, 48(2): 29–35. Lynch, J., and Redpath, T. (2012). ‘Smart’ technologies in the early years literacy education: a metanarrative of paradigmatic tensions in iPad use in an Australian preparatory classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 14(2): 147–174. doi: 10.1177/1468798412453150. McKee, L. L., and Heydon, R. M. (2014). Orchestrating literacies: print literacy learning opportunities within multimodal intergenerational ensembles. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(2): 227–255. doi: 10.1177/1468798414533562. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., and Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2): 132–141. Morgan, A. (2010). Interactive whiteboards, interactivity and play in the classroom with children aged three to seven years. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 18(1): 93–104. doi: 10.1080/13502930903520082. Morgan, H. (2013). Multimodal children’s e-books help young learners in reading. Early Childhood Education Journal, 41(6): 477–483. Palaiologou, I. (2016). Children under five and digital technologies: implications for early years pedagogy. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 24(1): 5–24. doi: 10.1080/1350293X.2014.929876. Papadakis, S., Kalogiannakis, M., and Zaranis, N. (2016). Comparing tablets and PCs in teaching mathematics: an attempt to improve mathematics competence in early childhood education. Preschool and Primary Education, 4: 241–253. Parette, H. P., Quesenberry, A. C., and Blum, C. (2010). Missing the boat with technology usage in early childhood settings: a 21st century view of developmentally appropriate practice. Early Childhood Education Journal, 37: 335–343. doi: 10.1007/s10643-009-0352-x. Plowman, L., and Stephen, C. (2003). A ‘benign addition’? Research on ICT and pre-school children. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 19: 149–164. Rhoades, M. (2016). “Little pig, little pig, yet me come in!” Animating the Three Little Pigs with preschoolers. Early Childhood Education Journal, 44: 595–603. doi: 10.1007/s10643-015-0743-0. Rowsell, J., and Harwood, D. (2015). “Let It Go”: exploring the image of the child as a producer, consumer, and inventor. Theory Into Practice, 54(2): 136–146. doi: 10.1080/00405841.2015.1010847. Sandvik, M., Smørdal, O., and Østerud, S. (2012). Exploring iPads in practitioners’ repertoires for language learning and literacy practices in kindergarten. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, 7(3): 204–221. Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., and Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a research agenda for the digital literacy practices of young children: a White Paper for COST Action IS1410. http://digilitey.eu (accessed 12 December 2017). Shuker, M. J., and Terreni, L. (2013). Self-authored e-books: expanding young children’s literacy experiences and skills. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 38(3): 17–24. Simpson, A., Walsh, M., and Rowsell, J. (2013). The digital reading path: researching modes and multidirectionality with iPads. Literacy, 47(3): 123–130. Stornaiuolo, A., Smith, A., and Phillips, N. (2017). Developing a transliteracies framework for a connected world. Journal of Literacy Research, 49(1): 68–91. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086296X16683419. Szmodis, W., and Columba, L. (2013). Technology for young learners: making a case for innovative tools. National Teacher Education Journal, 6(1): 61–68. Teck, W. K. (2013). Affordances of interactive whiteboards and associated pedagogical practices: perspectives of teachers of science with children aged five to six years. Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology-TOJET, 12(1): 1–8. Vangsnes, V., Økland, N. T. G., and Krumsvik, R. (2012). Computer games in pre-school settings: didactical challenges when commercial educational computer games are implemented in kindergartens. Computers & Education, 58(4): 1138–1148. Wohlwend, K. E. (2015). One screen, many fingers: young children’s collaborative literacy play with digital puppetry apps and touchscreen technologies. Theory Into Practice, 54(2): 154–162. doi: 10.1080/00405841.2015.1010837. Wohlwend, K. E. (2017). Who gets to play? Access, popular media and participatory literacies. Early Years, 37(1): 62–76. doi: 10.1080/09575146.2016.1219699. Wolfe, S., and Flewitt, R. (2010). New technologies, new multimodal literacy practices and young children’s metacognitive development. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(4): 387–399. doi: 10.1080/ 0305764X.2010.526589.

199

14 Inclusivity and young children’s digital literacy practices in early education Grace Oakley

Introduction This chapter discusses the ways in which digital technologies, with a focus on mobile technologies, can help minimize or remove barriers to inclusive practice in early childhood literacy education. It first concentrates on contexts, definitions and theoretical frameworks relevant to mobile learning and inclusive literacy education in the early years. Next, examples of practice and research on digital technologies and how they can be used to meet diverse literacy needs and practices among young children are presented. To inform this chapter, a review of research was conducted by carrying out a library database search using key terms: iPad, tablet, literacy, mobile technology, oral language, reading and writing. From the results returned, abstracts were read to identify articles that were relevant to the question of how mobile technologies can be used in inclusive literacy education in the early years. In addition to the library database search, the author drew on evidence and knowledge on early childhood literacy, digital technology and mobile learning from a personal database assembled from previous related work that she had undertaken. Much of the literature does not focus on inclusive literacy education and this indicates a gap in the research. The research reviewed utilized a range of methodological approaches, including qualitative (e.g. Baker 2017; Kucirkova and Flewitt 2018), mixed methods (Chmiliar 2017; Ismaili and Ibrahimi 2017; Oakley, Wildy and Berman 2018), and case studies (Oakley, Howitt, Garwood and Durack 2013). Other papers did not explicitly state a methodological approach (e.g. Gillis et al. 2012; Stone-MacDonald 2015). Several relevant research studies that employed quantitative approaches were also identified (e.g. Neumann 2018; Rogowsky, Terwilliger, Young and Kribbs 2018).

Inclusive education: definitions and perspectives Definitions of inclusive education are contested (Graham and Slee 2008), changing (Petriwskyj 2010), complex (Savage 2015), and used differently from context to context. Underpinning concepts of inclusivity in childhood is the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) (1989) which, along with other agreements and legislation, has been a driving 200

Inclusivity and digital literacy practices

force behind the development of national and local policies and practices. Article 28 of the UNCRC states that children have the right to education and that this should be on the basis of equal opportunity, and Article 13 states that children should have freedom of expression, including freedom to “seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of the child’s choice” (1989: 6). It is argued in this chapter that mobile devices such as iPads can potentially facilitate this freedom. Also relevant to the discussion in this chapter is UNCRC Article 17, which states that children should have access to media content, such as children’s books, from a diversity of sources, both national and international. With regards to personal development, UNCRC Article 29 states that education should aim to develop the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential, and also respect parents, their culture and language. These human rights are integral to the concept of inclusivity, although the ways in which they are realized in practice vary according to context. According to UNESCO (2017: 13), “Inclusion is a process that helps overcome barriers limiting the presence, participation and achievement of learners”. Being a process, inclusion necessitates an ongoing endeavour to find ways of responding to diversity. This means that flexibility and innovation are important. Presence is to do with the locations in which education takes place, as well as school attendance; participation concerns the quality of children’s learning experiences, including their participation as active agents who have a voice; and achievement, as one might expect, is about learning outcomes. These three aspects will be referred to throughout this chapter. While the UNESCO definition states that inclusion is about removing barriers, Savage (2015) goes further and asserts that difference should be celebrated and valued, that all learners should be able to feel confident in their right to participate, and that all voices should be heard and considered (Savage 2015: 5). Research suggests that digital technologies have the capacity to heighten students’ sense of empowerment, belonging and agency; they can help reposition children, or emancipate them from a deficit position that might be restrictive in terms of full participation (Oakley 2017). UNESCO (2017: 7) describes diversity in terms of differences in: “race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, language, culture, religion, mental and physical ability, class, and immigration status”, and in this chapter these differences are acknowledged, as well as differences in physical location, which is considered because children in remote and inaccessible areas, or children who lead itinerant lifestyles, often do not have access to quality schooling or literacy education (e.g. UNESCO 2018). Inclusive education commonly involves catering for the needs of all children within mainstream educational or classroom settings. However, teachers and other educational practitioners might not necessarily have the time, resources or expertise to help children as much as they would desire. It is argued in this chapter that the use of digital technologies can promote inclusion of young children in literacy learning and a wide range of literacy practices through facilitating the three aspects of inclusion mentioned by UNESCO (2017), namely: presence, participation and achievement. It is also argued that the notion of ‘the classroom’ should not be constrained or confined by the built or physical classroom. Due to the affordances of new technologies, the notion of ‘classroom’ (or early childhood education and care facility) can be redefined because education can take place anywhere and anytime where mobile technologies are appropriately harnessed (Howard and Scott 2017). Inclusion is multifaceted and concerns much more than special educational needs, although some authors do emphasize ‘exceptionalities’ (Gruenberg and Miller 2011). Linguistic and 201

Grace Oakley

cultural diversity are also key aspects of inclusivity that teachers might find challenging to address. Savage (2015) has emphasized that partnerships with families and communities are key to inclusivity in early childhood settings – schools and other educational institutions need to be in close collaboration with these partners. Mobile technologies can facilitate this through the use of platforms like Seesaw student-driven portfolios (Seesaw Learning, Inc.), through which young children can easily share with parents the literacy work they do in school (photos, texts, videos, etc.). Parents can comment and provide feedback on the uploaded content. Parents and young children can also successfully use web-based tools (and apps) such as VoiceThread (VoiceThread.com) to comment on, or add to, students’ publications (pictures, writing, photographs, etc.), using written text, voice or video, allowing multiple forms of expression (Gillis et al. 2012). Honouring the diverse perspectives and definitions outlined above, this chapter conceptualizes inclusive education as not only focusing on providing for young learners with learning difficulties, disabilities or special educational needs, but is about including, respecting and valuing all children (Armstrong, Armstrong and Spandagou 2011; Petriwskyj 2010). Focusing in on inclusive literacy education, Milton (2017) offers the following definition: “Inclusive literacy education is the provision of age-appropriate curriculum, using explicit, sequential, differentiated instruction that includes learning activities in oral language, reading, viewing, writing and creating a range of texts in traditional and digital format” (p. 8). It is noted that in the context of mobile learning, some learning activities might not necessarily be explicit. Mobile devices support a range of pedagogical approaches.

Digital literacy: definitions, perspectives, practices ‘Digital literacy’ can be defined in different ways: some emphasize the ‘digital’, whereas others emphasize ‘literacy’ or ‘literacies’, in that they focus on the use of digital technologies for a range of representational and communicative purposes. Neumann, Finger and Neumann (2017) propose that: “Digital literacy refers to the use of digital tools to create meaning and communicate effectively with others, including the ability to use visual representations, integrate different digital texts, navigate non-linear digital texts, and evaluate digital information” (p. 471), whereas Levy, Yamada-Rice and Marsh (2013) have defined digital literacies more broadly as “reading, writing and meaning-making mediated through new technologies” (p. 333). In this chapter, digital literacies are not thought of as simply traditional literacies that are facilitated and/ or mediated through digital technologies, but as potentially qualitatively different and unchained from some of the confinements associated with traditional print-based literacies. Digital literacy is a social practice (Sefton-Green, Marsh, Erstad and Flewitt 2016). As such, it entails practices that are embedded in the wider social practices of individuals, families and communities. Even the youngest children engage in digital literacies; it has been argued that “young children’s communicative practices are embedded in a range of technologies” (Marsh 2005: 4). Notwithstanding a digital divide that restricts access and participation for some (Wolfe and Flewitt 2010), many young children use mobile devices to play digital games or watch videos on platforms such as YouTube or YouTube Kids. They also use devices to make video calls with family members, to draw pictures, take photos and engage in many other everyday practices that involve language and literacy. In this sense, it could be argued that ‘the digital’ is bringing new literacy practices to a wide range of homes and community settings. There is reciprocal interplay between digital and traditional (non-digital) literacies, and theorists and researchers have attempted to conceptualize these relationships (Kositsky 2016; Neumann, Finger and Neumann 2017). However, just as Kukulska-Hulme (2010: 184) has 202

Inclusivity and digital literacy practices

suggested that mobile learning is now becoming “just learning”, it might be worth considering that digital literacy might soon be ‘just literacy’ because the interconnections between digital and traditional literacies are arguably becoming increasingly dense yet seamless. This can be partly attributed to the ubiquity of mobile technologies, which are facilitating a variety of digital literacy practices in context, any time and any place, and are tightly interwoven with everyday traditional literacy practices.

Mobile technologies for inclusive literacy learning and practice Although there are many digital technologies that young children can employ to engage in literacy practices (Dore, Zosh, Hirsh-Pasek and Golinkoff 2017), such as desktop computers, laptops, smart watches for kids, digital toys and game consoles, there is currently great interest in their uses of mobile technologies such as smartphones and tablets. As noted, an increasing number of very young children access mobile technologies for a range of purposes, including digital play (Marsh et al. 2016). With respect to young children up to the age of eight (in the USA), Rideout (2017) has pointed out that: “Mobile is rapidly gaining ground, rising from 5 minutes a day in 2011 to 15 minutes in 2013 and now to 48 minutes a day in 2017” (p. 5). Along similar lines, Kabali et al. (2015) found that the majority of children in the USA had used a mobile device before turning four, with many young children owning a device. Across the developed world the situation is similar, although in the developing world it is less likely that children, particularly girls, will be able to access smart mobile devices or reliable connectivity (Oakley and Imtinan 2018). Mobile technologies have also become more powerful, and more user-friendly in terms of the affordances they have: they are often ‘smart’ and have a range of features that can facilitate and motivate literacy learning and practice in a variety of real-life, authentic, motivational contexts. Such features include connectivity to the internet and to other smart devices and ‘things’ such as toys, access to a plethora of apps, geo-social capabilities, the camera, microphone and speaker, as well as the touch screen. These features can make it very easy, even for young children with diverse educational needs, to construct and share multimodal texts in a range of spaces. Smart mobile devices also have special assistive features (Ismaili and Ibrahimi 2017) that can help children who have hearing, visual and motor impairments, as well as those with learning and language difficulties. For example, iPhones and iPads have a feature called Voiceover which can read out what is on the screen for those with vision impairment or less developed reading abilities. Similar features are available on Android devices. There are hearing aids that can pair with tablet devices so that sound from the device goes straight into the hearing aid for better quality and to cut out disturbance to nearby people. It is possible for closed captions to be used on iPads to assist those who have hearing impairments in accessing video content. It is also possible to connect tablets to Braille devices. For people with motor disabilities, accessibility features like Switch Control enable Bluetooth connection with external devices such as a trackball mouse, tactile musical interface, and a range of other assistive devices from specialist companies. Thus, through these digital devices, children with disabilities are empowered to participate in literacy practices in meaningful ways.

Frameworks for inclusive literacy learning in the context of mobile digital technologies Although there is an emerging body of research showing that mobile technologies can enhance literacy learning among young children with diverse needs, no overarching 203

Grace Oakley

theoretical framework to describe this potential has yet been developed. Existing mobile learning frameworks need to be interrogated to establish their applicability in deriving key principles for early childhood inclusive literacy education using mobile technologies. Some of these are briefly described below. First, the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Framework (CAST 2011) is briefly discussed, as it can illuminate and be illumined by the mobile learning frameworks presented. The key mobile learning frameworks to be discussed are those of Traxler (2007) and Wong and Looi (2011). The UDL Framework can be used to guide the development of inclusive curriculum using mobile technologies (Cumming, Strnadova, Dixon and Verenikina 2015; Pérez 2013). The principles underlying UDL are that it is necessary to provide multiple means of representation, engagement, and action and expression. This provision must be planned in advance or ‘built in’. Multiple means of representation involves the ‘what’ of learning and necessitates the provision of materials in a variety of formats, such as visual, auditory and written materials (see udlguidelines. cast.org), which can be facilitated by the use of multimodal texts. Multiple means of engagement refers to the ‘why’ of learning and involves engaging children’s interest, motivation and self-regulation – this can be achieved, for example, through the design of teaching and learning activities that have some real-world relevance or authenticity but it can also be achieved through games. Multiple means of action and expression is about the ‘how’ of learning, referring to the processes of learning and the ways in which children can demonstrate their learning (CAST 2011). Mobile technologies can provide children with multiple options to learn and to represent their knowledge at different times and places, with different people, and with multiple media and tools. However, there is still a dearth of research into how early childhood educators can put UDL principles into practice to cater for young literacy learners using mobile technologies. Turning toward mobile learning frameworks, Traxler’s (2007) seminal work posits that the use of mobile technologies can support several different styles of learning that have the capacity to be transformative, namely: contingent learning, situated learning, authentic learning, context aware learning, personalized learning and game-based learning. Presence, participation and achievement for a diversity of children can be enhanced when these styles of learning are harnessed through mobile technologies. Contingent learning occurs where learners are able to respond and react to their environment and their own experiences. An example of contingent learning would be when children are outside in the garden or playground and using mobile devices – either to take photos of things that interest them or objects they have constructed, or to audio record descriptions, instructions or stories, or to draw pictures of their surroundings – which they might or might not later insert into multimodal texts and perhaps digitally share. This fits in well with early childhood philosophies that emphasize play-based, child-led learning and/ or learning outside (Roskos and Christie 2013; Robinson et al. 2018). In terms of inclusivity, this kind of learning is responsive to the context and the environment, and facilitates multiple forms of engagement, action and expression. Authentic learning, according to Traxler, is learning that is relevant to the real world. Thus, doing worksheets or reading texts that are not relevant or meaningful to the child would not be authentic, whereas recording a retell or a review of a rich storybook using a mobile device and then sharing it as a podcast for other children or even parents to listen to would be. Traxler’s (2007) personalized learning, which he defined as: “learning that recognises diversity, difference, and individuality in the ways that learning is developed, delivered, and supported” (n. p.), is highly relevant to the ideas discussed in this chapter. The use of mobile technologies to personalize learning has a growing research base and can allow children to follow their interests and have agency (Kucirkova and Flewitt 2018; Kucirkova, 2018). Some models of personalized learning incorporate adaptive learning, whereby technology selects content that 204

Inclusivity and digital literacy practices

corresponds to users’ interests and ability, facilitated by the analytics that are integral to many apps. The concept of personalization, as well as authenticity and collaboration, are highlighted and unpacked in detail in the iPAC framework of mobile learning (Kearney, Schuck, Burden and Aubusson 2012). The iPAC framework does not focus on inclusive education but can be applied to a wide range of contexts, thus supporting inclusivity. Looi et al.’s (2010) seamless learning model is useful to educators in designing inclusive literacy learning activities and environments. Wong and Looi (2011) define seamless learning as a “seamless flow of learning across contexts” (p. 2365) and suggest ten dimensions of seamless learning, which involve bridging formal and informal learning, personalized and social learning, physical and digital worlds, and multiple pedagogical or learning models. Also facilitated is the combination of multiple (digital) devices; learning across time and across locations; ubiquitous knowledge access (through constant internet access); switching between multiple learning tasks; and knowledge synthesis. Some of the dimension-crossing proposed by Wong and Looi (2011) could be relevant to young language and literacy learners but perhaps not all, due to the children’s level of maturity, need for face-to-face relationships, scaffolding and supervision to ensure their safety (Oakley 2018). For young children, shifting between contexts might not actually be ‘seamless’ either, as they are less likely to have access to personal devices that are always switched on, or be able to use technology with a level of automaticity that would allow ‘seamlessness’. I would argue that for young children there are additional dimensions that might be crossed and blended, such as curriculum area boundaries (e.g. English/Social Studies/Science) and modes of literacy (e.g. reading, writing, viewing, speaking and listening).

Mobile technologies, presence, participation and achievement It is necessary for children to be physically or virtually ‘present’ in order to participate in education. UNESCO (2015) has pointed out that millions of children around the world do not attend school or do not have access to schools, and tens of millions do not complete primary school, let alone secondary education. Absenteeism from school is an issue in many countries, including developed countries such as Australia, where the attendance rate for some remote schools is less than 65% (Commonwealth of Australia 2018). Digital technologies, particularly mobile, have the potential to offset some of the negative effects of non- or low-attendance at school by allowing digital access to education at any time and in any place. In some countries, certain demographic groups, such as girls, might not have full access to schooling, so the provision of free e-books and stories (such a World Reader books – see www.worldreader.org) via mobile devices has the potential to improve their literacy learning opportunities if they are able to read them or have them read aloud in the home or in the community. Oakley and Imtinan (2018) discuss the means by which mobile technologies can increase family and community literacy levels in developing countries, which should ultimately be beneficial to the literacy learning of young children. Thus, children who have been excluded from being present in school because of their geographical location, or because of poverty, disability, cultural or gender issues, might now have new opportunities to participate. Mobile penetration is increasing in many developing countries (GSMA 2016) and governments and NGOs are helping by providing solar charging stations and mobile devices with pre-loaded content for many communities without connectivity and power (Oakley and Imtinan 2018). However, there are still many communities without access to mobile technologies. Mobile technologies can be engaging (Dunn, Gray, Moffett and Mitchell 2018; Flewitt, Messer and Kucirkova 2015) and academically beneficial for young literacy learners. In a metaanalysis on the effect of mobile technologies on children’s learning, Sung, Chang and Liu (2016) 205

Grace Oakley

found that there was a high effect size on learning achievement overall, although only a medium effect size in language arts. Most of the studies included in this meta-analysis were short-term interventions so novelty effects could have been at play. Furthermore, the studies analysed by Sung et al. took place between 1993 and 2013 and there have been significant changes in the affordances and prevalence of mobile technologies since that time, not to mention a growth in pedagogical expertise in the area, and better software. In a meta-review of 20 single case studies prior to 2015, Ok and Kim (2017) found that the use of tablets such as iPads to teach children (Pre K-12) with disabilities had a strong effect on student achievement and a medium to strong effect on engagement. However, the types of disabilities are not detailed in the meta-review. Next, studies on the use of mobile technologies for helping young children improve in literacy skill-building and meaning-making are discussed. Some of the research included does not refer specifically to children with additional needs (disabilities, literacy difficulties, English as an additional language or dialect (EAL/D), etc.) but to the use of mobile technologies to promote children’s literacy learning more generally. However, where this is the case, links to UDL are made, illustrating how the mobile tools can be used in inclusive contexts.

Skill-building Mobile technologies have the potential to help young literacy learners with diverse needs, including children with disabilities (Stone-MacDonald 2015; Chmiliar 2017), to build skills such as letter knowledge, vocabulary, sight words, decoding and spelling. In recent years, numerous apps, many in the format of games, have been developed to address literacy skillbuilding in young children (Cahill and McGill-Franzen 2013; Milman, Carlson-Bancroft and Boogart 2014; Gormley and McDermott 2014; Oakley 2017). Such apps, which are sometimes referred to as ‘instructional apps’ (Ok and Kim 2017), are often based on educational approaches underpinned by behaviourism and many do not appear to be designed with more contemporary pedagogical underpinnings (Oakley, Pegrum, Faulkner and Striepe 2012; Pegrum, Oakley and Faulkner 2013). Further, they are often ‘closed content’ apps that do not allow for creativity and are limited in what they can do. Such apps are often used individually with little social interaction and, in some cases, learning might not be transferred to authentic literacy practices. Having said this, because many skill-building apps are game-based, they can introduce an element of play, thus promoting engagement. Chai, Ayres and Vail (2016) found that phonological awareness skills could be enhanced using an iPad app in K-2 students and D’Agostino, Rodgers, Harmey and Brownfield (2016) found that the use of an app called LetterWorks, used to help 6- and 7-year-olds who were struggling in literacy learn letters as part of a Reading Recovery intervention, had a positive effect compared to the use of concrete magnetic letters. Similarly, Musti-Rao, Lo and Plati (2015) found that sight word knowledge of at-risk first graders was improved through the use of an app. Using repeated acquisition design, Dennis (2016) used iPad storybook apps as part of an intervention to help six preschool children learn vocabulary, which resulted in increases in expressive vocabulary and definition measures, and van de Meer et al. (2015), using a multiple baseline across matching tasks design, found that a student with ASD was able to improve his/her ability to match words and pictures within a context of graduated guidance and differential reinforcement using an iPad-based speech generating device (SGD). Ahlgrim-Delzell et al. (2016) found that an iPad enhanced phonics program was able to help young children with developmental disabilities with their phonics. Here, the augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app GoTalk Now (The Attainment Company, n.d.) was used as a means for the students to respond, as they had speech difficulties and could not respond verbally. For young children with EAL/D, Neumann 206

Inclusivity and digital literacy practices

(2018), in a pre- and post-test randomized controlled study of 2–5-year-old children, found that the use of iPad apps resulted in significantly higher results in several aspects of literacy, namely letter name and sound knowledge, print concepts and name-writing skills. There were no significant differences between the iPad group and the control group for letter-writing skills. Also employing a pre- and post-test experimental design, Rogowsky, Terwilliger, Young and Kribbs (2018) studied the impact of ‘playful learning’ using game-based software with activities targeting phonological awareness, numeric operations, language development, alphabet knowledge, and logic and reasoning. Each day for a period of 10 minutes, young children aged 3 to 5½ years of age (n = 24) engaged in individualized instruction using a tablet with software featuring virtual characters and environments where the children could play. This playful learning is likely to enhance engagement. Compared to the group not receiving the game-based software instruction, significant improvements were found in aspects of the experimental group’s literacy, namely, their knowledge of letters, definitional vocabulary, phonological awareness and word attack (or word identification). Although this study did not focus on children with additional needs, it does show that using software on touch-screen tablets for as little as 10 minutes a day for a relatively short period of time can assist young children in learning literacy. Literacy skills can also be built through the use of apps that are open-ended or creative. For example, in a mixed methods study, Oakley, Wildy and Berman (2018) found that letter knowledge, letter-sound knowledge and word identification in children from low socioeconomic communities can be built through the use of open-ended writing apps, such as Book Creator (Red Jumper Limited). In the context of e-book reading, Korat and Blau (2010) found that when children reread digital texts (five times) that had synchronous narration and word highlighting, their recognition of words appearing in the text more than four times improved. Similarly, Korat and Shamir (2012) found that through reading e-books, children could improve their vocabulary knowledge and word identification. Although there is a growing research base, further research on the efficacy of apps for literacy skill-building in children with diverse needs is clearly needed to provide more detailed guidance as to what works and for whom. Furthermore, the majority of the studies described above, although using mobile devices (tablets), took place in classroom settings, and thus did not take full advantage of the mobility of the devices, much less features such as contextual awareness. However, features such as the touch screen and multimedia were used.

Meaning-making Meaning-making involves comprehending, composing and sharing texts. There is mounting research on the use of e-books or multimodal digital texts to assist young children to learn to read, as they provide features that allow multiple means of representation, engagement and action and expression. Some researchers have found that enhancements such as audio and visual elements offered by digital technologies can assist children in comprehending and learning from texts (Baker 2017; Reich, Yau and Warschauer 2016; Takacs, Swart and Bus 2015), and can support students who have weaker decoding skills in comprehension (Lefever-Davis and Pearman 2005). However, others have found that the use of e-books with young children can be a hindrance because extra features such as hotspots and animations can be a distraction and add to cognitive load (Chiong, Ree, Takeuchi and Erickson 2012; Krcmar and Cingel 2014; Bates et  al. 2017). Lauricella, Barr and Calvert (2014) found that young children’s comprehension did not differ between e-book story reading or reading traditional print storybooks, whereas others (e.g. Krcmar and Cingel 2014) have found that comprehension does differ across formats, with young children understanding more in the context of print-based rather 207

Grace Oakley

than electronic stories. It is likely that much depends on the specific features of the e-book (Bus, Takacs and Kegel 2015; Karemaker, Jelley, Clancy and Sylva 2017), the context, the children, the specific learning goals, and the interactions that children have with other people around the text (Krcmar and Cingel 2014). Research also shows that child–adult interactions during e-book reading are different from interactions observed during print-book reading (ParishMorris et al. 2013; Lauricella, Barr and Calvert 2014). Since high-quality interaction is known to be important, more research is needed about adult–child interactions during literacy activities, including potential factors such as socio-economic and cultural background, and children’s learning preferences and abilities. Roskos, Sullivan, Simpson and Zuzolo (2016) found that the use of enhanced e-books improved vocabulary knowledge in young children, particularly those with low vocabulary, which can improve comprehension as receptive vocabulary knowledge is required for effective comprehension. This supports the findings of Smeets and Bus (2012), that reading e-books can support the vocabulary growth of children at risk of reading failure. However, there are many gaps in research in this area.

Composing There are many open apps (Lynch and Redpath 2014) that can be used imaginatively and creatively to compose multimodal texts with young children, including story-writing apps, drawing apps and music-making apps. These apps offer rich opportunities for children with diverse literacy learning needs and interests because they are often easy to operate, motivational, and support the creation of multimodal texts. For example, Rowe and Miller (2015) found that four-year-old bilingual children were able to create multilingual multimodal texts, with the support of adults, through the use of digital cameras and tablets that had writing, drawing and bookmarking apps installed. Oakley, Howitt, Garwood and Durack (2013) found that a young child with autism, who had previously been reluctant to engage in literacy activities, was eager to create comic strips using a comic strip app on an iPad. Oakley, Pegrum, Faulkner and Striepe (2012) found that children in a remote school for Australian Aboriginal students were motivated to use tablets for literacy learning, and enjoyed using skill-building apps (for spelling and handwriting) as well as more open-ended creative apps to create multimodal texts about issues that were important to them. Similarly, Oakley, Wildy and Berman (2018) found that five-year-old children from low socio-economic communities were highly motivated to create multimodal texts using iPads and seemed to benefit in terms of their growth in reading ability. Baker (2017), using ethnographic methods, studied eight struggling first graders using speech recognition technology to support their written composition over a five-month period and found that the speech recognition software supported the students in their writing.

The future of digital literacy and inclusivity in the early years The rate of technology development is rapid and technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) are making inroads into literacy education, as are robotics, digital toys and the ‘Internet of Things’ (Oakley 2017). Such technologies are also making their way into homes and educators should capitalize on the potential of such technologies and find meaningful ways of incorporating them into the literacy learning of young children with diverse needs. Some particularly exciting possibilities involve immersive virtual reality (IVR). It is not hard to imagine how motivational it would be for difficult-to-engage students, or students with comprehension difficulties, if they could immerse themselves into fictional worlds through IVR. These emerging 208

Inclusivity and digital literacy practices

digital mobile tools might allow exciting new means of representation, engagement and action and expression, but as yet are under-researched.

Implementation issues There are well-documented issues that can inhibit the implementation of digital technologies for literacy learning and practice among diverse learners. Marsh, Kontovourki, Tafa and Salomaa (2017) highlight the limited knowledge of educators on how to integrate technology meaningfully into their teaching practice, and the attitudes of teachers toward the use of digital technologies in early childhood settings can be an impediment (D’Agostino, Rodgers, Harmey and Brownfield 2016). Another difficulty is the relatively limited research base on the use of mobile technologies for diverse literacy learners through which to inform teacher professional development. Although the provision of relevant professional development is needed, it seems necessary for teachers to be able to teach themselves (and each other), and keep abreast of rapidly evolving technologies and what they might be used for (Croser 2014). For young children with diverse needs, teachers also need to be creative as they will often need to repurpose digital technologies to address the individual needs and interests of students. The selection of appropriate apps can be challenging as there are numerous to choose from, with many being of poor quality. Several authors and organizations (Cahill and McGill-Franzen 2013; Israelson 2015; Schrock n.d.) have devised guidelines and rubrics to assist in this endeavour. Finally, with regard to children with disabilities, Croser (2014: 164) has pointed out that there are often shortfalls in funding for additional peripheral devices such as mounting arms, switch access boxes and specialized apps, and so on.

Concluding comments An attempt has been made in this chapter to integrate key theory and research on inclusive education, mobile learning and young children’s literacy and digital literacy learning, as no overarching theoretical framework that brings these areas together currently exists. It has been argued that mobile technologies can open up opportunities for young literacy learners to engage in a blend of traditional and digital literacies in a range of contexts through multiple means of representation, engagement, action and expression, thus enhancing participation and achievement. Mobile learning frameworks indicating that barriers associated with time, space and pedagogical approaches can be surmounted through the use of mobile technologies have been outlined, and it has been suggested that, in the context of early childhood literacy learners with diverse needs, barriers between literacy modalities, home and school, play and ‘work’, and the curriculum areas may also be bridged. Although the body of research informing practice in this area is growing, there are still many gaps in knowledge, which primarily relate to ‘what works’ for children with specific characteristics (such as EAL/D, reading difficulties, disabilities and gender). There is also more research on lower order skills rather than higher order processes such as comprehension and creating. Finally, there is limited research on the role of mobile technologies in relation to the nexus between home and school literacies. Despite the challenges described in this chapter, it is evident that digital and mobile technologies have the potential to play a significant role in young children’s literacy learning and practices. Educators need to be creative in finding ways of using technologies to provide multiple means of representation, engagement and action and expression to ensure that children with diverse needs are able to fully participate and achieve in digital literacy. With rapid technological 209

Grace Oakley

advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies, not to mention the use of data to personalize learning, the options available to engage and support young children in digital literacy are likely to proliferate.

References Ahlgrim-Delzell, L., Browder, D. M., Wood, L., Stanger, C., Preston, A. I., and Kemp-Inman, A. (2016). Systematic instruction of phonics skills using an iPad for students with developmental disabilities who are AAC users. The Journal of Special Education, 50(2): 86–97. doi: 10.1177/0022466915622140. Armstrong, D., Armstrong, A. C., and Spandagou, I. (2011). Inclusion: by choice or by chance? International Journal of Inclusive Education, 15(1): 29–39. Baker, E. A. (2017). Apps, iPads, and literacy: examining the feasibility of speech recognition in a firstgrade classroom. Reading Research Quarterly, 52(3): 291–310. doi: 10.1002/rrq.170 Bates, C. C., Klein, A., Schubert, B., McGee, L., Anderson, N., Dorn, L., et al. (2017). E-books and e-book apps: considerations for beginning readers. The Reading Teacher, 70(4): 401–411. doi: 10.1002/ trtr.1543. Bus, A. G., Takacs, Z. K., and Kegel, C. A. T. (2015). Affordances and limitations of electronic storybooks for young children’s emergent literacy. Developmental Review, 35: 79–97. Cahill, M., and McGill-Franzen, A. (2013). Selecting ‘app’ealing and ‘app’ropriate book apps for beginning readers. Reading Teacher, 67(1): 30–39. CAST. (2011). Universal design for learning guidelines – Version 2.0. Wakefield, MA: Author. Retrieved on June 16, 2018 from www.udlcenter.org/aboutudl/udlguidelines/downloads Chai, Z., Ayres, K. M., and Vail, C. O. (2016). Using an iPad app to improve phonological awareness skills in young English-language learners with disabilities. Journal of Special Education Technology, 31(1): 4–25. Chiong, C., Ree, J., Takeuchi, L., and Erickson, L. (2012). Comparing parent-child co-reading on print, basic, and enhanced e-book platforms. Joan Ganz Cooney Center, New York. Retrieved on April 30, 2018 from www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/jgcc_ebooks_quickreport.pdf Chmiliar, L. (2017). Improving learning outcomes: the iPad and preschool children with disabilities. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(660): 1–11. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00660 Commonwealth of Australia (2018). Understanding family perspectives of school attendance in remote communities. Retrieved on April 30, 2018 from https://aifs.gov.au/cfca/2018/05/08/report-understandingfamily-perspectives-school-attendance-remote-communities-evaluation Croser, R. (2014). Inclusive technology. In: A. Ashman (ed.), Education for Inclusion and Diversity (pp. 162–195). Melbourne: Pearson Australia Pty Ltd. Cumming, T. M., Strnadova, I., Dixon, R., and Verenikina, I. (2015). Sustaining mobile learning in inclusive environments: a universal design for learning approach. In: W. Ng and T. M. Cumming (eds.), Sustaining Mobile Learning: Theory, Research and Practice (pp. 127–148). Abingdon: Routledge. D’Agostino, J. V., Rodgers, E., Harmey, S., and Brownfield, K. (2016). Introducing an iPad app into literacy instruction for struggling readers: teacher perceptions and student outcomes. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 16(4): 522–548. Dennis, L. R. (2016). The effects of a multi-component intervention on preschool children’s literacy skills. Topics in Early Childhood Special Education, 36(1): 15–29. doi: 10.1177/0271121415577399 Dore, A., Zosh, J. M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., and Golinkoff, R. M. (2017). Plugging into word learning: the role of electronic toys and digital media in language development. In: F. C. Blumberg and P. J. Brooks (eds.), Cognitive Development in Digital Contexts (pp. 75–91). Retrieved on April 30, 2018 from http:// ebookcentral.proquest.com Dunn, J., Gray, C., Moffett, P., and Mitchell, D. (2018). ‘It’s more funner than doing work’: children’s perspectives on using tablet computers in the early years of school. Early Child Development and Care, 188(6): 819–831. doi: 10.1080/03004430.2016.1238824 Flewitt, R., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2015). New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. Gillis, A., Luthin, K., Parette, H. P., et  al. (2012). Using VoiceThread to create meaningful receptive and expressive learning activities for young children. Early Childhood Education Journal, 40: 203–211. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-012-0521-1 Gormley, K., and McDermott, P. (2014). Differentiating literacy instruction: there’s an app for that! The Language and Literacy Spectrum, 24: 49–75. 210

Inclusivity and digital literacy practices

Graham, L. J., and Slee, R. (2008). An illusory interiority: interrogating the discourse/s of inclusion. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40(2): 247–260. Gruenberg, A. M., and Miller, R. (2011). A Practical Guide to Early Childhood Inclusion: Effective Reflection. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson. GSMA (2016). Global mobile trends. Retrieved on April 30, 2018 from www.gsmaintelligence.com/research/? file=357f1541c77358e61787fac35259dc92&download Howard, J. M., and Scott, A. (2017). Any time, any place, flexible pace: technology-enhanced language learning in a teacher education programme. Australian Journal of Teacher Education, 42(6): 51–68. Ismaili, J., and Ibrahimi, E. H. O. (2017). Mobile learning as alternative to assistive technology devices for special needs students. Education and Information Technologies, 22(3): 883–899. doi: 10.1007/ s10639-015-9462-9 Israelson, M. H. (2015). The app map. The Reading Teacher, 69(3): 339–349. Kabali, H. K., Irigoyen, M. M., Nunez-Davis, R., Budacki, J. G., Mohanty, S. H., Leister, K. P., and Bonner, R. L. (2015). Exposure and use of mobile media devices by young children. Pediatrics, 136(6): 1–7. Karemaker, A., Jelley, F., Clancy, C., and Sylva, K. (2017). The effects on children’s literacy skills of reading e-books with different features: are ‘bells and whistles’ over-rated? International Journal of ChildComputer Interaction, 12: 30–36. Kearney, M., Schuck, S., Burden, K., and Aubusson, P. (2012). Viewing mobile learning from a pedagogical perspective. Research in Learning Technology, 20: 14406. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v20i0/14406 Korat, O., and Blau, H. (2010). Repeated reading of CD-ROM storybook as a support for emergent literacy: a developmental perspective in two SES groups. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 43: 443–462. Korat, O., and Shamir, A. (2012). Direct and indirect teaching: using e-books for supporting vocabulary, word reading, and story comprehension for young children. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 46(2): 135–152. Kositsky, N. (2016). Synergy between digital and traditional literacy practices: A framework for building a reading culture in a secondary school. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Retrieved on April 30, 2018 from http:// scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/727. Krcmar, M., and Cingel, D. P. (2014). Parent-child joint reading in traditional and electronic formats. Media Psychology, 17: 262–281. doi: 10.1080/15213269.2013.840243. Kucirkova, N. (2018). Personalized learning with digital technologies at home and school: where is children’s agency? In: G. Oakley (ed.), Mobile Technologies in Children’s Language and Literacy: Innovative Pedagogy in Preschool and Primary Education (pp. 133–154). London: Emerald. Kucirkova, N., and Flewitt, R. (2018). The future-gazing potential of digital personalization in young children’s reading: views from education professionals and app designers. Early Child Development and Care (online, pp. 1–15). doi: 10.1080/03004430.2018.1458718. Kukulska-Hulme, A. (2010). Mobile learning as a catalyst for change. Open Learning: The Journal of Open, Distance and e-Learning, 25(3): 181–185. Lauricella, A. R., Barr, R., and Calvert, S. L. (2014). Parent-child interactions during traditional and computer storybook reading for children’s comprehension: implications for electronic storybook design. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 2: 17–25. Lefever-Davis, S., and Pearman, C. C. F. (2005). Early readers and electronic texts: CD-ROM storybook features that influence reading behaviors. The Reading Teacher, 58: 446–454. Levy, R., Yamada-Rice, D., and Marsh, J. (2013). Digital literacies in the classroom. In: K. Hall, T. Cremin, B. Comber and L. Moll (eds.), International Handbook on Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning and Culture (pp. 333–342). Chichester: Wiley. Looi, C., Seow, P., Zhang, B., So, H., Chen, W., and Wong, I. (2010). Leveraging mobile technology for sustainable seamless learning: a research agenda. British Journal of Educational Technology, 41: 154–169. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8535.2008.00912.x. Lynch, J., and Redpath, T. (2014). Smart technologies in early years literacy education: a meta-narrative of paradigmatic tensions in iPad use in an Australian preparatory classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 14: 147–174. Marsh, J. (2005). Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood. Abingdon: Routledge. Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J., and Scott, F. (2016). Digital play: a new classification. Early Years, 36(3): 242–253. doi: 10.1080/09575146.2016.1167675 211

Grace Oakley

Marsh, J., Kontovourki, S., Tafa, E., and Salomaa, S. (2017). Developing Digital Literacy in Early Years Settings: Professional Development Needs for Practitioners. A White Paper for COST Action IS1410. Retrieved on April 30, 2018 from http://digilitey.eu. Milman, N. B., Carlson-Bancroft, A., and Boogart, A. V. (2014). Examining differentiation and utilization of iPads across content areas in an independent, preK–4th grade elementary school. Computers in the Schools, 31: 119–133. Milton, M. (2017). Literacy and Inclusion: Current Perspectives in Inclusive Principles and Practices in Literacy Education. London: Emerald. Musti-Rao, S., Lo, Y.-Y., and Plati, E. (2015). Using an iPad® app to improve sight word reading fluency for at-risk first graders. Remedial and Special Education, 36(5): 154–166. Neumann, M. M. (2018). Using tablets and apps to enhance emergent literacy skills in young children. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 42: 239–246. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2017.10.006. Neumann, M., Finger, G., and Neumann, D. (2017). A conceptual framework for emergent digital literacy. Early Childhood Education Journal, 45: 471–479. Oakley, G. (2017). Engaging students in inclusive literacy learning with technology. In: M. Milton (ed.), Inclusive Principles and Practices in Literacy Education (pp. 143–158). New York: Emerald Publishing. Oakley, G. (2018). Introduction: mobile technologies in language and literacy practice and learning in preschool and primary school children. In: G. Oakley (ed.), Mobile Technologies in Children’s Language and Literacy: Innovative Pedagogy in Preschool and Primary Education (pp. 1–13). London: Emerald. Oakley, G., and Imtinan, U. (2018). Supporting children’s literacy learning in low- and middle-income countries through m-learning. In: G. Oakley (ed.), Mobile Technologies in Children’s Language and Literacy: Innovative Pedagogy in Preschool and Primary Education (pp. 155–175). London: Emerald. Oakley, G., Howitt, C., Garwood, R., and Durack, A.-R. (2013). Becoming multimodal authors: preservice teachers’ interventions to support young children with autism. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 38(3): 86–96. Oakley, G., Pegrum, M., Faulkner, R., and Striepe, M. (2012). Exploring the Pedagogical Applications of Mobile Technologies for Teaching Literacy. Perth: AISWA/UWA. Retrieved on April 13, 2019 from www.education.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2195652/AISWA-Report-FINALFinal-101012-2.pdf. Oakley, G., Wildy, H., and Berman, Y. E. (2018). Multimodal digital text creation using tablets and openended creative apps to improve the literacy learning of children in early childhood classrooms. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468798418779171 Ok, M. W., and Kim, W. (2017). Use of iPads and iPods for academic performance and engagement of preK–12 students with disabilities: a research synthesis. Exceptionality, 25(1): 54–75. doi: 10.1080/09362835.2016.1196446 Parish-Morris, J., Mahajan, N., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., and Collins, M. F. (2013). Once upon a time: parent–child dialogue and storybook reading in the electronic era. Mind, Brain, and Education, 7: 200–211. doi: 10.1111/mbe.12028 Pegrum, M., Oakley, G., and Faulkner, R. (2013). Schools going mobile: a study of the adoption of mobile handheld technologies in Western Australian independent schools. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, 29(1): 66–81. Pérez, L. (2013). Mobile Learning for All: Supporting Accessibility with the iPad. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. Petriwskyj, A. (2010). Diversity and inclusion in the early years. International Journal of Inclusive Education, 14(2): 195–212. Reich, M., Yau, C., and Warschauer, C. (2016). Tablet-based eBooks for young children: what does the research say? Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 37(7): 585–591. doi: 10.1097/ DBP.0000000000000335 Rideout, V. (2017). The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense Media. Robinson, C., Treasure, T., O’Connor, D., Neylon, G., Harrison, C., and Wynne, S. (2018). Learning through Play: Creating a Play-based Approach within Early Childhood Contexts. Melbourne: Oxford University Press. Rogowsky, B. A., Terwilliger, C. C., Young, C. A., and Kribbs, E. E. (2018). Playful learning with technology: the effect of computer-assisted instruction on literacy and numeracy skills of pre-schoolers. International Journal of Play, 7(1): 60–80. doi: 10.1080/21594937.2017.1348324 Roskos, K. A., and Christie, J. A. (2013). Gaining ground in understanding the play-literacy relationship. American Journal of Play, 6(1): 82–97. 212

Inclusivity and digital literacy practices

Roskos, K. A., Sullivan, S., Simpson, D., and Zuzolo, N. (2016). E-Books in the early literacy environment: is there added value for vocabulary development? Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 30(2): 226–236. doi: 10.1080/02568543.2016.1143895 Rowe, D. W., and Miller, M. E. (2015). Designing for diverse classrooms: using iPads and digital cameras to compose eBooks with emergent bilingual/biliterate four-year-olds. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 16(4): 425–472. Savage, K. (2015). Children, inclusion, young people and social policy. In: K. Brodie and K. Savage (eds.), Inclusion and Early Years Practice (pp. 1–17). London: Routledge. Schrock, K. (n.d.). Critical evaluation of mobile apps. Retrieved on June 1, from www.ipads4teaching.net/ critical-eval-of-apps.html Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., and Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a research agenda for the digital literacy practices of young children: a white paper for COST action IS1410. Retrieved on October 15, 2016 from: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/digiliteywp.pdf Smeets, D. J. H., and Bus, A. G. (2012). Interactive electronic storybooks for kindergartners to promote vocabulary growth. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 112(1): 36–55. Stone-MacDonald, A. (2015). Using iPad applications to increase literacy skills for children PreK to Grade 3 with disabilities. Young Exceptional Children, 18(3): 3–18. doi: 10.1177/1096250614535220 Sung, Y.-T., Chang, K.-E., and Liu, T.-C. (2016). The effects of integrating mobile devices with teaching and learning on students’ learning performance: a meta-analysis and research synthesis. Computers & Education, 94: 252–275. Takacs, Z. K., Swart, E. K., and Bus, A. G. (2015). Benefits and pitfalls of multimedia and interactive features in technology-enhanced storybooks. Review of Educational Research, 85(4): 698–739. Traxler, J. (2007). Defining, discussing and evaluating mobile learning: the moving finger writes and having writ . . . . The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 8(2): 1. www.irrodl. org/index.php/irrodl/article/viewArticle/346/875 UNESCO (2015). Education for all 2000–2015: achievements and challenges. Paris: UNESCO. Retrieved on March 1, 2018 from https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2015/education-all-2000-2015achievements-and-challenges UNESCO (2017). A guide for ensuring inclusion and equity in education. Paris: UNESCO. Retrieved on March 1, 2018 from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0024/002482/248254e.pdf UNESCO (2018). One in five children, adolescents and youth is out of school. Factsheet number 48. Retrieved on March 1, 2018 from http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/fs48-one-five-childrenadolescents-youth-out-school-2018-en.pdf United Nations (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child. Retrieved on September 1, 2018 from https:// treaties.un.org/doc/Treaties/1990/09/19900902%2003-14%20AM/Ch_IV_11p.pdf van der Meer, L., Achmadi, D., Cooijmans, M., Didden, R., Lancioni, G. E., O’Reilly, M. F., and Sigafoos, J. (2015). An iPad-based intervention for teaching picture and word matching to a student with ASD and severe communication impairment. Journal of Developmental and Physical Disabilities, 27(1): 67–78. doi: 10.1007/s10882-014-9401-5 Wolfe, S., and Flewitt, R. S. (2010). New technologies, new multimodal literacy practices and young children’s metacognitive development. Cambridge Journal of Education, 40(4): 387–399. Wong, L.-H., and Looi, C.-K. (2011). What seams do we remove in mobile-assisted seamless learning? A critical review of the literature. Computers & Education, 57(4): 2364–2381.

213

15 Young children’s digital play in early childhood settings Curriculum, pedagogy and teachers’ knowledge Elizabeth Wood, Joce Nuttall, Susan Edwards and Susan Grieshaber

Introduction Research indicates that children’s digital play practices seem to be in advance of teachers’ adaptation of curriculum and pedagogical approaches to incorporate digital technologies, digital media and popular culture, and the potential for learning that these materials generate (Howard, Miles and Rees-Davies 2012; Aubrey and Dahl 2014; Edwards 2016). This gap has been identified as an international concern (European Commission 2012): children’s digital activities are not always well understood by teachers, and might not be valued in ways that will advance children’s competences, or connect with curriculum content. This chapter explores some of the reasons for this gap, and proposes new play pedagogies as a way forward. The first section presents the research literature that identifies the gap between children’s converged play and curriculum and pedagogy in early childhood education (ECE) settings. The second section sets out the conceptual framework, combining contemporary iterations of socio-cultural theories, with theories of children’s interests, funds of knowledge, and converged play. The third section illustrates how teachers in the “New Play Pedagogies” project shifted their understanding of digital technologies, digital media and popular culture, and how children’s interests and practices could be integrated into the early childhood curriculum. The conclusion considers three key questions that are of international significance in ECE regarding new play pedagogies, curriculum and teachers’ knowledge.

Children’s digital play: contemporary perspectives The role of digital literacy within the broader literacies field incorporates children’s multi-modal home and school practices, including the ways in which popular culture texts and artefacts are embedded in the literacy and play lives of children and their families. Marsh (2017) describes the connections that flow between children’s literacy and play practices with digital technologies, media and popular culture, ranging from clothing, household goods and food to mobile phones 214

Young children’s digital play

and accessories, internet sites and virtual worlds. This “transmedia ecology” (Black, Alexander and Korobkova 2017) provides contexts for children’s multi-modal literacy practices before “formal” teaching of school-based literacy. Children’s interests are embedded in new technologies, as reflected in their uptake, potential for learning, social engagement and the development of imaginative play. Contemporary play repertoires dissolve barriers of space, place and time because of their potential for multi-modal forms of communication and interaction. Abrams, Rowsell and Merchant (2017) present the concept of “playscapes” to explain the global and local flows and pathways that circulate around and within children’s interactions with digital and non-digital tools and resources. The concept of playscapes reflects the interweaving of human, material, semiotic and discursive practices, and attempts to theorize how boundaries are blurred between children’s digital technology use, digital media participation, popular culture and play practices. Contemporary perspectives on play highlight that children do not consistently play within the frame of one digital game, but create their own ways of playing across multiple contexts, typically simultaneously (Wohlwend, Buchholz and Medina 2017). For example, in an ethnographic study of four 3-year-old children’s digital game play, Huh (2017: 192) describes their “multi-formed game play as they made up their own digital games through their experiences with digital games”, and their everyday interests. The children could tactically use and navigate real and virtual spaces for their play; they bent and broke the game rules, and even recreated the game scenes for their play (p. 192). They demonstrated similar forms of spontaneity, agency and control that characterize traditional/analogue play, by incorporating the digital world for their own purposes. Huh reports that the children use game content as tools to play with and create new forms of play by mixing their game play and other play in real life (p. 192). Innovations, such as the iPad, enable children’s participation in the transmedia ecology. Research indicates that children respond to the range of digital options available to them through these technologies and adapt them for their own play repertoires (Flewitt, Messer and Kucirkova 2015; Papadakis, Kalogiannakis and Zaranis 2018). Consistent with the concepts of transmedia ecologies and playscapes, children’s play practices evolve through new modes of engagement and interaction, with expanded choice and flexibility, which also reflect their interests and enquiries, and their participation in diverse cultural activities and practices. Modes have socio-cultural and social semiotic purposes because they link social interactions, cognitive content, meaning-making, children’s interests and identities. These play practices sustain the cognitive flexibility that is fundamental to learning and creativity, based on children combining and re-mixing their home-based funds of knowledge across time, space and contexts. In view of the rapid developments in children’s use of digital technologies and engagement with digital media and popular culture, what factors might explain the differences between home and ECE settings, specifically their uptake by early childhood teachers? From a sociocultural perspective, the “everyday” concepts that children reveal in their play may become the foundation for the scientific concepts in the subject disciplines or areas of learning within curriculum documents. However, as Fleer (2016) has shown, traditional/non-digital play does not consistently provide the contexts for the shift from everyday to scientific concepts, and there are ongoing tensions in pedagogical approaches that aim to mix or balance adult-led and childinitiated activities. Chesworth (2016) argues that these approaches are not mutually exclusive, because both require attention to planning and organizing the curriculum, pedagogical interactions with children, and assessment of learning processes and outcomes. Nevertheless, childinitiated and adult-led play have been difficult to reconcile, and are proving problematic in the context of children’s digital and popular-culture experiences (Burnett and Merchant 2013). The latter problem reflects ongoing debates about the appropriateness of digital technologies and 215

Wood, Nuttall, Edwards and Grieshaber

popular culture in children’s lives where the promotion of traditional play could be a defence against the assumed negative effects of digital play (Edwards et al. 2015). In addition, teachers might be bound by the demands of national legislated curriculum frameworks in which valued learning outcomes become the focus for their teaching, observations and assessments. Moreover, these outcomes might be narrowed to “basic skills” in, for example, Literacy and Numeracy, to prioritize children’s readiness for school (Ang 2014), and might reflect the instrumental effects of ECE policy frameworks (Wood 2015). In contrast, the fluidity and complexity of children’s digital play practices do not fit neatly within such frameworks. These factors confirm that attention to different characteristics of settings and contexts is crucial to understanding the differences in children’s home and pre-school practices. Taking a socio-ecological perspective on this problem, Edwards, Henderson, Gron, Scott and Mirkhil (2017) tracked children’s technology use in their homes and in an early childhood centre. They argued that elements of the centre associated with technology use suggested that activity, time, place and role influenced how and why technologies were used, including decision-making around access to those technologies (p. 6). In summary, problems with integrating children’s digital play in ECE settings cannot be explained as a mismatch of teachers’ knowledge, theories and practices, or as the instrumental effects of ECE policies. Nor is it simply a matter of providing professional development to change teachers’ knowledge as the basis for changing their practices regarding digital technologies, media and popular culture. We propose that the task for teachers is to go beyond the traditional ECE dichotomies of everyday/scientific concepts, informal/formal approaches, child-/ adult-initiated activities and digital/non-digital play, to understand how new pedagogical possibilities can be created that combine children’s converged play and curriculum knowledge in ways that integrate home, family and preschool-school practices. Drawing on Jenkins (2006), convergence initially explained the disappearing boundary between technologies, interactive media and popular culture. Subsequent research expanded this concept to describe how digital technology, media and popular culture also interfaced with young children’s traditional forms of play (Edwards 2013a, b) (such as construction, sand and water, role play, outdoor play, with non-digital resources). Converged play occurs when children use a technology and/or are inspired by popular-culture characters to participate in traditional play activities, for example by watching a Bob the Builder DVD and then digging and building in the sand pit with trucks. Converged play also occurs when traditional activities are enacted using technologies, such as using craft, painting and drawing apps on a tablet or computer. In spite of children’s widening play repertoires, there are ongoing challenges for teachers, specifically to recognize and support children’s converged forms of play (Edwards 2013a, b). In our research, we approach this challenge by re-positioning teachers’ use of digital technology, digital media and popular culture as a field-specific issue related to defining and understanding children’s converged play, and the wider educational implications. The following section sets out the conceptual framework for the research, and the development of web-mapping (Edwards 2013b) as a tool and process for enabling teachers to capitalize on changes in children’s popular culture and digital play experiences at home to foster valued learning through the ECE curriculum.

The conceptual framework for “New Play Pedagogies” Multiliteracies conceive pedagogy as comprising: (a) teaching practices that connect with children’s life worlds; and (b) learning outcomes that foster the capacity to generate learner-designed products and multi-modal forms of communication (Kalantzis and Cope 2012). We propose that 216

Young children’s digital play

the new pedagogies required for multiliteracies are equally relevant for children’s play practices, where thinking, acting, learning and playing in transmedia ecologies are seamless processes (New London Group 1996). Three concepts are fundamental to theorizing children’s learning in our project: funds of knowledge, children’s interests, and converged play all have implications for incorporating new ways of understanding learning, pedagogy and curriculum. Funds of knowledge refer to the understandings, interests and expertise that children develop, and contribute to, as participants in their families and communities (Moll, Amanti, Neff and Gonzalez 1992). Funds of knowledge incorporate everyday practices, such as shopping and cooking that can engage children in emergent concepts of mathematics and literacy, and provide contextual understanding of the situated meaning of those practices and concepts. Children’s funds of knowledge are understood to motivate learning, and are connected to their interests as they participate in diverse communities and practices. Children’s interests are significant from a pedagogical perspective, because they can inform curriculum planning (Hedges 2014). However, there is some debate as to whether children’s interests are momentary and idiosyncratic and are, therefore, difficult for teachers to interpret, let alone map into areas of learning and curriculum goals (Hedges 2014; Lovatt and Hedges 2015). Hedges and Cooper (2016: 306) have argued that interpreting interests as simply “activities” can mask understanding of what the activity represents in terms of children’s funds of knowledge and deeper enquiries. Their research linked children’s interests with understanding and negotiating multiple and shared identities as members of peer groups, families and wider communities and cultures. Children’s interests are expressed through free play activities, social interactions, and their choices of play materials and themes. This has implications for how teachers might develop responsive pedagogical approaches that incorporate children’s play-based interests, including popular culture and digital play. However, research also shows that teachers are not always confident about recognizing and responding to children’s digital and popular-culture interests (Fleer 2016), or identifying the potential for learning. Therefore, the concept of convergence is relevant in addressing how teachers might understand the breadth of children’s interests and the modes through which these are expressed. In addition, convergence offers explanations for how ECE curriculum policies and frameworks are lagging behind children’s digital play. Research indicates that convergence is a common experience for children because they no longer experience technologies, interactive media and popular culture as separate from traditional play, in home and educational settings. O’Mara and Laidlaw (2011) first illustrated converged play in their work describing two preschool-aged children playing tea parties. The children had a tea party app on their iPad to which they invited their “real” dolls and teddy bears. Other examples of convergence are “toys to life” figurines, such as Disney Infinity and Lego Dimensions, which come to life on screen when placed on a portal connected to a gaming device. Verenikina and Kervin (2011) argue that convergence has reached a point of saturation in the lives of many young children, such that it is no longer possible to observe whether or not digital play activities influence traditional play or vice-versa. Moreover, children’s converged play integrates cultural agency and competence in extending their play repertoires. Although converged play is an established concept, less evident is the extent to which it is incorporated into the early childhood curriculum, and whether teachers’ pedagogical approaches foster convergence to support children’s interests and valued learning. Converged play arguably provides multiple opportunities for children to develop and deepen their interests, but these practices might not be mirrored in ECE settings, for a number of reasons. Teachers might notice children’s interests as emergent themes, knowledge and ideas. However, as Hedges and Cooper (2016) noted, there is less evidence about how children’s interests can be recognized, 217

Wood, Nuttall, Edwards and Grieshaber

extended and engaged with in ways that connect with the goals of the curriculum. Teachers might, therefore, fall back on methods that are more likely to ensure curriculum delivery, such as direct instruction and adult-guided play, or rely on traditional forms of play. The dislocation between child-initiated and adult-led activities remains a significant issue in international ECE curriculum frameworks, many of which specify learning goals or outcomes, and direct play toward achieving those goals (Wood 2015; Hedges, Peterson and Wajskop 2018), particularly in Literacy, Numeracy/Mathematics and Science/Knowledge of the World. Where digital technologies are referenced in ECE frameworks it is generally not in relation to children’s play, thus further entrenching the separation between the digital as a fund of knowledge for children, and play as a means of achieving curriculum goals. Furthermore, ECE curriculum frameworks might not acknowledge children’s home and family digital practices, nor encourage those practices as valued learning experiences or outcomes. This is in spite of the potential of converged play to combine content (what children learn) with learning-relevant processes and dispositions such as agency, self-regulation, metacognition, problem-solving, creativity and imagination, and with children’s funds of knowledge. However, the place of play in general, and converged play in particular, remains problematic, such that teaching practices and learning outcomes for children might not foster the links between multiliteracies and pedagogy as proposed by Kalantzis and Cope (2012). The following section describes the research project, and how we addressed these problems and challenges by using web-mapping to explore new play pedagogies in ECE.

Using web-mapping: teachers’ perspectives This section focuses on the development of pedagogical practices with qualified teachers in early childhood centres in Victoria, Australia, involving children aged 3–5 years, and their families. The research project “New play pedagogies for teaching and learning in the early years” reflects socio-cultural orientations, building on Vygotskian principles of learning and pedagogy. Multimodality and multiliteracies frame children’s communicative practices and meaning-making in different contexts (Kalantzis and Cope 2012), and involve different forms of representation. The concept of funds of knowledge (Moll et al. 1992) is used to understand children’s converged play practices, and the extent to which teachers use their knowledge of children’s converged play in curriculum planning. Tool-mediated activity (Kravstov and Kravstova 2009) occurs when people use tools to achieve particular objects of activity within specific contexts. Web-mapping was initially developed by Edwards (2013b) to examine children’s homebased use of digital technologies, digital media and popular culture interests. In the “New Play Pedagogies” research we extended the web-mapping tool to help teachers engage with the concept of converged play using a visual web (Figure 15.1). The object of activity for teachers was planning for children’s converged play using web-mapping as a pedagogical tool. Key to web-mapping as a process is the idea that converged play is uniquely experienced by children as relational within their families and communities, even though their interests might represent globalized forms of popular culture and digital technology. The concept of playscapes (Abrams et al. 2017) similarly highlights that the “global” is re-contextualized by children within their play to represent their local experiences. The aim of the project was to investigate the pedagogies enacted by 17 sessional kindergarten teachers who used the web-mapping tool with 66 children aged 3–5 years. Web-mapping operates as a pedagogical observation and planning tool because teachers can “map” children’s converged play by shading those sectors of the web that integrate traditional play (e.g., construction, role play) with digital technology, digital media and popular-culture interests. By reflecting on both the shaded and unshaded sectors of the web, teachers can plan for converged play within 218

Young children’s digital play

Figure 15.1 Web-mapping as a representation of the convergence of traditional and digital play.

the curriculum. Web-mapping thus incorporates thinking about children’s funds of knowledge, their observed interests and the concept of converged play, to help teachers integrate digital technologies, interactive media and popular culture into the curriculum. Critically, the webmap allows for teachers’ planning to promote what is perceived as “valued” learning (either by teachers or according to curriculum frameworks), and to consider new play pedagogies. Our aim in this chapter is to present examples from the empirical data in order to raise questions about how teachers can make sense of children’s converged play in relation to the curriculum. Some teachers in the study did include reference to Belonging, being and becoming: The early years learning framework for Australia (EYLF) (Australian Government 2009). However, the questions we raise from this project are of relevance for curriculum and pedagogy across international contexts.

Web-mapping, funds of knowledge and curriculum In the initial interviews it was clear that the participating teachers were positively motivated with respect to children’s use of digital technologies; many added, however, that they struggled to incorporate digital play into the curriculum. In follow-up interviews at the end of the web-mapping intervention, the teachers made a variety of comments in response to a question about whether web-mapping prompted changes in practices or pedagogical approaches. Analysis of these responses indicates that the process of web-mapping raised the consciousness 219

Wood, Nuttall, Edwards and Grieshaber

of the teachers about the extent of children’s home interests and expertise in technologies, digital media and popular culture; generally, the teachers had been unaware of these interests and the expertise held by children. Because teachers were unable to plan using these interests in the past, they had potentially overlooked significant funds of knowledge that children brought to the kindergarten. Web-mapping, therefore, alerted teachers to children’s interests in popular culture and digital devices, enabling them to acknowledge and potentially respond to these interests. They also reported how they noticed learning-relevant dispositions such as perseverance, motivation, engagement, creating and solving problems, and creativity. One teacher, Josie, articulated how web-mapping had supported her planning for converged play, based on her recognition of digital media and popular culture in young children’s lives, and capitalizing on children’s home interests. She also described how the web-mapping process had enabled her to notice and respond to a child who had been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). In her post-video interview transcript, Josie describes how the child would not use the play dough, and they were concerned about the development of his fine motor skills. Building on his interests in Lego and Star Wars, Josie printed and laminated some Star Wars figures, mounted these on sticks, then placed them with the play dough. She describes how the child “would make things like the Millennium Falcon . . . then he would take Chewbacca and Han Solo . . . and he would use the characters . . . to drive the spaceship. He would make storm troopers, other things out of playdough”. As a result of this intervention, the children who joined him in this activity “were having these lovely conversations about who does what, who flies where, and where the storm troopers go”. In addition to developing his social interaction and conversation skills, the boy went on to draw pictures about his interests, and write his name, motivated by Josie allowing him to watch some YouTube film clips of Lego and Star Wars. Thus, although his interests did not seem to be directly related to the curriculum goals and outcomes, Josie’s responsive pedagogical approaches ensured some flexibility alongside intentional framing of his learning and development. Building on this child’s interests enabled Josie to facilitate his social participation in a group, and changed her ideas of how to use digital technology to support the needs of children with ASD. The project data also revealed teachers’ recognition of the value of children’s interests in popular culture (e.g. Star Wars, Monster Trucks, Frozen) as a source of curriculum planning, mainly in the area of social interaction and development, as well as planning individualized learning activities. In her post-video interview, Kate described collaborative use of the iPad to extend children’s play interests in building a swamp with crocodiles. They’ve been building a swamp with the crocodiles and we got the iPad out this week and said, “Let’s have a look at some crocodiles in the water” and they tell me what they want me to search up. In the Google bar I say to them, “What would you like me to look up?” and they say, “Crocodiles in the swamp” so I’m saying, “Crocodiles–” and I’m typing it in, the letters, and they’re watching the words come up. Then hitting “go” and they’re telling me where the images are. They’re showing me with the finger how to swipe. They’re talking me through it. This search activity was subsequently repeated because the children noticed snakes in the pictures, and wanted to add these to their swamp. For Kate, the links to curriculum content included language, reading, social interaction and using Google searching as part of their play. Kate commented that the pedagogies might be changing, but the learning outcomes remain the same: “you want the kids to have social skills and language skills and you’re still teaching them 220

Young children’s digital play

but the way you’re teaching them and the knowledge base you’re using to form all those skills is really different”. It was evident in our analysis that the web-mapping tool and the resulting web-maps, were not used in the same ways by all teachers. For example, some teachers sought to incorporate the EYLF or its outcomes in the web-map as part of their planning. Some teachers altered the webmaps, producing multiple hand-written annotations that included traditional areas of learning and development such as mathematical, social, emotional, physical and communicative learning; others raised questions about where books, writing and symbols might be incorporated. One teacher wrote the EYLF learning outcomes on her web-map to show the connections between her plans and ECE curriculum policy. This inclusion of traditional developmental areas on the web-maps could be a strategy to remind teachers of connections between traditional play and technologies, digital media and play inspired by popular culture. Alternatively, web-maps could have been altered to plan in ways that were familiar to the teachers such as developmental areas, or the EYLF learning outcomes. As Kate commented in her post-video interview, “It was good to have the tool. I think I would probably adapt the tool for myself so that it made more sense to me”. Some teachers expressed concerns about sticking with traditional play and traditional elements of the curriculum because that is what is known and familiar. This might also reflect wider concerns about digital versus (and possibly displacing) traditional play, rather than seeing the potential of converged play. Overall, it was evident that the web-map as a tool, and web-mapping as a process, made sense for most of the teachers as a way of raising consciousness (teachers’ explicit awareness) and enabling them to understand what actions they might take to link their practices with children’s learning outcomes via converged play. However, reflection on the findings of the research project suggests three questions of international relevance for ECE curriculum policies, pedagogy and practice: 1 2 3

What is the content of the curriculum in ECE? How might pedagogy and curriculum be theorized to enable the field to engage with children’s participation in transmedia ecologies? What would it take for pedagogy and curriculum to respond to these changes?

What is the content of the curriculum in ECE? We have argued that curriculum and pedagogy in ECE are lagging behind children’s converged play, which is problematic in light of contemporary theories of transmedia ecologies and playscapes (Abrams et al. 2017; Black et al. 2017). On the basis of our research findings, we propose that “adding on” or “adding in” digital technologies are insufficient responses to this problem. The challenge for teachers is to understand convergence in relation to the funds of knowledge children bring to the early childhood setting, and how convergence could be pedagogically situated to enhance children’s motivation to share and develop their interests, to support learningrelevant dispositions and capabilities, and to learn, use and apply content knowledge. There are fundamental epistemological questions about the core skills, knowledge and concepts in the ECE curriculum, how these are formulated as progressive curriculum goals, and what pedagogical approaches should be used (Wood and Hedges 2016). The foundational knowledge for curriculum for ECE had traditionally derived from applied child psychology and child development theory. Even where socio-cultural theories have informed contemporary ECE policy frameworks, there tends to be a developmental orientation to how outcomes are defined and sequenced (Wood 2015). Internationally, play is seen as developmentally appropriate activity, 221

Wood, Nuttall, Edwards and Grieshaber

because children’s interests drive provision, rather than substantive disciplinary knowledge. From a developmental perspective, converged play remains problematic for teachers because it is difficult to integrate digital technology, media and popular culture in ways that would be considered “developmentally appropriate”. Currently there is no developmental framework for understanding children’s rapid uptake of digital technologies, and their converged play, alongside the implications across different socio-economic groups and contexts. These phenomena are happening spontaneously and in situated, dynamic contexts, with developmental and educational theories lagging behind. In contrast, the findings from our project suggest that webmapping addresses this problem by helping teachers to mobilize the concept of convergence in ways that can be utilized within the curriculum to achieve a range of learning goals, and respond to children’s interests. However, contemporary perspectives on learning suggest that a shift is needed from privileging what is developmentally appropriate to what is developmentally possible in transmedia ecologies. This is because new theories of transmedia ecologies and playscapes suggest limitations in continued use of developmental theories as the primary knowledge base for teachers. Traditional developmental theories of play and learning are similarly inadequate for the purposes of understanding the complexities of children’s converged play. A further problem is that policy frameworks in many countries now define, to varying degrees, both curriculum content and pedagogical approaches (Wood and Hedges 2016; Hedges et al. 2018). As a result, play in many contemporary ECE curricula is framed within defined limits of achieving outcomes, raising standards and improving school readiness, all of which are at odds with play-based learning. A review of research on play in the UK presents consistent evidence that child-initiated, freely chosen play is losing the battle against adult-led “educational play” that is more directly linked to the learning outcomes in curriculum frameworks (Wood and Chesworth 2017). Similar concerns have been documented in international contexts (Breathnach, O’Gorman and Danby 2016; Fesseha and Pyle 2016; Hedges et al. 2018). In light of contemporary directions in the field of new literacies, and in children’s digital play, it seems there is a disjuncture between the role of technologies in curriculum frameworks, how technologies provoke learning, and the implications for new play pedagogies. This leads to our second question of what needs to change to address these challenges.

How might pedagogy and curriculum be theorized to enable the field to engage with children’s participation in transmedia ecologies? As previously noted, research indicates that teachers’ practices might be constrained by how they understand children’s capabilities and interests, and how these understandings might connect with conceptual learning across curricular areas of learning. There is broad agreement in ECE curriculum frameworks that child-initiated and adult-led play should be integrated to support children’s learning and development (Chesworth 2016). This demands that practitioners draw on pedagogical modes that serve different purposes. Wood (2014) has conceptualized integrated approaches as incorporating three pedagogical modes, each with implications for curriculum planning, enactment and assessment: (1) teachers respond flexibly to children’s selfinitiated activities, interests and play; (2) teachers design adult-led activities that are playful and allow for responsive interactions; (3) teachers plan activities that focus on specific learning goals within the curriculum, based on adult-led direct instruction. Each of these modes involves flexibility in the intentional/responsive framing of activities and interactions that can support learning in particular ways and directions. How these different modes might be understood in the context of ECE curriculum frameworks, and teachers’ knowledge of children’s digital practices, requires further articulation to maximize the potential of converged play for children’s learning. 222

Young children’s digital play

Consistent with Wood’s (2014) conceptualization of integrated pedagogical approaches, teachers can focus on guiding and extending children’s learning through their choice of appropriate pedagogical strategies. Our findings have shown that this can be realized when teachers engage with children’s interests and funds of knowledge, and how these are expressed in the context of converged play as sources of knowledge that relate to curriculum content. We argue that new play pedagogies hold potential for addressing the dichotomies between everyday/scientific concepts, informal/formal approaches, child-/adult-initiated activities and digital/nondigital play. These propositions require fundamental epistemological shifts that would need to be reflected in initial and continuing teacher development programmes, in curriculum frameworks, and in teachers’ knowledge and practice. Moreover, critical consideration is needed of what, and whose knowledge is valued within curriculum frameworks. We argue for contemporary theories of learning that align with new play pedagogies of the type fostered by the concept of convergence. This, in turn, raises our third question, related to how such theories might come about.

What would it take for pedagogy and curriculum to respond to these changes? This question is particularly pressing in the context of digital technologies, digital media and popular culture, and the implications of new play pedagogies for teachers. Our research contributes to current debates about the implications of converged play for children’s learning, as well as new forms of agency, multi-modal communicative competences, and metacognition that are evident in new literacies research (Robson 2010; Burnett and Merchant 2013; Bezemer and Kress 2016). Digital technologies, digital media and popular culture are situated within new media ecologies that permeate all aspects of children’s experiences, thereby provoking new developmental challenges. These challenges have profound implications for practices of curriculum and pedagogy in contemporary ECE. Therefore, we propose that corresponding shifts need to occur in three areas. First, new play pedagogies can support converged play by enabling teachers to build on children’s funds of knowledge and interests in ways that promote multi-modal approaches to learning. Web-mapping as tool and process enables teachers to identify children’s converged play, and to make pedagogical decisions about how to motivate learning that is related to children’s interests and competences, and can be connected to curriculum goals. Such changes can be facilitated when teachers have opportunities to collaboratively imagine new practices, based on exposure to examples of new or unfamiliar practices. Second, we argue that the implications for curriculum require a dynamic focus on learning processes, and on content. In terms of processes, our research project indicates that converged play enables children to develop positive dispositions for learning, such as engagement, persistence, agency and concentration, alongside the metacognitive skills of inquiry, creativity, creating and solving problems in meaningful contexts. In terms of content, converged play can relate to the disciplinary forms of knowledge within the areas of learning that are represented in national curriculum frameworks for ECE. We argue that a focus on dynamic learning processes and content enables teachers to orient toward children’s everyday life worlds in ways that can reduce anxieties about curriculum compliance. This links to our third point, that curriculum frameworks should incorporate the key concepts associated with those practices, and to represent these as curriculum goals or learning outcomes. We have argued that policy frameworks in ECE continue to rely on child development theories as the knowledge base for teacher education and curriculum construction. However, there is 223

Wood, Nuttall, Edwards and Grieshaber

no developmental framework for understanding converged play. In contrast, new theories of transmedia ecologies and playscapes suggest that the knowledge base for teachers needs to move beyond developmental theories of play and learning. This is because children are engaging with multi-modal digital texts, and inventing their own uses for digital media, both of which reflect the complexity and fluidity of converged play for extending children’s learning. We argue that this complexity and fluidity require critical consideration of teachers’ curriculum planning and new pedagogical approaches to play.

Conclusion We propose that in order to understand converged play in relation to curriculum, researchers need to direct their attention to how teachers can recognize children’s funds of knowledge and interests, informed by the connections between learning in the home and in early childhood settings. Researchers also need to identify and describe how such funds of knowledge can be systematically noticed, accepted and fostered by teachers within the curriculum to support learning. This is an urgent task. Digital design is evolving rapidly, including touch-screen technologies, the Internet of Toys, wearable technologies, augmented reality toys, along with channels such as YouTube, where children upload their own content and engage large numbers of their peers in co-curated play based on popular-culture interests. Children are already engaging with multi-modal digital texts and inventing their own uses for digital media, both of which reflect the complexity and fluidity of their converged play. This, in turn, requires critical consideration of the place of converged play within teachers’ curriculum planning and pedagogical approaches. Furthermore, understanding and appreciation are needed of the complexity of children’s life worlds, the range of different modes and platforms for their learning, and the material and immaterial culture of children’s lives. In making these recommendations, we are not arguing for more top-down, centralized directives for teachers, but for local, grounded and research-informed approaches that enable teachers to generate changes in their thinking and practice. Our research does not override ongoing concerns about the over-use or inappropriate uses of digital technologies, such as online safety, child protection and health. Instead, our focus is on how teachers can be enabled to recognize converged play in order to plan the curriculum, and develop integrated pedagogical approaches. As the playscapes and transmedia ecologies in which children are growing up continue to evolve, so too does the requirement for teachers to connect with children’s life worlds, including converged play. There are ongoing debates about what needs to change in early childhood education in terms of integrating theory, policy and practice in order to reflect what engages children, and what they are choosing to engage with in their transmedia ecologies. We argue for new play pedagogies that are responsive to children’s interests and funds of knowledge, as evidenced in their multiliteracies and multi-modal play repertoires. Contemporary ways of understanding learning, aligned with new play pedagogies, can help to drive these changes.

References Abrams, S. S., Rowsell, J., and Merchant, G. (2017). Virtual convergence: exploring culture and meaning in playscapes. Teachers College Record, 119(12): 1–16. Ang, L. (2014). Preschool or prep school? Rethinking the role of early years education. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 15(2): 185–199. doi: 10.2304/ciec.2014.15.2.185. Aubrey, C., and Dahl, S. (2014). The confidence and competence in information and communication technologies of practitioners, parents and young children in the Early Years Foundation Stage. Early Years, 34(1): 94–108. doi: 10.1080/09575146.2013.792789. 224

Young children’s digital play

Australian Government Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (2009). Belonging, Being & Becoming: The Early Years Learning Framework for Australia. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia. Available online at: https://docs.education.gov.au/node/2632 (accessed 6 May 2019). Bezemer, J., and Kress, G. (2016). Multimodality, Learning and Communication. London: Routledge. Black, R. W., Alexander, J., and Korobkova, K. (2017). Flows of literacy across corporate and userproduced virtual worlds. Teachers College Record, 119(12): 1–20. Breathnach, H., O’Gorman, L., and Danby, S. (2016). “Well it depends on what you’d call play”: parent perspectives on play in Queensland’s preparatory year. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 41(2): 77–84. Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2013). Learning, literacies and new technologies: the current context and future possibilities. In: N. Hall, J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 575–586). London: Sage. Chesworth, L. (2016). A funds of knowledge approach to examining play interests: listening to children’s and parents’ perspectives. International Journal of Early Years Education, 24(3): 294–308. doi: 10.1080/09669760.2016.1188370. Edwards, S. (2013a). Digital play in the early years: a contextual response to the problem of integrating technologies and play-based pedagogies in the early childhood curriculum. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 21(2): 199–212. Edwards, S. (2013b). Post-industrial play: understanding the relationship between traditional and converged forms of play in the early years. In: A. Burke and J. Marsh (eds.), Children’s Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning and Participation (pp. 10–25). New York: Peter Lang. Edwards, S. (2016). New concepts of play and the problem of technology, digital media and popularculture integration with play-based learning in early childhood education. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 25(4): 513–532. Edwards, S., Henderson, M., Gronn, D., Scott, A., and Mirkhil, M. (2017). Digital disconnect or digital difference? A socio-ecological perspective on young children’s technology use in the home and the early childhood centre. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 26(1): 1–17. doi: 10.1080/1475939X.2016.1152291. Edwards, S., Nuttall, J., Mantilla, A., Wood, E., and Grieshaber, S. (2015). Digital play: what do early childhood teachers see? In: S. Bulfin and N. F. Johnson (eds.), Critical Perspectives on Technology and Education (pp. 69–84). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. European Commission (2012). Supporting the teaching professions for better learning outcomes. In: Rethinking Education: Investing in Skills for Better Socio-Economic Outcomes. European Commission. Fesseha, E., and Pyle, A. (2016). Conceptualising play-based learning from kindergarten teachers’ perspectives. International Journal of Early Years Education, 24(3): 361–377. Fleer, M. (2016). Theorising digital play: a cultural-historical conceptualisation of children’s engagement in imaginary digital situations. International Research in Early Childhood Education, 7(2): 75–90. Flewitt, R., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2015). New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. Hedges, H. (2014). Young children’s ‘working theories’: building and connecting understandings. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 12(1): 35–34. Hedges, H., and Cooper, M. (2016). Inquiring minds: theorizing children’s interests. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 48(3): 303–322. Hedges, H., Peterson, S. S., and Wajskop, G. (2018). Modes of play in early childhood curricular documents in Brazil, New Zealand and Ontario. International Journal of Play. doi: 10.1080/21594937.2018.1437379. Howard, J., Miles, G. E., and Rees-Davies, L. (2012). Computer use within a play-based early years curriculum. International Journal of Early Years Education, 20(2): 175–189. doi: 10.1080/09669760.2012.715241. Huh, J. H. (2017). Uncovering young children’s transformative digital game play through the exploration of three-year-old children’s cases. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood Education, 18(2): 179–195. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Kalantzis, M., and Cope, B. (2012). New Learning: Elements of a Science of Education. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kravstov, G., and Kravstova, E. (2009). Cultural-historical psychology in the practice of education. In: M. Fleer, M. Hedegaard and J. Tudge (eds.), Childhood Studies and the Impact of Globalisation: Policies and Practices at Global and Local Levels (pp. 202–213). New York: Routledge. Lovatt, D., and Hedges, H. (2015). Children’s working theories: invoking disequilibrium. Early Child Development and Care, 185: 909–925. doi: 10.1080/03004430.2014.967688. 225

Wood, Nuttall, Edwards and Grieshaber

Marsh, J. (2017). The internet of toys: a posthuman and multimodal analysis of connected play. Teachers College Record, 119(12): 1–32. Available online at: www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=22073 (accessed 20 November 2018). Moll, L., Amanti, C., Neff, D., and Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2): 132–141. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1): 60–93. O’Mara, J., and Laidlaw, L. (2011). Living in the iworld: two literacy researchers reflect on the changing texts and literacy practices of childhood. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 10(4): 149–159. Papadakis, S., Kalogiannakis, M., and Zaranis, N. (2018). Educational apps from the Android Google Play for Greek preschoolers: a systematic review. Computers & Education, 116: 139–160. Robson, S. (2010). Self-regulation and metacognition in young children’s self-initiated play and reflective dialogue. International Journal of Early Years Education, 18(3): 221–241. Verenikina, I., and Kervin, L. (2011). iPads, digital play and pre-schoolers. He Kupu, 2(5): 4–19. Wohlwend, K. E., Buchholz, B. A., and Medina, C. L. (2017). Playful literacies and practices of making in children’s imaginaries. In: K. Mills, A. Stornaiuolo, A. Smith and J. Zacher Pandya (eds.), Handbook of Writing, Literacies, and Education in Digital Cultures (pp. 136–147). New York: Routledge. Wood, E. (2014). The play-pedagogy interface in contemporary debates. In: E. Brooker, S. Edwards and M. Blaise (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Play and Learning (pp. 145–156). London: Sage. Wood, E. (2015). The capture of play within policy discourses: a critical analysis of the UK frameworks for early childhood education. In: J. L. Roopnarine, M. Patte, J. E. Johnson and D. Kuschner (eds.), International Perspectives on Children’s Play (pp. 187–198). Maidenhead, UK: Open University Press. Wood, E., and Chesworth, C. (2017). Play and pedagogy. In: J. Payler, J. Georgeson and E. Wood (eds.), BERA/TACTYC Academic Review of Early Childhood Education 2003–2017 (pp. 49–60). Available online at: www.bera.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/BERA-TACTYC-Full-Report. pdf (accessed 20 November 2018). Wood, E., and Hedges, H. (2016). Curriculum in early childhood education: critical questions about content, coherence, and control. The Curriculum Journal, 27(3), 387–405.

226

16 Remixing emergent literacy education Cross-age, plurilingual, multimedia adventures in narrative teaching and learning Heather Lotherington

Minority languages in early childhood education This chapter addresses a growing phenomenon in early childhood education (ECE) that has received insufficient pedagogical attention: how to close the gap between school entrants’ heterogeneous linguistic and cultural backgrounds and the language proficiency expectations of ECE literacy preparation curricula. This is an increasingly common problem, given the proliferating movement of people around the globe, and one of acute relevance to schools in Toronto, Canada, where this research took place. Societal multilingualism, long a feature of major urban areas that have traditionally attracted migrants, is increasingly manifest in smaller, regional communities. Vertovec (2007) described changing 21st-century patterns of global flows of “new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified immigrants” (p. 1024) into British society as superdiversity. Though the term superdiversity has been contested, notably by Pavlenko (2016), acknowledging a post-multicultural agenda is critical to supportively accommodating differential immigration statuses and their concomitant entitlements and restrictions of rights, divergent labour market experiences, discrete gender and age profiles characterizing immigrant flows, patterns of spatial distribution in receiving contexts, and mixed local area responses by service providers and residents. (Vertovec 2010: 87) This complex agenda faces, head-on, ECE teachers who welcome children from a wide range of social, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds into the kindergarten classroom, including asylum seekers, migrants (legal or illegal, recent and settled), and locals, who speak languages from around the globe and around the corner. This superdiverse classroom is not the kindergarten

227

Heather Lotherington

reception class typically imagined in curricular documents, drawn in the main from stable, middle-class families speaking the dominant language/s. According to Lastikka and Lipponen (2016), reinforcing positive social attitudes and welcoming actions that foster cultural diversity at school requires a cultural commitment to accommodating migrant families with young children in the society at large. Sadly, the current politics of protectionism, trending across the United Kingdom, the United States, and numerous countries in continental Europe, encourages intolerance to cultural pluralism. Cummins (2009) stated that failing to appreciate the contributions of children’s existing language knowledge in school, and suppressing their complex transnational identities in order to get them speaking English (or the dominant language of school and society) as soon as possible replicates “coercive power relations” (p. 261) in the larger society. Taking a deficit approach to children’s linguistic repertoires by stressing what they do not know without acknowledging what they do bring to the classroom, is not helpful to the project of language (or any other) learning (Cummins 2000; Lotherington 2011). This chapter describes two story-retelling projects carried out with kindergarten children at Joyce Public School in northwest Toronto, Ontario (Lotherington 2011; Lotherington and Paige 2017) as part of a collaborative action research project in an urban elementary school. In these narrative projects, teachers mapped out imaginative routes to a redefined contemporary literacy for superdiverse children.

Changing concepts of language and literacy in society and in education ECE readies children for institutional learning, which continues to rely heavily on print literacy skills in the dominant language/s of society. As de Castell and Luke (1983) explained 35 years ago: Being “literate” has always referred to having mastery over the processes by means of which culturally significant information is coded. The criterion of significance has varied historically with changes in the kind of information from which power and authority could be derived. Educational attempts to redefine literacy, however, have not always faithfully reflected this fact. (p. 373) The three Rs of 19th-century mass literacy education: reading, writing, and arithmetic, were “inextricably bound to the transmission of a national ideology and culture” (de Castell and Luke 1983: 379). These basics have tenaciously held the public imagination about what ECE undertakes to accomplish, as evident in gate-keeping tests, such as the mandatory Grade 3 assessment of schoolchildren’s reading, writing, and mathematics skills across Ontario by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO 2017). This traditional 3Rs-based agenda has a strong backwash effect on curriculum and teaching, cementing outdated thinking that literacy is reading and writing alphabetic print in the dominant language/s. Conceptualizations of what language encompasses and how it should be taught and learned are formulated according to the theories of the times and framed by extant mediating technologies. Over the better part of the 20th century, school language mediation engaged principally face-to-face, one-to-many teacher talk; pencil and paper writing; book reading and research. Developmental theory held that children were naturally socialized into speaking and listening in the home; reading, and then writing were to follow in school learning. The policies and curricula formed to fulfil this expectation presumed a normative middle-class, dominant-language pre-school upbringing. 228

Remixing emergent literacy education

The digital dimension has transfigured the 21st century, letting an endlessly imaginative multimodal genie loose from a controlled print container. Contemporary literacies encompass varied semiotic strands that work in conjunction with each other to create novel multimodal texts. New media sites of production have generated digital genre-specific grammatical and spelling conventions, such as texting and tweeting, and nurtured new identities in immersive digital worlds. It stands to reason that evolving language and literacy practices should influence early literacy learning if school preparation is to be geared to 21st-century skills. Typically, though, this is not the case, with ABCs leading the traditional storybook-reading agenda. Our university-school research collective sought to tap the rich palette of contemporary digitally mediated literacies to introduce, embed, and productively incorporate children’s global linguistic and cultural backgrounds in basic literacy education.

The dawning of a pedagogy of multiliteracies Though anthropological researchers, such as Heath (1983) and Street (1984) were investigating literacy as social practice in forms not accounted for in school literacy education in the 1980s, it was not until the New London Group published their 1996 manifesto that the term multiliteracies came into prominence. Rapid changes in information and communications technology, the opening up of the World Wide Web (WWW) to public access and content, and the increase in global population flows in that decade had created a social world of physical-digital literacies that traversed time zones, cultural groups, and national borders. The New London Group’s analysis showed how literacy, understood as static print in dominant languages on paper, was inadequate in the dawning digital era. The research reported in this chapter began in 2002, stimulated by the New London Group’s call to pedagogical action. Pedagogical research during the first decade of the 2000s included studies of young children’s multilingual literacy learning in diverse contexts, such as Kenner’s (2000; Kenner et al. 2004) studies in south London; Hélot and Young’s (2002, 2006) research in Alsace, France; and Schecter and Cummins’ (2003) interventionist research in Mississauga, Canada. Simultaneously, research into young children’s pop culture and digital literacy socialization was flourishing: for example, Marsh’s (2004, 2005, 2006) research on digital childhoods in northern England; Dyson’s (2003) explorations of American children’s pop media culture; and Luke’s (1999) research on transmedia childhoods in Australia. While these and other studies focused on children’s digital socialization or multilingual integration, our longitudinal collaborative action research project sought to envision literacy education across the range of social changes motivating the New London Group’s elucidation of multiliteracies, namely: [W]e attempt to broaden this understanding of literacy and literacy teaching to include negotiating a multiplicity of discourses. We seek to highlight two principal aspects of this multiplicity. First, we want to extend the idea and scope of literacy pedagogy to account for the context of our culturally and linguistically diverse and increasingly globalized societies, for the multifarious cultures that interrelate and the plurality of texts that circulate. Second, we argue that literacy pedagogy must now account for the burgeoning variety of text forms associated with information and multimedia technologies. (New London Group 1996: 61) As the term multiliteracies encountered critical scrutiny for its lack of specificity (e.g., Lankshear and Knobel 2003), delineations of multimodality and multimodal literacies (Kress 2000, 2003, 2009; Jewitt 2005, 2008; Bearne 2009; Cope and Kalantzis 2009) enabled a clearer focus for research. 229

Heather Lotherington

The digital permeation of society rapidly outdated the 1990s’ WWW capabilities inscribed in the New London Group’s 1996 manifesto, introducing over the first decade of the 21st century the interactive semantic web, the ubiquity of wireless access, the social revolution of mobile connection, and the incursion of artificial intelligence in everyday interactions. With the changing communicative landscape, our collaborative action research grew in sophistication, morphing from a pedagogical and epistemological exploration of multiliteracies into exploratory multimedia, multilingual, cross-curricular projects.

Context of research The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) is the largest school board in Canada, serving 246,000 students in 583 schools throughout the city (TDSB 2014). It is also one of the most diverse. A recent survey found only 44% of children entering Toronto schools had an Englishspeaking background (Yau, Rosolen, and Archer 2013). Haque (2012) points out that school entrants reflect the success of Canada’s 1971 Multiculturalism Policy; school language policy, on the other hand, embodies the Official Languages Act of 1969 that provided equal rights in English and French. The blatant incompatibility of these two policies, which separate language and culture, was historically rationalized as supporting national unity at a time when Québécois separation was a national threat. Today the disjuncture between nationally focused bilingual language competencies, and the superdiverse children in urban classrooms is glaring. Children start public school in Ontario at age 4, entering junior kindergarten followed by a senior kindergarten year to participate in a preparatory “engaging, inquiry and play-based learning program” (Ministry of Education 2018: 2) designed to build foundational problem-solving and creative thinking, respectful socialization, and critical thinking in literacy and mathematics. Given the demography of Toronto, kindergarten teachers routinely welcome children speaking many different languages, including those they might know little about, for example, Oromo, Pashto, Romani. This creates an unfair burden on the kindergarten teacher who has to square children’s multiple and incomplete language proficiencies with the mandate to work toward literacy preparation in the official languages, English and French, with little in the way of systemic assistance to close the gap, apart from a stretched and outdated ESL formula geared to the few, not the many.

Nurturing a learning community at elementary school Joyce Public School (JPS), built in the 1960s in an area of northwest Toronto that is economically attractive to newly arrived migrants, did not have the sports oval or musical instruments of schools established in wealthier areas of the city, so the school administrators decided to invest in digital technologies. They applied for grants to purchase hardware and software and, by 2000, JPS had caught international attention for its digitally immersive pedagogical explorations (Granger et al. 2002). What the school was not doing well, though, was working productively with the many languages spoken by the school population. Following an initial ethnographic study that indicated only digital aspects of multiliteracies had permeated the learning agenda, I approached the principal, Cheryl Paige (who together with all JPS teachers is acknowledged, on their ethically granted request, by name) to try a class intervention to have Grade 2 children rewrite canonical childhood stories for contemporary times. What began as a volunteer after-school meeting with a few elementary teachers to rewrite Goldilocks and the Three Bears (see Lotherington 2011) had morphed by 2005 into a regular monthly workshop timetabled into the school day. Our action research collective developed 230

Remixing emergent literacy education

organically over the following eight years into a multidimensional in-house learning community comprising teachers, researchers, graduate students, and administrators (Lotherington et al. 2016).

Collaborative action research agenda The learning community worked hand-in-glove toward a shared aim: to improve language and literacy learning for linguistically heterogeneous children socialized into digital practices. Inspired by the principles of dialogic learning (Bakhtin 1975/1981), which eschew authoritative hierarchies in learning, we engaged in multidimensional talk, following a routine of planning, learning, and sharing (Lotherington 2011). Research questions articulated a shared research agenda guiding annual class projects that were collaboratively planned, designed, and conducted. Teachers had creative licence to develop customized cross-curricular projects that fundamentally incorporated curricular learning aims, the concept of play (de Castell and Jenson 2003), and children’s multiple languages (Lotherington 2011; Lotherington and Paige 2017). We did not aim to change the curriculum itself, but the ways in which curricular content was engaged. Narrative learning was fundamental to the research design; the primary grade projects began with a story that children learned to read as a springboard to discussion about ethical action, cultural choices, family histories, and so forth. Children’s learning was expressed narratively in a variety of multimodal and digital forms, including narrated screen plays, talking books (see Figure 16.1), claymation movies, handheld video games, and videotaped talk shows. Classroom projects were works in progress; ideas and textual products morphed and changed over the year, responding to needs, challenges, and possibilities. Multimodality was supported digitally and physically through discussion of ideas (e.g. from Kress 2003; Lankshear

Figure 16.1  A page from Imagine a World (with permission: Andrew Schmitt). Available at: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zabcX_zoP0

231

Heather Lotherington

and Knobel 2003; Jewitt 2005; Cope and Kalantzis 2009) and through class project experimentation. Our progress was inspired by incremental learning in our regular workshops, led by teachers’ adherence to social justice aims, and tilted toward technological interests, such as stop-action animation, claymation, and video game building. We invited guest speakers to guide us through special topics; collectively read and discussed provocative articles, such as Sawyer’s (2006) recommendation for improvisational learning; and shared ideas with project researchers, centrally involving Professor Jennifer Jenson at York University (re: culture, technology, and pedagogy), and, more peripherally, Professor Jim Cummins, at OISE/University of Toronto (re: multilingualism and identity texts). Key to our success was making a safe space for collaboration. Learning to talk dialogically required flattening the traditional school hierarchy; this was a learning curve for all concerned (see Lotherington et al. 2016; Lotherington in press). Theory guided and shaped thinking, but teachers planned and conducted their own classroom projects. Everyone was a learner; everyone was a teacher; everyone was a researcher. The workshops inspired a climate of exploration, as Grade 2 teacher Michelle describes. It was enriching! . . . When we go to [school board] workshops it’s basically just on a needto-know basis whereas when we would go to these [workshops], it was far more intellectual . . . Whenever we were stuck there were just so many more brains there to brainstorm ideas and the creative side of what to do. The collaborative spirit dominated all facets of the research, describing how we as a learning community operated, how teachers planned and conducted their classroom projects, and how children worked with the teacher and each other in their classroom projects. As Grade 3 teacher, Farah, describes below, teaching grew into connecting children and learning. Project-based learning allowed the kids to connect, and I want to use that word connect because it was something to hold to parents, to communities, to each other, because they’re working in teams, to Canadian culture. They connected in so many ways! I connected the curriculum. I connected my reading, writing, math, drama, art, everything was connected, science, social studies. Everything was connected! Some class projects were absolute showstoppers. The few that did not quite work out as planned taught us a valuable lesson, changing our conception of failure from error to essential procedural guidance. The success of the projects in inspiring children’s learning – which was visible in terms of substantially improved test results by children who had earlier failed to reach, much less exceed, standard expectations of literacy (Paige and Lotherington 2017) – was in the excitement generated by classroom learning. Children loved becoming agents in their own learning, co-writing and performing scripts, processing their stories as videos, plays, games, and multimedia productions; teachers loved working with children who were so actively enjoying their learning. Play (de Castell and Jenson 2003) importantly permeated all facets of learning. For students to be engaged, they needed to actively participate in their learning, and this participation involved play. Rhea, a specialist teacher who taught children with learning challenges, made an astute, politically contextualized observation regarding the liberating potential of play in learning. I regained my passion to not just teach but to be inspired! Especially when teachers were losing [political] control of what they were teaching: new curriculum, much more 232

Remixing emergent literacy education

regimented . . . But these projects helped me to play again, in the true Piagetian way: experiment, learn and grow. I knew that I wanted my kids to experience this because I was SO PROUD of my work!

The interplay of language, technology, and pedagogy Technology was chosen by school administrators in the late 1990s as a route to educational betterment for children at an inner-city urban school. Teachers understood technology broadly as any tool that could be leveraged for pedagogical purposes, no matter what its social cachet, from the tired old photocopier to shiny digital devices. Their understanding of technology as “irreducibly social” (Lawson 2008: 49) put paid to the naive technologically determinist stance on 21st-century school learning dominating public and political discourse that imagined simply purchasing digital artefacts would automatically result in better teaching and learning. JPS supplied teachers with proprietary laptops so teachers could, literally, play with them. As teachers became mini-experts in preferred programs and platforms, and experimented with teaching and learning applications, they became advocates to other teachers. Similarly, teachers shared their differing knowledge bases to overcome the hereditary split between language arts and second-language learning – pointless in an era when superdiversity characterizes all classrooms in Toronto. Teachers added knowledge about language, literacy, and technology kaleidoscopically to collaborative planning discussions. An interesting discovery was that teachers were reticent to share what they thought of as their own poor and incomplete knowledge of languages they had grown up with. We engaged in thinking about language competence among ourselves. No one knows any language perfectly, and self-judgements about second-language competencies tend to be harsh, as special education teacher Rhea exposes in her comment. I think the multiliteracies projects helped me to understand the importance of the children’s different languages and cultures. The importance of equity in the classroom . . . by validating the children’s first language and culture – even my own dialect. In Toronto, multiple languages live cheek-by-jowl in novel configurations; in contemporary life they seep into everyday untranslated usage, e.g. cappuccino, chai, sushi, pho. Classrooms represent this social remix. It was important to welcome into the classroom fragmented and imperfect plurilingual knowledge (Moore 2006), representing individuals’ idiosyncratic communicative knowledge. At present, the education system aims for the prioritizing, abstract perfection, and unreal separation of languages, structurally considered. Our intention was not only to open all channels for learning, but also to recognize the entangled, complex identities of students at JPS. This diverse cultural tapestry is illustrated beautifully in a page from a junior grade multimodal talking book about human similarities, entitled Imagine a World, which was completed by children in grades 4 and 5 to show how people were the same, as a prelude to discussing human social and cultural variation (see Figure 16.1). Figuring out how to invite children’s languages into classroom learning presented a challenge, of course. There is no legal slot for languages other than English or French in Ontario public schools. Heritage (now called International) language teaching falls within continuing education, as if the diverse languages of the residents of a multicultural country were something to consider after the business of mandatory schooling. It was truly up to teachers to experimentally try out channels for multilingual inclusion and, as we progressed, plurilingual expression. 233

Heather Lotherington

Getting inside a story: kindergarten Emergent literacy with a superdiverse population is complicated. The little black marks on the page that tell a story in letters must be accessed. However, they do not have to take prime place; nor do they have to stand on their own. Stories can be told in pictures, words, actions, songs, puppetry and in mixed media limited only by the imagination. The hands-on play-based modalities of childhood are viscerally understood by kindergarten teachers, who are professionally predisposed to multimodality. Two examples of class projects with culturally and linguistically superdiverse ECE children are discussed in the following sections.

Chicken Little “What is the dominant site of communication in this century? Is it the printed page? Or is it the screen?” asks Leon rhetorically. Young children fear scary things, such as monsters under the bed. Leon was working with a handful of kindergarten children, though, who understood fear through shattered migrations, fleeing political discord, and outright wars. Leon’s mission was to support the children’s early literacy acquisition in a language that they were just learning. His fear stories project explored how children could tell their own story and resolve a personal fear vicariously in the story denouement. A patient and caring early intervention reading specialist who creatively used digital technology to support his and others’ pedagogical aims, Leon was the ideal teacher to work creatively with vulnerable new arrivals from diverse backgrounds. His small pull-out group had been selected for special help by their kindergarten class teacher, and Leon had begun to work with the children on their communication skills and understanding of setting and character by reading and sharing familiar stories. To introduce his fear stories project, Leon chose the traditional fable of Chicken Little (also known as Henny Penny). The story provided a simple plot line about the main character’s neurotic fear that the sky was falling in, and introduced to the children the notion that people hold irrational fears. After learning the main ideas of the story, discussing and drawing the characters, the children pinned their pictures on a clothesline to map the narrative structure of the tale. This narrative preparation opened up a conversational space about scary things, and what frightened these children. The children’s fears included the unexpected appearance of a spider near a little girl; a big dog chasing a little boy (see Figure 16.2); scary bad dreams; and for a pair of girls working together who feared being left alone, the threat of kidnapping. Leon listed each fear on chart paper, and together they discussed how the children, as the protagonists inside their stories, could address this fear. The children considered how their story characters’ actions could support and resolve the fearful event with Leon’s help. They then drew their pictures on a single piece of paper folded and cut into eight-page paper doll books. Leon captioned each drawing with a simple sentence using the children’s words. Figure 16.2 shows six pre-digitized pages of The Dog Was Chasing Me, a story told by a little boy who feared big dogs, which in his country of birth, were not treated as house pets as they are in Canada.

Learning print through iconic navigation In the following stage, children proceeded to digitize their fear stories, requiring nothing more complex than a scanner or smartphone camera and presentation software. Once digitized, children inserted their captioned pages into their choice of slide tray where they were able to 234

Remixing emergent literacy education

Figure 16.2  The Dog Was Chasing Me (with permission).

program their storytelling event as a movie. Because the actual programming is predominantly iconic drag and drop, children were able to manipulate their stories, reading them (through memory-enhanced retelling) in English as well as telling their stories in their home language/s in recorded voiceovers. I was intrigued by how digital mediation disrupted expectations of emergent literacy development that had formed during the pre-digital era. Children’s activities were not aligned with dated trajectories of pre-school socialization wherein they listened to and learned to speak English at home before arrival at school, ready to learn to read, then to write. The children at this school were learning English at school, developing other languages at home, and, simultaneously, learning literacy in exploratory media and digital play. What they had learned before arriving at school covered a gamut of possibilities from literate childhoods in major languages, such as Russian, Spanish, or Mandarin Chinese, to socialization in Caribbean Creoles that were shot through with colonially imposed language shame, to existing in limbo in a refugee camp, having escaped war with an unknown number of family members speaking a familial language and maybe learning other language/s in the camp. And then some children did grow up in English-speaking homes, though maybe not middle class. There was more unity in the digital culture children shared at playtime; icons (e.g., ● ▶, 〓,  ) were primary; letters followed. In Leon’s Chicken Little remix, kindergarten children with only a fledgling knowledge of English, and a beginner’s grasp of story structures, engaged in early (English) reading by first drawing, then digitizing, then programming their own fear stories using icons that are pervasive 235

Heather Lotherington

throughout the digital environment. This media remix activity engaged children’s elemental fears and knowledge of digital icons to grow an understanding of cathartic storytelling and gain a foothold on literate English, using an array of communicative modalities, including importantly, the physical mode of talk in their language of greatest comfort (digitally recorded).

Three Billy Goats Gruff In another take on leading children into stories through remix, Michelle and Sonia created an adventurous cross-age kindergarten and Grade 2 project to rewrite The Three Billy Goats Gruff, a traditional folktale about bullying, centred on a nasty gate-keeping troll. Sonia, the kindergarten teacher, paired her children with Michelle’s Grade 2 class as learning buddies, based, wherever possible, on common home languages. The unique cross-age design offered each Grade 2 child responsibility for leadership and provided each kindergarten child with a mentor (see Lotherington, Paige, and Holland-Spencer 2013). After hearing the narrative read by the teachers in different versions over a number of lessons, children thought about the problems represented in the story. They thought the troll was not very nice to the three billy goats, and concluded that if he were more respectful, things might go better for all of them. What he needed was better politeness strategies. The Grade 2 children focused on distinguishing appearance from character; they wrote letters to the troll offering a character assessment of what they liked about him, and how he could improve. The children then collaboratively rewrote the story, inserting please and thank you into story dialogues and considered how this modified everyone’s role in the story. Cross-age teams were then merged into small playwriting groups, again on the principle of home language wherever possible. The Grade 2 children took responsibility for writing up their group’s recast Three Billy Goats story, inserting neighbourly politeness into the dialogue, and each group storybook was translated with parental help, providing an English-Cantonese version, an English-Turkish version, and so forth. The revised versions were acted by each group in full costume on a constructed bridge, photographed, and the digital photos inserted into each group’s bilingual retold Three Billy Goats storybook. The bilingual storybooks were bound with a blank final page, then shared with parents and grandparents at a family night at JPS. While kindergarteners told the story using their finger puppets, Grade 2 children worked with their family members to write customized bilingual story endings (see Figure 16.3). Figure 16.4 shows a family discussing their child’s finished book depicting the nasty troll and the three billy goats now able to cross the bridge. The Three Billy Goats cross-age project was highly multimodal but required minimal digital technology to put children inside their own multilingual narrative remixes. The project juggled learning to read for children just learning word shapes helped by children able to write elementary paragraphs; it illustrates the learning community’s participatory pedagogical design process, and showcases children’s co-operative customized multilingual, multimodal learning.

Valuing linguistic diversity as an educational resource for everyone A quintessential project aim was to create a welcoming multilingual buffer zone for incoming minority language schoolchildren. This required communicating the importance of valuing language maintenance to family members who were primarily fixated on learning English. This was and continues to be a struggle, as kindergarten teacher Sonia indicates in the following

236

Remixing emergent literacy education

Figure 16.3 Teacher Sonia with a parent and child completing a Turkish version of The Three (Respectful) Billy Goats (with permission).

quote: “Having seen how [children] don’t necessarily value their home language . . . They need to . . . We need to keep reminding them to keep their home language strong”. Research attests to the importance of first language maintenance in serial language learning (Cummins 2000). The social environment of Toronto is awash in English; non-official minority languages have a much slimmer support base. Language inclusion, though, runs the risk of being tokenistic if it does not bridge to external language support or community. We found support in parents and community members, who otherwise felt excluded from the school if they had poor English, but also through digital connection to multilingual people – teachers, schools, partners, no matter where on the globe, who were connected formally or informally with the research or with individuals participating in the project. Kindergarten teacher Sonia comments on how this cross-age narrative project invited parents to share their home languages in their children’s school learning. When the [Three Billy Goats Gruff] books were printed, they were printed in English and the home language side-by-side. They had both texts in there. And then the books were put together and bound, but with a final blank page. Because then we invited the parents to come and we showed them the entire project. And then we challenged them to write with their children a happy ending for the story . . . So they wrote and decorated and did the final scene, and we encouraged them to write the final scene in their language.

237

Heather Lotherington

Figure 16.4 A family discusses the title page of their child’s finished The Three Billy Goats (respectful version) book, showcasing children playacting the bridge-crossing scene in costume (with permission).

Future research areas Project-based learning at JPS utilized multimodality for plurilingual storytelling in a host of ways using available tools and resources as elemental as multilingual word walls and plasticine characters digitally photographed in stop-action animations to splashy interactive game programming and plurilingual talking books (see Lotherington 2011; Lotherington and Paige 2017). Teachers mixed and remixed physical and digital media: tools were explored and used as they befit the learning aims. This is important: technologies supported rather than drove all project-based learning. What can be done physically is not necessarily bad; what can be done digitally is not necessarily good; moving flexibly between the physical and the digital is key. What each class project was about was set out in clear learning aims; it was never simply a licence to play with what a particular software program can do. According to Bijker (2009: 72), “we live in a technological culture: our modern, highly developed society cannot be fully understood without taking into account the role of science and technology”. Given the inextricable co-productivity of technology and society, there needs to be a concurrent creative development of pedagogies that utilize digital tools, not because they are flashy and new, but because they form an integral part of the social and communicational landscape. Principal among these developments is the rapid migration to mobile devices and the ubiquitous connection they enable for the user. Cameras, of course, are mobile technology. What is changed is the affordability of powerful multifunction devices that allow children to program their own stories on a single small device. 238

Remixing emergent literacy education

Though young children should not be let loose with powerful pocket-sized portals to an unfiltered cybersphere, they can take control of choosing, capturing, and assembling digital data with teacher supervision and project scaffolding. This puts strategic agency and responsibility for learning and doing in children’s own small hands. Future directions include, importantly, considering how to share plurilingual pedagogical designs, and the purposes for having them, with politicians and functionaries who view complexity as bothersome, and the idea of discussing official spaces for languages in education as threatening. Our project created teacher-researcher evangelists who now share their knowledge of multilingual, multimodal project-based learning with new teachers as we once did in our regular workshops at JPS. The teaching profession is keen to innovate; politicians, however, must be weaned from their comfort with a one-size-fits-all language policy that is simply not flexible enough to accommodate contemporary superdiverse urban classroom populations. What is argued is that classroom pedagogies and professional learning models must change in concert with both rapid sociotechnical innovation and global population flows away from coercive teaching, and toward a more fluid, collaborative exploratory learning experience – for all. What we did to circumvent the need for language choices that included some and excluded other languages was to make spaces for customized bilingualisms in project-based learning, so the involvement of particular languages depended on the children involved rather than on the system as a whole. This provided locally focused, but globally sensitive, education so necessary in our rapidly changing world.

Acknowledgements This chapter is dedicated to the memory of Leon Lenchner, a talented elementary school teacher and librarian, who sadly and unexpectedly passed away in 2018. Leon’s creative mentorship is written not only into this chapter, which details his innovative Chicken Little-inspired fear stories, but onto the lives of those of us fortunate enough to have worked with and learned from him. I gratefully acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generous and continued support of our 10-year collaborative action research project.

References Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). Discourse in the novel. In: M. Holquist (ed.), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (pp. 257–422). Austin: University of Texas Press (first published 1975). Bearne, E. (2009). Multimodality, literacy and texts: developing a discourse. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 9(2): 156–187. Bijker, W. E. (2009). How is technology made? That is the question! Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34(1): 63–76. Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2009). A grammar of multimodality. International Journal of Learning, 16(2): 361–426. Cummins, J. (2000). Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children Caught in the Crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Cummins, J. (2009). Pedagogies of choice: challenging coercive relations of power in classrooms and communities. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 12(3): 261–271. de Castell, S., and Jenson, J. (2003). Serious play: curriculum for a post-talk era. Journal of the Canadian Association for Curriculum Studies, 1(1): 47–52. de Castell, S., and Luke, A. (1983). Defining “literacy” in North American schools: social and historical conditions and consequences. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 15(4): 373–389. https://doi. org/10.1080/0022027830150403 239

Heather Lotherington

Dyson, A. H. (2003). “Welcome to the jam”: popular culture, school literacy, and the making of childhoods. Harvard Educational Review, 73(3): 328–361. EQAO. (2017). Grade 3, primary division. [Online]. Available at: www.eqao.com/en/assessments/primarydivision (accessed 10 February 2018). Granger, C. A., Morbey, M. L., Lotherington, H., Owston, R. D., and Wideman, H. H. (2002). Canada: factors contributing to teachers’ successful implementation of information technology. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 18 (4): 480–488. Haque, E. (2012). Multiculturalism within a Bilingual Framework: Language, Race, and Belonging in Canada. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hélot, C., and Young, A. (2002). Bilingualism and language education in French primary schools: why and how should migrant languages be valued? International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 5(2): 96–112. Hélot, C., and Young, A. (2006). Imagining multilingual education in France: a language and cultural awareness project at primary level. In: O. García, T. Skutnabb-Kangas, and M. E. Torres-Guzmán (eds.), Imagining Multilingual Schools: Languages in Education and Glocalization (pp. 69–90). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Jewitt, C. (2005). Multimodality, “reading”, and “writing” for the 21st century. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26(3): 315–331. Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and literacy in school classrooms. Review of Research in Education, 32(1): 241–267. Kenner, C. (2000). Biliteracy in a monolingual school system? English and Gujarati in south London. Language Culture and Curriculum, 13(1): 13–30. Kenner, C., Kress, G., Al-Khatib, H., Kam, R., and Tsai, K. C. (2004). Finding the keys to biliteracy: how young children interpret different writing systems. Language and Education, 18(2): 124–144. Kress, G. (2000). Multimodality: challenges to thinking about language. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2): 337–340. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2009). Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge. Lankshear, C., and Knobel, M. (2003). New Literacies: Changing Knowledge and Classroom Learning. Buckingham: Open University Press. Lastikka, A. L., and Lipponen, L. (2016). Immigrant parents’ perspectives on early childhood education and care practices in the Finnish multicultural context. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 18(3): 75–94. Lawson, C. (2008). An ontology of technology: artefacts, relations and functions. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 12(1): 48–64. Lotherington, H. (in press). Learning to talk (dialogically) at school: creating the discourse conditions for successful collaborative action research. In: K. W. Clausen and G. Black (eds.), The Future of Action Research in Education: A Canadian Perspective. McGill-Queen’s University Press. Lotherington, H. (2011). Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Rewriting Goldilocks. New York: Routledge. Lotherington, H., Fisher, S., Jenson, J., and Lindo, L. M. (2016). Professional development from the inside out: redesigning learning through collaborative action research. In: M. Knobel and J. Kalman (eds.), New Literacies and Teacher Learning: Professional Development and the Digital Turn (pp. 65–87). New York: Peter Lang. Lotherington, H., and Paige, C. (eds.) (2017). Teaching Young Learners in a Superdiverse World: Multimodal Perspectives and Approaches. New York: Routledge. Lotherington, H., Paige, C., and Holland-Spencer, M. (2013). Using a professional learning community to support multimodal literacies. What works? Research into Practice. Toronto: Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat. [Online] Available at: www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/literacynumeracy/inspire/research/WW_ Professional_Learning.pdf (accessed 21 February 2018). Luke, C. (1999). What next? Toddler netizens, Playstation thumb, techno-literacies. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 1(1): 95–100. Marsh, J. (2004). The techno-literacy practices of young children. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 2(1): 51–66. Marsh, J. (2005). Ritual, performance and identity construction: young children’s engagement with popular cultural and media texts. In: J. Marsh (ed.), Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood (pp. 33–50). London: Routledge Falmer. 240

Remixing emergent literacy education

Marsh, J. (2006). Global, local/public, private: young children’s engagement in digital literacy practices in the home. In: K. Pahl and J. Rowsell (eds.), Travel Notes from the New Literacy Studies: Instances of Practice (pp. 19–38). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Ministry of Education. (2018). Full-day kindergarten. Toronto: Queen’s printer for Ontario. [Online] Available at: www.edu.gov.on.ca/kindergarten/whatwillmychildlearnanddo.html (accessed 4 February 2018). Moore, D. (2006). Plurilingualism and strategic competence in context. International Journal of Multilingualism, 3(2): 125–138. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social factors. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1): 60–92. Paige, C., and Lotherington, H. (2017). 21st century learning as discovery. In: H. Lotherington and C. Paige (eds.), Teaching Young Learners in a Superdiverse World: Multimodal Perspectives and Approaches (pp. 187–217). New York: Routledge. Pavlenko, A. (2016). Superdiversity and why it isn’t: reflections on terminological innovation and academic branding. In: S. Breidbach, L. Küster, and B. Schmenk (eds.), Sloganizations in Language Education Discourse. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. [Online] Available at: http://bit.ly/2Bb5LFo (accessed 6 February 2018). Sawyer, R. K. (2006). Educating for innovation. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 1(1): 41–48. Schecter, S. R., and Cummins, J. (eds.) (2003). Multilingual Education in Practice: Using Diversity as a Resource. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Street, B. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Toronto District School Board (TDSB). (2014). About us. [Online] Available at: www.tdsb.on.ca/ About-Us (accessed 4 February 2018). Vertovec, S. (2007). Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6): 1024–1054. Vertovec, S. (2010). Towards post-multiculturalism? Changing communities, conditions and contexts of diversity. International Social Science Journal, 61(199): 83–95. Yau, M., Rosolen, L., and Archer, B. (2013). Facts: 2011–12 student & parent census. Toronto District School Board. [Online] Available at: www.tdsb.on.ca/Portals/research/docs/2011-12CensusFactSheet1Demographics-17June2013.pdf (accessed 3 October 2016).

241

17 Posthuman theory as a tool to explore literacy desirings Sara-Taylor-iPad-Book becoming in Writers’ Studio Candace R. Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker

In Tara’s 2nd grade Writers’ Studio (7 & 8 years old), Sara is carrying the book, Have you Seen Trees? (Oppenheim 1995) as Taylor is working with an iPad. Sara tells other students to go away who try to enter into the conversation. She tells them she needs some quiet time with her assistant, Taylor. As Taylor holds the iPad up, Sara exclaims, “Please don’t film me like that . . . no!” Others come around to see the confrontation. A boy picks up the iPad and Sara tells him no. Sara pulls at the iPad and tells him she needs it for videotaping. Since others won’t leave her alone, Sara states that she is just going to walk away and invites Taylor to come with her. Taylor remains at the table working-with-the-iPad and says to a peer, “Where’s the app?” as what she was hoping to see disappeared. For a couple of minutes Taylorplays-with-iPad-cover/flipstand trying to get it to stand up while also pushing app buttons. Sara comes back and asks Taylor if she is still playing with the iPad. Sara apologizes and shares how she felt mad when peers kept coming in and trying to work on the iPad as she was working on her project. Sara suggests that she and Taylor go to the classroom library where they can concentrate without many people. Once in the library, Sara says she’ll handle the iPad herself and expresses to Taylor that she is frustrated, so please leave her alone. Next, Sara props up the iPad on the furniture and states to Taylor that they won’t need the stand/cover. Sara begins recording and does an introduction for a read-aloud video for 1st graders. However, she realizes the difficulty in recording and performing. Sara says she has a better job for Taylor, to be the “cameragirl”. She tells Taylor how to hold the iPad and instructs her to use hand signals to communicate with her. Others have come into the space, so Sara and Taylor move again with the iPad and Have you Seen Trees? to Tara’s desk area. Sara sits in the teacher’s chair and Taylor sits in a student chair, holding the iPad and recording. *** Since 2010, we have co-researched the literacy desirings in Tara’s classroom. Our teaching/ researching focus is on what happens when Tara sets out a range of artistic and digital tools and 242

Posthuman theory as a tool

invites students to be writers. We conceptualize writing broadly and created the term “literacy desiring” to focus on literacy processes (the becoming of artifacts such as books, movies, dramas, 3-D models, wall murals, puppets, and so forth) and to emphasize the fluid, sometimes unintentional, unbounded, and rhizomatic ways multimodal artifacts come into being through intraactions with humans and nonhumans (i.e., time, space, materials, environment). Literacy desiring is oriented toward the present (ever-changing) needs, wishes, and demands of students-with-nonhumans, but also with possible users of literacy artifacts in mind. (Kuby and Gutshall Rucker 2016: 4) We are interested in the processes of literacies coming into being, not solely the products. Originally Tara called writing time “Writing Workshop” but over time changed the name to “Writers’ Studio” when she invited children to compose with artistic and digital tools. During the school year that this vignette occurred, Tara had two iPads in addition to a SmartBoard and two desktop computers (and audio and video recorders used for research). Tara also had access to a laptop cart if all children needed a computer to use. However, as a school they were not engaged in 1:1 technology. Therefore, children did not all do the same things with digital tools at the same time, which we found promising. We were fascinated with the playing-with-iPad that Taylor engaged with as she articulated later that day this was her first time using an iPad (student names are pseudonyms). We were also fascinated with Sara’s choices related to space, people, iPad, stand/cover, book, and relationships as she worked with all of these in trying to make her vision of creating video read-alouds for the 1st grade classes come alive. This clip also reveals several misconceptions on how to use an iPad. For example, Sara believes they need to record one video for each class instead of being able to record one and share it with all 1st grade classes. We also noticed how Sara’s demeanor changed when she thought the camera was recording her (or not). In all, we are interested in how people (both teachers and children) as well as a future audience all intra-act (inspired by posthumanist theories) with other bodies such as books, iPad, case/ flipstand, desks, chairs, and so forth to produce new ways of knowing/be(com)ing/being and literacies. Our work is inspired by theorists who claim knowing cannot be separated from our be(com)ing and doing in the world, hence our writing uses unconventional joining of words and punctuation to demonstrate the theoretical ideas we are trying to communicate. For example, we write know/be(com)e/do together in this way to demonstrate that these cannot be separated; knowing, being, becoming, and doing are co-constituted as discussed in Barad’s (2007) agential realism theory. We understand that the use of hyphens, slashes, and other non-traditional forms of (re)presentation might feel uncomfortable. In part, that is the point. To shake up language and how we think of writing when thinking with posthumanist theories, in an effort to not only think with theories but to also write with theories within the limits of (re)presentation. In this chapter, we think with feminist-philosopher-physicist Karen Barad’s writing on posthuman performativity. While we have read publications by Barad (e.g. 2007, 2013) and watched her lectures online, we narrowed our analytic practices to one particular article (Barad 2003). We did this for several reasons. One, it is a long, dense article full of many key ideas related to her theory of agential realism. Two, we wanted the opportunity to think with theory with data to really dig deep into what was becoming in Writers’ Studio. Third, this chapter provides a space to think with several core concepts of Barad’s work as discussed below that we find helpful in thinking about how and what is produced when people and non-living bodies (e.g. desks, iPads, books) come into being together as they create literacies. 243

Candace R. Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker

Literature to think with and about There is a growing body of scholarship that looks at how young children learn with digital tools. For example, in Marsh’s (2005) edited book on popular culture, new media, and digital literacy, Smith discusses how a toddler engages in computer-based dramatic play. Vasquez and Felderman’s (2013) edited book on technology and critical literacy chronicles several classrooms using a variety of digital tools such as VoiceThread, podcasts, photography, and Clustr Maps. Marsh (2008, 2010, 2011) has also written about children’s online play in virtual worlds and with editing animated films. Wohlwend’s (2013) scholarship details the moment by moment interactions of children with digital tools and popular media. Wohlwend, Vander Zanden, Husbye, and Kuby (2011) write about the virtual and physical worlds of children playing with an online gaming space in an afterschool computer lab. Verenikina and Kervin (2011) write about digital games and spontaneous play. In addition, Skinner and Hagood (2008) look at both kindergarten and junior high students (learning English) making digital stories. Flewitt, Messer, and Kucirkova (2014) look at the use of iPads in three settings with children age 3–4, 4–5, and 7–13 years old. They focus on sociocultural notions of power, figured worlds, novice/expert, and collaboration. Carrington and Marsh (2005) were a part of a special issue dedicated to digital childhood and youth, specifically focusing on new texts and new literacies. However, Burnett’s (2010) robust review of scholarship from 2003 to 2009 indicates there continues to be a lack of research about young children and technologies. In her piece, she outlines three categories of studies that position technology as: deliverer of literacy; site for interaction around texts; and medium for meaning making. Burnett also notes how the studies either drew on psychological-cognitive or socio-cultural models of literacy. In response, Burnett offers readers a perspective of thinking with Latour’s actor network theory as a tool to consider another way of conceptualizing children’s engagement with digital texts. It is here, for example, the field begins to see an invitation to think with post-theories in relation to digital literacies. However, there still remains little scholarship that marries digital literacies of young children with post-theories. We notice that the body of scholarship on young children and digital literacies has grown, but theoretically and methodologically it is rooted in socio-cultural theories such as multimodality, New Literacy Studies, and multiliteracies and/ or critical literacy. One might also, however, argue that there is a growing body of scholarship in (early) literacy education that thinks with post-theories. For example, in a recent special issue of the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy (Kuby and Rowsell 2017) nine sets of authors explore posthumanist theories in relation to literacies of infants, toddlers, and primary-aged children. In an edited book on posthumanism and literacy education (Kuby, Spector, and Thiel 2019), there are several chapters by educators who write about early childhood literacies. While not specifically in literacy education, the writings of Bronwyn Davies, Hillevi Lenz Taguchi, Karin Murris, Liselott Mariett Olsson, and Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Sylvia Kind and Laurie Kocher are about preschoolers and primary-aged children and are pivotal in shaping how we think about teaching/learning of children in a lively, more-than-human world. We are beginning to see more scholarship that thinks with post-theories in relation to digital literacies, although most are focused on children older than 8 years old. Uniquely however, Wargo’s (2017) scholarship explicitly thinks with posthuman theories, digital literacies, and young children’s (sonic) compositions and thus indicates the lack of scholarship that intersects these three areas (we do not see poststructuralism and posthumanism as synonyms; while they

244

Posthuman theory as a tool

have overlapping features they also have philosophical differences). Therefore, we believe the time is ripe for early literacy educators, specifically interested in multimodal and digital literacies, to consider what posthumanist theories might afford us in thinking about how literacies come to be and what they produce.

Inquiring with/through/in theory We situate our work in a larger field of scholars who “think with theories” as inquiry (Jackson and Mazzei 2012). These scholars resist the normalized, taken-for-granted assumptions of qualitative inquiry and think with post-theories as analytic practice. We think with Barad’s (2003) writing and data from Tara’s classroom, specifically a video of Sara-Taylor-iPad-Book coming into literacies together. Over the years, we have audio and video recorded lessons, conferences, and playful literacies. We focus on this one literacy desiring (i.e., the making of read-aloud videos), however this one example is situated in a lively classroom of children be(com)ing writers with various artistic and digital tools. Hence, our focus is on the ways children, teachers, and material bodies – which include paint, paper, glue, yarn, cotton balls, pipe cleaners – and digital bodies like iPads come into literacies together. We do not privilege the digital tool over a book or paint brush, nor a person, rather we are interested in the relationships between as a way of thinking about knowing/be(com)ing/doing literacies. Digital tools are a part of the relationship, not the only part. With our example of Sara-Taylor-iPad-Book literacy desiring, the digital is a part of it, but not the whole.

Theoretical concepts We narrow our thinking and writing in this chapter to four Baradian concepts: Intra-action: We use “intra-act”, a neologism that Barad (2007) coined, to signal the posthumanist concept that humans, nonhumans, more-than-humans intra-act together to create realities and knowledges. Barad discusses that interaction is associated with the social interactions of humans, not the agentic relationship between humans and nonhumans (i.e. intra-action). Entanglement: Within quantum physics, a quantum entanglement is a phenomenon that occurs when particles intra-act in such a way that you cannot describe a particle independently of the others, even if physically they are separated. In other words, the whole (the new phenomenon) is only recognizable as a whole because of the relationships between the pieces. Material-discursive: For Barad, the material (all bodies) cannot be separate from discourses, that which enables and constrains what bodies say and do. Therefore, she writes these terms as a joined word to indicate the mutually constitutive relationship of them. Agential cuts: Barad’s theory of agential realism centers on the notion of agential cuts. Objects are not completely separate, bounded bodies that we refer to them as. There are constant intra-actions (forces, shifts, jumps, entanglements) happening that produce new relationships, knowledges, and realities. These specific material-discursive configurations are agential cuts, and thus agency and power are produced through the relations enacted through cuts.

245

Candace R. Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker

While we separate these four concepts for definitional purposes here, we hope readers experience how they work together as written below. We write-with posthumanist theory in-between the intra-actions of Sara-Taylor-iPad-Book becoming. We put to work the four Baradian concepts with the video clip, thinking about how the theoretical concepts helped us to think differently about literacies.

Sara-Taylor-iPad-Book becoming Matter (re)configuring Sara, sitting in Tara’s deskchair, holds the book to the side like a teacher during a read-aloud. She says things like “Here are some facts that I think you guys would love if you went to Hawaii.” Taylor records. Jane comes and stands over Taylor’s shoulder to watch. Taylor holds the iPad vertically to record Sara reading. Sara points to pages and reads information about a sweetgum tree, “It can be chewed like bubble gum”. Sara turns to the camera and says, “If you’ve never eaten bubblegum you might want to try this flavor!” She continues by reading about the sugar maple tree while pointing to the picture of its leaf. Sara turns to the camera and says, “Syrup is the thing you like to put on pancakes, it’s great! Especially if you are a pancake lover!” Taylor smiles and giggles but with little sound from behind the iPad. Sara reads about how it takes 30 gallons of maple sap to make one gallon of syrup. Then she turns to the camera and says, “Isn’t that a lot?” Another peer joins the group looking behind/through the iPad. Sara continues to read, pointing to pictures, looking at the camera to make connections to future viewers, and posing questions. Taylor eases off the chair and sits on the ground to get closer to Sara as if to zoom-in. As Sara finishes the book she faces the cover of the book to the iPad and says, “That’s the end of this book and if you want to learn more you might as well look for it at your local library or classroom. The end.” *** Barad (2003) writes that the “Posthumanist notion of performativity [is]—one that incorporates important material and discursive, social and scientific, human and nonhuman, and natural and cultural factors” (p. 808). In early childhood learning spaces, there are discourses that shape how children (and teachers, administrators, families) think about literacies, specifically writing. The performative nature of the world coming to be, in our case literacies, are produced with/ through/in material bodies (e.g., people, digital tools, art supplies, plants, animals) and discursive relationships (e.g., beliefs about childhood, policies on curricula, standardized testing and accountability measures). These material-discursive relationships, perform and produce ways of knowing/be(com)ing/doing literacies. Tara-Sara-Taylor-iPad-Book are producing realities and knowledges about literacies in this literacy desiring. It is important to note that Tara did not instruct them to create read-aloud videos, the desirings came to be through intra-actions of Sara-with/in material-discursive relations. We notice how Sara blurs genres in this read-aloud. She is reading a nonfiction book but adds personal commentary. This interactive read-aloud, to a future audience, reminds us of the genre of children’s TV shows where the main character often pauses and asks the audience (children viewing the show) questions. Sara is a part of a material-discursive move to put to work the book, her reading of its nonfiction information, the iPad recording for a future audience, and her knowledge of TV shows for children as she creates-with-other bodies the videos. Barad (2003: 818–819) writes: 246

Posthuman theory as a tool

Meaning is not a property of individual words or groups of words. Meaning is neither intralinguistically conferred nor extralinguistically referenced. Semantic contentfulness is not achieved through the thoughts or performances of individual agents but rather through particular discursive practices . . . meaning is not ideational but rather specific material (re)configurings of the world, and semantic indeterminacy, like ontological indeterminacy, is only locally resolvable through specific intra-actions. As literacy teachers/researchers, this quote caught our eyes. How can meaning not be about the property of words or groups of words? We thought about how for Sara (and her future audience) meaning was not just about the words she spoke (the book’s nor her added commentary) but rather the entire entanglement of the video such as her assumptions about what 1st graders would enjoy; her gaze and when she chose to turn from the book to the camera with a performative, engaging look; and the purposeful commentary and questions throughout that she thought 1st graders could connect to (although it is hard to tell if they were all planned or improvisational). This is material (re)configurings of the world through specific intra-actions. Sara is teacherly in this read-aloud to help 1st graders know how to read a nonfiction text, showing them how reading is active, not static facts. Barad (2003) writes about matter, “matter is substance in its intra-active becoming – not a thing, but a doing, a congealing of agency. Matter is a stabilizing and destabilizing process of iterative intra-activity” (p. 822, emphasis in original). Matter, such as the book, is not (solely) a thing, but a doing through the intra-actions with Sara, Taylor, 1st grade viewers, knowledge about children’s TV shows, and . . . and . . . and . . . . As educators we must think about books (and other objects that seem non/un-lively) as doings, intra-active in relationships and knowledges. Intra-active becoming is relational in the sense that knowing/ be(com)ing/doing come to be through relationships between/among all bodies (both human and nonhuman).

Unpredictable relationships Jane appeals to Sara to be a part of the group. Sara lets her know that she might help as a “cameragirl” with Taylor. Taylor says she doesn’t want anyone to help her. Sara uses her body and words to show that Jane might be good at [hand] signaling to her during recordings. Sara holds up her pointer finger, “This means ready and giving a thumbs up means stop”. Jane changes the meaning of a thumbs up to “good job”. Sara asks Taylor, “Are you ready to film me in another one?” Taylor, “Yeah! Do the same thing girl.” Sara walks back to the teacher chair. Taylor and Jane work together to get ready with the iPad. Sara states, “Same thing, but it might not be so sophisticated.” Jane gently pushes forward the chair Taylor is sitting in, closer to where Sara is. “This is good,” Jane says. Sara uses her feet to roll her chair forward slightly to the iPad. Sara says, “Tell me when it is ready for me to start.” She looks over to Jane for a hand signal. Taylor wants to be on the ground and moves her body to the floor in front of Sara. Jane leans down behind Taylor/Camera. Jane nods her head at Sara to signal it is time for her to start at the same time that Taylor pushes the record button. *** We notice (re)configurings as other peers plead with words and their bodies to be a part of this literacy desiring (see Figure 17.1). These bodies (re)configure relationships and ways of creating the video. Jane got the job of using hand signals to let Sara know when to start/stop. 247

Candace R. Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker

Figure 17.1  Sara, Taylor, and Jane create a video.

Jane helps position Taylor’s body as the cameragirl by moving the chair closer and then helping Taylor record from the floor at the same time Sara scoots forward. This intra-action is fascinating, as it seems to indicate that the girls were not aware of the zoom function on the camera. Instead of using their fingers on the iPad screen to zoom, they physically moved their bodies (iPad included) to get the desired effect. This helped us see that children need time to play-with digital tools – to understand their multiple affordances and constraints with other bodies – just like they do with art supplies. We were amazed at how Sara knew this book. In this second video recording she did “do the same thing” as Taylor encouraged her but it was also different. She did not choose to focus on the same pages and facts, but rather chose different trees to discuss for the second recording. She asked different questions of her future audience members. So while she knew the book, we observed how the cameragirls did not know the iPad. They were learning-in-the-moment about functions and features of the tool which were a part of the relational be(com)ing of making the video. Also, as you will read in the vignettes to follow, while Sara knew the book, she was not able to predict (nor control) the relationships that were produced in the moment when all bodies came together (e.g., when people walk in front of the iPad or when Tara signals to the class that it is time to clean up). Sara instead has to improvise, a material-discursive performance, with books-peers-iPad-classroom rules . . . and . . . and . . . and . . . . As educators it is important to remember that children need time to practice with materials, but yet at the same time, the final product will not mimic the practice-tries as new relationships come into being.

Bodily apparatuses and lively agency Taylor waves her hand as a signal for Sara to stop. Taylor whispers to Jane that she’d like to see if Sara can do it faster. “I heard you Taylor,” Sara states. However, Sara questions that if she does it faster the 1st graders might not understand, “They don’t know that much actually.” 248

Posthuman theory as a tool

Taylor, “Oh, can you wink at the end? Can you wink?” Sara with a look of antipathy and uncertainty, “The whole book?” Taylor and Jane, “No, at the end of the whole book.” Taylor holds the iPad screen up. Jane suggests, “Or you could just say ‘have a happy day’ that would be good, that would be nice.” Taylor, “Yeah.” A peer moves through the bodies and says “Don’t start yet, let me get a napkin,” as she reaches for the paper towel dispenser next to the sink which is next to the chair Sara is sitting in. Sara, “Hey too many people are joining this thing”. The peer responds, “I am just getting a napkin” and walks away. *** Barad (2003: 819) writes: Discourse is not a synonym for language [. . .] Discourse is not what is said; it is that which constrains and enables what can be said. Discursive practices define what counts as meaningful statements [. . .] statements and subjects emerge from a field of possibilities. In this section, much like the previous ones, we were struck with how larger discourses about school, writing, and in this case 1st graders constrained and enabled the intra-actions. For example, Sara appears to have ideas of 1st graders as not able to understand her read-aloud video if she does not perform it in a slow, intentional way. This made us smile, as Sara is a 2nd grader, only one year ahead of the 1st graders! But this discourse intra-acted with Sara as Taylor requested that she speed up the read-aloud. The iPad, peers, books, and discourses about 1st graders all intra-acted in the moment of producing the video. This is the material-discursive relationship that Barad writes about in how the world comes into being. This clip also made us smile as we watched Sara’s entire, bodily response to the request to wink. It is clear that winking was not an action Sara had envisioned for her videos. Perhaps Taylor and Jane had seen this before in a children’s TV show, the host winking at the audience. This material-discursive intra-action (re)configured the relationships of the three girls-and-iPad, as Taylor and Jane gave their first suggestion to revise and enhance the videos. However, Sara’s response of shock – thinking that they were suggesting she wink throughout the read-aloud – produced a look of uncertainty and repugnance. It also produced a response from Sara stating that she would prefer if they’d just leave it to her (decisions about the video). Barad discusses how waves and particles come into being as they pass through apparatuses; their identities and relationships are not decided prior to the intra-action. Barad (2003) writes that “apparatuses are not mere static arrangements in the world, but rather apparatuses are dynamic (re)configuring of the world, specific agential practices/intra-actions/performances through which specific exclusionary boundaries are enacted” (p. 816, emphasis in original). This was a quote we had a difficult time processing. What might this quote mean for our thinking about composing with digital tools? The moment of a peer literally moving through the bodily apparatuses to get a paper towel (re)configured the be(com)ing read-aloud video. It was only during and after the intra-action that the boundaries were clearer to us (and perhaps to the students). Meaning, the bodies – the three girls recording the video, the recording iPad, the peer getting the paper towel from the dispenser, the position of the teacher’s chair Sara sat in next to the counter, the sink, as well as the composing of the peer across the room who decided she needed a paper towel at that moment – all produced a way of being together and a way of making the video-with-the iPad. All of these bodies are not static. As educators, we know that children’s bodies are not static, as they literally move across the room. However, the bodies of paper towels, chairs, and iPads also intra-act with other bodies 249

Candace R. Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker

producing new relationships; they are dynamic-with-other-bodies. It is through the intra-active performance of bodies that boundaries and relationships are produced. As we have written about elsewhere (Kuby, Gutshall Rucker, and Darolia 2017), this is posthumanist agency. The in-between-ness, togetherness, flows, and forces of material-discursive relationships coming to be. Barad (2003: 827) states, “a posthumanist materialist account of performativity [is one] that challenges the positioning of materiality as either a given or a mere effect of human agency. On an agential realist account, materiality is an active factor in processes of materialization”. The intra-actions (re)presented above shaped how Sara wanted 1st graders to see her perform for them. She was insistent that the recording that was interrupted by suggestions to read and talk faster, wink, and by a peer entering into the view of the camera was deleted. The iPad allowed her to feel like she had some control in the material-discursive performativity of the video coming into being. So while we might have children draft or pre-write a script and/ or storyboard for creating videos (in this example Tara did not), it is only in the moment of intra-acting together that all bodies produce a video. There are many unexpected moments that invite responses or, as Barad writes, response-ability. The ability to respond in the moment to the lively (re)configurings.

Becoming (tripod, video) together Sara begins reading again and commenting to her future audience. “What if this first tree is used to make paper, have you ever thought of drawing on a tree?” Taylor gently hands off the iPad to Jane to hold and record without stopping Sara or stopping the clip. Taylor holds her hands up to hold the bottom of the iPad, like a tripod stand, Jane has the top of the iPad. Sara continues reading and offering questions to viewers. Taylor is now completely holding the iPad again. Jane gives two enthusiastic thumbs up to Sara from her view behind Taylor and iPad. Taylor steadies the camera. Jane plays with Taylor’s ponytail, twisting it which moves the camera but they don’t seem to mind. Another student walks in front of the recording iPad. Jane tries to explain quietly to the student what happened – that she walked in front of the recording camera. Taylor slowly pulls the iPad down and begins to push buttons, perhaps to stop the recording. Jane buries her hands in her head in frustration. Sara’s body deflates and she stops reading but still has the book held up. Two more girls come and walk in front of the iPad looking down at it as they pass. Another peer says to their backs as they pass, “Hey, you got in the way of the camera”. Sara is asking Taylor if she can do something to the camera to fix it [the messed up recording]. Sara repositions herself and Taylor says, “1, 2, 3, go” and holds the iPad up to record again. Jane puts a thumb up to Sara from behind Taylor. Taylor says, “Wait, wait, wait” as she forgot to press record. Taylor says “1, 2, 3 cha-ching” and presses record. Sara, “Hello 1st graders this book is called . . .” as she points to each word in the title. Another peer comes near and signals they need a paper towel from the wall dispenser by Sara. She pauses reading, pulls a towel out, signals to the student to come, but they don’t come to get it. Taylor keeps recording the whole time. Sara looks around for a place to discard the paper towel while crumpling it up in one hand. All the while the book is still propped up in one hand toward the camera. Sara still trying to read, nods her head and says “okay” to someone talking to her. The paper towel falls out of her hand onto the floor. *** Barad (2003: 821) writes of matter, 250

Posthuman theory as a tool

Matter, like meaning, is not an individually articulated or static entity. Matter is not little bits of nature, or a blank slate, surface, or site passively awaiting signification . . . Matter is not a support, location, referent, or source of sustainability for discourse. Matter is not immutable or passive. It does not require the mark of an external force like culture or history to complete it. Matter is always already an ongoing historicity. We thought about matter – iPad, Taylor’s ponytail, chairs, floor, paper towels, the book, and lack of an iPad tripod or stand. All of this matter mattered in the videos coming to be. These things were not passive but rather intra-acted with the girls performing a read-aloud and recording the clip. For example, the iPad did something with. It became heavy-with-Taylor. She sought relief from holding it while at the same time did not want to stop recording the clip. She decided to gently slide the iPad to Jane’s hands without talking to her or turning her body around to signal. This relationship, the being a tripod together, did not exist prior to the intra-actions, but rather came to be in the moment of recording. Within seconds, after getting some relief, Taylor regained the iPad by herself. The moment at the end of Sara getting a paper towel for someone, only to realize they were not going to come get it produced an unexpected moment. Sara, still trying to perform the read-aloud as it was being recorded, also had two material objects to work-with: the book and paper towel. What unfolded was a teacherly response, continuing to read and engage her audience, while juggling a crumpled paper and book in one hand. She did all of these while still being teacher. The relationship with-the-paper towel was not expected and perhaps because of the apparatuses of the camera recording, she chose to work-with-the-towel-book. This section also reminds us of Barad’s notion of agential cuts. In each moment, we make cuts – decisions, movements, responses – that intra-act with other bodies (people, art and digital tools, languages, policies, and so forth) in producing and (re)configuring the world. We think about how this was Taylor’s first time to use an iPad and how moments of thinking she was recording – but really not –produced how the video was created. “We are not outside observers of the world. Nor are we simply located at particular places in the world; rather, we are part of the world in its ongoing intra-activity” (Barad 2003: 828, emphasis in original). Taylor, and her actions with the iPad buttons, were not passive but an active part of the video coming to life (or not when she thought she was recording but was not).

Educational insights with/from Sara-Taylor-iPad-Book becoming Reading Barad’s (2003) article with/through/in the literacy desiring of Sara-Taylor-JaneiPad-books-and . . . and . . . and . . . creating videos sparked questions and contemplations on pedagogical practices. Our hope by sharing this literacy desiring was not to provide a “right” interpretation but, rather, to share insights and questions to help us all think otherwise about literacies and possibilities for future inquiries and pedagogies.

Playing-with digital and art tools Our learning-with-students-materials taught us something that is not new, but perhaps we need to be reminded. Children need time and curricular space to play-with materials (technologies, art supplies, etc.) without an end product or specific academic goal in mind. The recording of videos for 1st graders was not something Tara prompted Sara to do. Taylor’s lack of experience with an iPad was not a hindrance – she did not need to learn the “skills” of how to work an iPad first and then get to work on a project. Rather, it was through be(com)ing cameragirl that she came to know/be(come)/do iPads and create literacies. 251

Candace R. Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker

Conversations with children Our learning-with-students-materials also force us to question conferences with children. What you say (or choose not to say) when conferencing with a child creates agential cuts which can open up and/or restrain what is possible. We found ourselves often not interjecting while students were working with materials, and instead sat back to watch what was unfolding before deciding if and how to talk with them. We wanted them to have time to play-with-tools and not assume that we always knew what they needed, what their desirings were, and even the best way to put materials to work. As we have written about elsewhere, we noticed that children’s composing processes with materials does not often follow a linear writing process trajectory, but rather is rhizomatic (see Kuby and Gutshall Rucker 2016; Kuby 2017a).

(Re)thinking writing Our learning-with-students-materials has caused us to ask: what is writing? Is creating a readaloud video writing? A literacy? Does it matter what we call this literacy desiring? Children (and ourselves) come with preconceived ideas about what is writing based on previous years of schooling. In spirit with posthumanist scholarship, our point is not to create binaries such as writing/not writing or literacy/not literacy. However, we are advocating for being open to the possibilities of literacies, possibilities of newness and otherwise (Kuby and Fontanella-Nothom 2018; Zapata, Kuby, and Thiel 2018). When Tara invited students to “go be a writer” with a range of art and digital tools, we found ourselves (and students) wrestling with what we know as writing. The intra-actions, often unexpected, with people and tools created new possibilities for what writing is and can become.

Possible inquiries with post-theories We see much promise in “thinking with” post-theories for early (digital) literacy research. Not only do these theories force us to (re)think long-held beliefs about what is (or is not) literacy, they also require us to (re)think inquiry practices. These theories, broadly speaking, operate with different paradigmatic assumptions than most theories used for literacy research which still assume a Cartesian subject (see St. Pierre 2000; Kuby 2017b). When this binary of subject/ object is broken we have to invent new ways of doing inquiry.

Posthumanism-young children-digital literacies We take up Burnett’s (2010) challenge, to expand the field of literacy education by thinking with post-theories (e.g., poststructural, posthuman) to help us better understand how children with/in material-discursive relationships with digital tools come into be(com)ing/knowing/ doing with new literacies. As such, we are energized by Barad’s writing and the thinking it prompts for literacy educators. She writes “What possibilities exist for agency, for intervening in the world’s becoming? Where do the issues of responsibility and accountability enter in?” (2003: 824). We take this question as an invitation to consider what our response-abilities are as educators in what literacies are able (or not) to come to be in material-discursive relationships. How do our current definitions and understandings of writing, writing processes, writing materials, and writing instruction limit the conditions of possibilities for new ways of knowing/ be(com)ing/doing (digital) literacies? By thinking-with posthumanist theories we are able to see

252

Posthuman theory as a tool

pedagogy as (a) relational becoming, an intra-activity of worldly (re)configuring. We invite you to imagine and co-create pedagogical encounters with students and the lively materialities of literacies coming to be with artistic and digital tools.

References Barad, K. (2003). Posthumanist performativity: toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 28(3): 801–831. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Barad, K. (2013). Ma(r)king time: material entanglements and re-memberings: cutting together-apart. In: P. R. Carlile, D. Nicolini, A. Langley, and H. Tsoukas (eds.), How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts, and Materiality in Organization Studies (pp. 16–31). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Burnett, C. (2010). Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings: a review of research. Journal of Literacy Research, 10(3): 247–270. Carrington, V., and Marsh, J. (2005). Digital childhood and youth: new texts, new literacies. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 26(3): 279–285. Flewitt, R., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2014). New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. Jackson, A., and Mazzei, L. (2012). Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data across Multiple Perspectives. New York: Routledge. Kuby, C. R. (2017a). Rhizomatic possibilities for writing processes: fluid structures and components. In: R. Meyer and K. Whitmore (eds.), Reclaiming Early Literacy (pp. 217–226). New York: Routledge. Kuby, C. R. (2017b). Poststructural and posthumanist theories as research methodologies: tensions and possibilities. In: R. Zaidi and J. Rowsell (eds.), Literacy Lives in Transcultural Times (pp. 157–174). New York: Routledge. Kuby, C. R., and Fontanella-Nothom, O. (2018). Reimagining writers and writing: the end of the book and the beginning of writing. Literacy Research: Theory, Method, and Practice, 67(1): 310–326. doi: 10.1177/2381336918786257. Kuby, C. R., and Gutshall Rucker, T. (2016). Go Be a Writer! Expanding the Curricular Boundaries of Literacy Learning with Children. New York: Teachers College Press. Kuby, C. R., and Rowsell, J. (2017). Early literacy and the posthuman: pedagogies and methodologies (Editorial introduction). Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3): 285–296. Kuby, C. R., Gutshall Rucker, T., and Darolia, L. H. (2017). Persistence(ing): posthuman agency in a Writers’ Studio. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3): 353–373. Kuby, C. R., Spector, K., and Thiel, J. J. (eds.) (2019). Posthumanism and Literacy Education: Knowing/ Becoming/Doing Literacies. New York: Routledge. Marsh, J. (ed.) (2005). Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood. New York: Routledge. Marsh, J. (2008). Emergent media literacy: digital animation in early childhood. Language and Education, 20(6): 493–506. Marsh, J. (2010). Young children’s play in online virtual worlds. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 8(1): 23–39. Marsh, J. (2011). Young children’s literacy practices in a virtual world: establishing an online interaction order. Reading Research Quarterly, 46(2): 101–118. Oppenheim, J. (1995). Have You Seen Trees? Illustrated by J. Tseng and M. S. Tseng. New York: Scholastic. Skinner, E. N., and Hagood, M. C. (2008). Developing literate identities with English language learners through digital storytelling. The Reading Matrix, 8(2): 12–38. Smith, C. R. (2005). The CD-ROM game: a toddler engaged in computer-based dramatic play. In: J. Marsh (ed.), Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood (pp. 108–125). New York: Routledge. St. Pierre, E. A. (2000). Poststructural feminism in education: an overview. Qualitative Studies in Education, 13(5): 477–515. Vasquez, V. V., and Felderman, C. B. (eds.) (2013). Technology and Critical Literacy in Early Childhood. New York: Routledge.

253

Candace R. Kuby and Tara Gutshall Rucker

Verenikina, I., and Kervin, L. (2011). iPads, digital play, and pre-schoolers. He Kupu: The Word, 1–19. Wargo, J. M. (2017). Rhythmic rituals and emergent listening: intra-activity, sonic sounds and digital composing with young children. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3): 392–408. Wohlwend, K. (2013). Literacy Playshops: New Literacies, Popular Media, and Play in the Early Childhood Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Wohlwend, K., Vander Zanden, S., Husbye, N., and Kuby, C. R. (2011). Navigating discourses in place in the world of Webkinz. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 11(2): 141–163. Zapata, A., Kuby, C. R., and Thiel, J. J. (2018). Encounters with writing: becoming-with posthumanist ethics. Journal of Literacy Research, 50(4): 478–501).

254

Part IV

Reading and writing on screen

18 Young children’s writing in the 21st century The challenge of moving from paper to screen Clare Dowdall

Introduction To be a writer in the digital age invokes an enactment of identity that is at once active and relational (Gee 2017). We are writers in the active sense when we choose to write and find pleasure and fulfilment in the act; we are writers in the relational sense when we are categorized as writers by ‘others’ with whom we have relationships – our parents, teachers, assessors, readers and even policy makers. For very young children, and those firmly established within their education systems, being a writer usually invokes both of these enactments of identity, as the full gamut of material, agentive and structural influences mesh together to enthuse and/or dissuade young children from composing texts for themselves and others (Dowdall 2006). The aim of this chapter is to capture the challenges experienced by a group of early years educators as they work to help young children begin to develop their writerly identities and behaviours (Whitehead 2004) in the digital age. For many adults, writing is a necessary skill, an asset and a source of enjoyment. Recent research in the US reports that screen-based habits, communication and authoring are increasing exponentially among young adults in the digital age (Brandt 2015). In England, over 50% of children aged 8–18 surveyed recently report that they enjoy writing (Clark and Teravainen 2017). However, despite this observed popularity, it is noted elsewhere that writing continues to receive less attention than reading in the schooling literacy literature (Gardner 2018), and in a recent systematic review of literature about teachers as writers, the literature finds that teachers are reported as having “narrow conceptions of what counts as writing and being a writer” (Cremin and Oliver 2017). This chapter seeks to focus on the views of educators working with the youngest children in formal settings, as they embark on becoming writers in the digital age, and in so doing, contribute to the literature that explores what it is to be a writer in the 21st-century textual landscape.

Defining writing In order to explore educator views, a working definition for young children’s writing needs to be constructed. The term ‘writing’ is highly contestable and can be defined in many ways 257

Clare Dowdall

depending on the perspective and position from which it is considered (Beard et  al. 2010; Cremin and Myhill 2012: 68; Kucirkova et  al. 2017). From an historical perspective that overviews the trajectory from the earliest cave drawings through to the signs that represent language today, Olson (2009) asserts that a comprehensive view of writing accepts that it can involve any intentionally created visual mark or artefact that affords communication and expression, and that is also capable of representing the abstract properties of speech. He reports how a study of writing systems over time shows that they are subject to change, along with the needs of the writer (Olson 2009: 6–9). From this historical perspective, it is also apparent that it is not only the needs of the writer that drive changes to writing behaviour, but the context in which writing is enacted. In the digital age, the possibilities for writing will change the writing systems into which we are inculcated, regardless of whether these contexts are recognized within formal educational settings or excluded from them (Carrington and Robinson 2009: 2). From an educational perspective, Hyland is clear that the term ‘writing’ evades adequate description, but is of overarching significance in our lives. As he states, “writing is central to our personal experiences and social identities, and we are often evaluated by our control of it” (2009: xii). He argues that there are three approaches to teaching and researching writing: product-focused, process-focused and reader-focused approaches, with attendant emphases on the text, the author and the reader – involving the social world in which text is constructed. The delineation of these approaches is useful here, as it reflects current curriculum policy in England (DfE 2013). The statutory and non-statutory guidance included in this policy attend to writing as a product, the process of writing and the purpose for writing. ‘Writing’ is defined as involving two dimensions: transcription and composition; with a considerable emphasis on technical aspects such as spelling, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation (DfE 2013: 5). Recommendations for pedagogy relating to the development of children’s writing in England build from this policy and are deeply entrenched within a pervasive culture of accountability (Reedy et al. 2017), where performativity is a naturalized school-based discourse, giving rise to competition and individualism as children are encouraged to strive to achieve their best (Keddie 2016). In this climate, the focus for children’s writing is often associated with a paperbased context and the development of a range of prescribed compositional and transcriptional technical skills (Bearne 2017: 74; Cremin and Myhill 2012: 1), and it has been observed that this narrow interpretation gives scant regard to the wider opportunities available for educators to develop children’s literacies more responsively in global, digital contexts (Burnett 2016). Indeed, statutory requirements and associated assessment practices imply the development of what can be called a ‘linear writing process’; one that involves stages of planning, writing down and reviewing, and that distinctly emphasizes using paper-based technologies for text production, with a focus on conventional spelling, punctuation and grammar, as delineated in the curriculum (Bearne 2017). In a diverse and evolving 21st-century multimodal textual landscape (Kress 2010; Carrington and Robinson 2009; Sefton-Green et al. 2016), these requirements can be regarded as anachronistic. These national requirements can be seen to reach backwards and impact English early years settings. A recent report by the education regulator ‘Ofsted’, Bold Beginnings (2017), notes in its key findings that successful schools enhance the requirements for children’s learning beyond what is expected from the Early Learning Goals (DfE 2017: 10). This report claims that in successful Foundation settings, children master the spelling of phonically regular words and common exception words, and use pencils and exercise books while sitting at tables to support good controlled letter formation (Ofsted 2017: 5). An emphasis on technical skill development in the teaching of early writing can be seen within the report, which has received criticism from 258

Children’s writing in the 21st century

influential literacy and early years organizations (see, for example, Early Education/TACTYC www.early-education.org.uk/news/dialogue-ofsted-bold-beginnings-report; and the UKLA https://ukla.org/news/story/ofsteds-bold-beginnings-ukla-response). This emphasis on skills preparation for later learning, and writing in particular, can be viewed as reductive. First it is at odds with the notion that early writing can be constructed as a rich meaningful sociocultural practice and semiotic activity. From this perspective, children’s writing is framed as a situated and relational activity; a multimodal endeavour, involving authoring using the widest range of semiotic systems available: talk, drawing, gesture and dramatic play (Wells-Rowe 2009: 219–224). Second, the semiotic systems available to young writers incorporate the communication technologies of the digital age; opening up new possibilities for compositional behaviours; making a merely paper and skills-based curriculum inadequate. In England, a recent Ofcom survey found that 22% of 3–4-year-olds and 40% of 5–7-yearolds have their own smartphone or tablet; while 53% of 3–4-year-olds go online for 8 hours per week and 79% of 5–7-year-olds go online for 9 hours per week (Ofcom 2017). While these data are presented as estimates (Ofcom 2017: 21), they convey the potential for young children to be engaged in screen-based communication; an assertion fully underpinned by recent scholarly activity in this area (see, for example, Harwood 2017; and the ground-breaking work of scholars involved in the European DigiLitEy project http://digilitey.eu/publications/ digilitey-publications/).

Young children’s writing in the digital age The expansion of young children’s writerly behaviour into contexts that transcend print is of interest here. Indeed, as Whitehead has described, children make texts using the resources available to them. They endeavour to represent meaning through a range of channels: symbolically, multimodally, through play, and through forms of storying as they develop recognized ‘writerly’ behaviours that are not merely encoded alphabetically, or even print-bound (Whitehead 2004: 172–174). In 2004, Whitehead might not have foreseen the impact of tablet and other screen-based technologies on young children’s learning in contexts reaching (albeit unequally) across the globe (Harwood 2017). Yet as suggested by the levels of engagement reported above, young children’s ‘writerly’ behaviours are increasingly likely to involve digital technologies. Kucirkova et  al. (2017) have recently reviewed the literature pertaining to young children’s screen-based writing since 2010. Building on established views, they define young children’s writing in broad terms that include “children’s multiple modalities of expression” (p. 3). In their review, they note that synonyms for the term ‘writing’ are used interchangeably by researchers concerned primarily with what it means to be a young writer in a digital environment (Kucirkova et al. 2017). These terms include authoring, composing, artmaking, sign-making, text creation and story-making, and the authors assert that they should be included in any consideration of young children as writers in screen-based environments (p. 10). Following a discussion about the boundaries of what can be counted as writing in screen-based contexts they conclude: In sum, then, we understand writing as a multimodal composing practice that includes all modalities available to young children’s composing, including oral (audio), verbal, written, and pictorial mode (which encompasses drawings, marks or digital photographs) and a linguistic component. In our definition, both the multimodal and linguistic components need to be present to count as “writing on screen”. (Kucirkova et al. 2017: 11) 259

Clare Dowdall

By linguistic components, Kucirkova et al. are referring to compositions that involve speech and/or writing. Children’s single-mode iconic representations, such as a drawing or photograph, are therefore excluded from their definition of early children’s writing (p. 10), although others might argue that a child taking a photograph, or drawing a picture is undertaking an intentional act of multimodal textual communication with ideational, interpersonal and textual functions present (Kress 1997, 2010: 147). According to Wells-Rowe, who has traced trends in early writing research from the 1930s to 2008, three long-held tenets about young children’s writing remain central to our understanding of it: pre-school children learn about writing before formal schooling begins; unconventional forms of pre-school writing reflect children’s hypotheses about print; and young children learn about writing through interactions with more accomplished writers (Wells-Rowe 2009: 213). At the heart of these tenets are convention, intentionality (Harste et al. 1984, in WellsRowe 2009: 214), and sociability (p. 220). While Wells-Rowe’s writing pre-dates the largescale uptake of tablet technology in children’s lives, these tenets can be considered in relation to the digital age. •• ••

••

Young children’s exposure to adults who use tablet technology, smartphones or a computer in the home will impact on their sense of what writing is and what it is for. For these families, screen-based text making is a conventional form of communication. Children’s play and engagement with these same devices in the home can be regarded as early compositional behaviour, grounded in children’s hypotheses about the function and purposes of technology in the communication process. Their play involves the intention to communicate. Children’s proficiency as writers using these devices will be supported by accomplished users. Social interaction plays a significant part in children’s progression toward independent writerly behaviour using the screen.

If these assertions are accepted, then it must be recognized that young children enter formal schooling with varying degrees of experience of writerly behaviour in the digital age, depending on their family’s access to digital technologies and their associated habitus (Brooker 2002). In many cases, children will have participated in writerly behaviours and play involving technology. However, it has been observed that not all educational settings are capitalizing on this potential, for reasons of accountability, policy, economy and expertise (Burnett 2016: 34–36). As Burnett goes on to propose in a series of recommendations for schools, educators should endeavour to normalize the use of technology, promote collaboration around technology, share the products of technology, draw on examples of technology use from children’s lives beyond school, and work with families and caregivers to develop children’s critical and productive engagement with technology in educational settings (pp. 36–38).

Multimodality, composition and design The potential for rich multimodal composition is clearly afforded by digital technologies in the home and classroom. Multimodal composing in the early years is a well-documented and researched phenomenon, where children flexibly interweave different sign systems, embodied practices and the physical materials available to them as they author texts (Kress 1997). These multimodal acts of composition have historically been regarded as a stage in the route to printbased writerly behaviour; however, Wells-Rowe, drawing from the celebrated work of the New London Group (1996) and other prominent scholars in this field, asserts that these acts can now 260

Children’s writing in the 21st century

be connected more explicitly to the “increasing multimodality of children’s twenty-first century textual experiences”, with significant implications for educators (Wells-Rowe 2009: 220). Gee and Hayes (2011), considering 21st-century literacies, note this expanded multimodality, observing the presence of both speech and writing in digital texts, claiming that digital media “are an interesting hybrid of the properties of oral language and of written language”. They go on to explain that this hybrid language is realized as text with dynamic affordances – that can be interactive and permanent; that can travel great distances and be changed in a moment (p. 1). This notion of textual fluidity can be regarded as a facet of what Bauman (2005) has labelled “liquid life”, lived in a liquid modern society. In this society, the texts that we ‘write’ are more ephemeral than their print-bound counterparts, however, despite this potential for fluidity of form, these texts can have enduring significance for their writer and audience (Dowdall 2009). What is also clear is that despite their potential for fluidity, multimodal texts constructed using digital means do have form; they are artefactual. Children’s digital texts are realized through their screens as ‘writerly’ texts: texts that are shown, narrated or told, and that may in turn act as models for children’s own text making. Presented in this way, young children’s multimodal composing can be regarded as complex writerly behaviour, rather than a stage in the route to accomplished writing in print-based contexts. Clearly, the development of children’s engagement with digital texts, either as makers or consumers, conveys the potential for young children to be engaging in creative screen-based, ‘writerly’ behaviours that extend beyond the narrow definition of writing offered by early years and primary curricula (DfE 2013, 2017: 11) and regulatory body reports (Ofsted 2017). Engaging with the possibilities offered by digital contexts, and moving beyond perspectives concerned mainly with technical aspects and skill, it is evident that ‘writing’ in the digital age can be more than the sum of these parts for very young children. It is a rich and complex process involving the heart and mind of those giving voice in relation to the available tools and resources, the figured audiences, and the social worlds that the composer constructs and inhabits as they create textual artefacts (Beard et al. 2009; Bearne 2002; Cremin and Myhill 2012; Grainger et al. 2005; Halliday and Hasan 1976: 26). In the following section, the views of three early years educators who support young children as they become writers are discussed, in order to consider implications for educators in the light of this expanded notion of writing in the early years.

The study The data presented here form part of a larger study funded by the United Kingdom Literacy Association entitled: “Children’s ‘writing’ in the 21st century: composition, crafting and design”. The complete data set includes transcripts and analyses from five focus group conversations with teachers of children aged 4–11 in three different schools. The data included in this chapter draws from one conversation with three teachers who work in a Foundation Stage unit for 90 children (aged four and five), made up of three classes, in a very large city primary school. At the time of the interview, each teacher had access to three iPads and an interactive whiteboard in their classroom. The Foundation unit is ‘paperless’, meaning that children do not record their learning in books, and ‘work’ is rarely completed on paper; however, paper-based resources and tools for play, mark-making and early writing are available. An exception to the paperless environment is the presentation of individual writing samples that are displayed on a ‘writing wall’, alongside each child’s photograph. All other records of achievement are recorded digitally using an online journal tool Tapestry. The general provision is described by the teachers as free-flowing, child-directed and responsive, with the key aim being to enhance the children’s abilities through targeted intervention to children’s interests. 261

Clare Dowdall

The method In this study, I worked with three Foundation Stage teachers, who had worked closely together for two years. Together we engaged in a focused conversation (Nutbrown 1999, in Clough and Nutbrown 2012: 91) that lasted just over an hour. This conversational focus group method draws from Nutbrown’s view, where the researcher and participants’ purpose and positionality are acknowledged and a main aim is to create a space where: “new ideas can be born, new knowledge can be created, views can be shaped and reshaped” (Nutbrown 1999: 21, in Clough and Nutbrown 2012: 86–96). In our conversation, the accounts of the teachers were constructed in response to my research questions. Their collegiate approach, and the openness of the teachers to each other’s opinions supported the opportunity for ‘new knowledge’ about how children become writers, to be constructed. In line with a focus conversation approach, this episode was a starting point, and ongoing work with these teachers to revisit the conversation and deepen the analysis is planned. One key section from the conversation forms the focus of this chapter, as I believe it offers new perspectives on the use of the screen for supporting young children’s development as writers. My method of analysis draws from Kathy Charmaz’s articulation of constructivist grounded theory, where segments of rich data are mined, interrogated, categorized and organized using codes that summarize and account for them (Charmaz 2006: 43–46). Following an iterative coding process, a memo-writing stage is used to more fully involve the analytic process. The use of memo writing was significant in this study, in that it allowed the analysis to build from a rather fragmented coded account to a more focused narrative, where coherent insights could be constructed in response to the overarching research question: how can we help children to become writers in the 21st century? This whole analytic process is highly qualitative, specific and non-generalizable, yet as Mackey (2016: 20) has argued, this very ‘particular’ way of working is in the tradition of other research studies, where single cases can be used to explore and illuminate ways of working and understanding that might seem new.

Talk-time In the section selected from the conversation, the teachers discussed their responses to the question: What do you do in terms of mark-making and composing? To ensure that a skills-based interpretation of the words ‘writer’ and ‘writing’ did not limit the conversation, a range of synonyms were used including: story-making, composing and authoring. In the conversation, the teachers described how they give priority to the development of pre-writing skills through play-based and experiential multisensory preparation. The development of oral composition, through an activity entitled ‘Talk-time’ is regularly used to help children formulate and articulate thoughts and feelings, and to build interaction skills, and is seen as a key stage in the journey toward being a writer. Equally, the use of talk and reading together around print-based story books, to build vocabulary as preparation for writing, was described. The influence of talk and genre-based approaches to writing, were strong features of this discussion and indicate the teachers’ subscription to a talk-based writing pedagogy, grounded in the school’s recent interest in the work of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (http://cprtrust.org.uk). In relation to Talk-time, the teachers described their use of an online profiling resource Tapestry, to digitally record children’s achievements, and to communicate these achievements to parents and caregivers. Photographs or videos of the children at play and work, and examples of their achievements, are annotated and uploaded to Tapestry. These can be viewed by anyone with access to the child’s log-in details, enabling them to be shared more widely (for example, with 262

Children’s writing in the 21st century

grandparents or children in other schools). Equally, parents and children can upload materials or add comments from home. The teachers had recently encouraged parents and children to upload their own videos and photos of achievements to share in class using the interactive whiteboard, during Talk-time. As part of this process, the teachers had noted the potential for Tapestry to scaffold the children’s oral composition, and this was described as one of the pre-writing skills that was used to support the writing process. It is to this example that I turn to seek new insights about children’s writing in the 21st century. Using their uploaded videos and photos, children present their achievements, explaining to the class what is happening in the digital text. The presenter’s talk is scaffolded by the teacher who models and uses questioning to support the child’s composition. The audience is also invited to contribute questions and ideas. This activity is a variation on the traditional show and tell activity, where children learn to recount personal stories and narratives, as is commonly observed in the early years (see Dyson 2010: 17; DfE 2017). However, I suggest that Talk-time can be regarded as a more expansive form of text making that extends beyond current conceptions of multimodal text making and writerly behaviour in the early years.

Discussion As stated earlier in this chapter, Kucirkova et al. (2017: 10) contend that in relation to children’s writing in digital contexts, a single iconic mode of communication, for example a photograph, is not ‘writing’ in a digital environment, due to the absence of linguistic elements. I will argue here that the Talk-time example offered by the teachers problematizes the notion of what counts as a writerly text and writerly behaviour in the early years. Here, the iconic mode (the photograph or video in Tapestry) becomes an intrinsic part of a more complex writerly text that is at once digital and oral, singular and collaborative, as the child is supported by the digital artefact to describe, narrate, even explain the events around it. In this situation, the iconic and oral modes of communication depend on one another, and work together to construct a more complex composite multimodal text than a young writer could otherwise achieve. The digital and non-digital combine in a full experiential, multisensory and multimodal manner to promote 21st-century writerly behaviour. This description of writerly behaviour works alongside the account of Cremin et al. (2017) who describe the discursive co-construction of children’s personal narratives as they interact with peers and teachers through multimodal play and performance. The collaborative act of composing around a digital artefact and across time and space is reminiscent of family members building a discourse around a special photograph, where stories about the characters present in the photograph are woven and retold, and family folklore is constructed over time (Glassie 1999). This style of sedimented and co-constructed oral composition is inextricably linked to identity and identities, and provides a clear example of how, in a 21st-century digital context, the screen can be regarded as a key facilitator for, and contributor to, meaningful and rich compositional behaviour; equivalent to the role of drama or play, as described by Cremin et al. (2017). In this way, the screen and use of digital artefacts of significance can be considered a key resource and contributor to children’s writerly behaviour in the 21st-century digital landscape. The use of Talk-time for this writerly activity supports its conceptualization as a kind of makerspace, a space where children typically create artefacts using specialist tools and resources [. . .] in addition to everyday resources, both digital and non-digital (Marsh et al. 2017: 6–7). Regarded in this way, Talk-time around a digital text in Tapestry, where an individual child is supported to construct a unique narrative of significance, might be viewed as a highly complex act of making and understanding. The artefact being made is ephemeral; it is also multi-channel, 263

Clare Dowdall

as well as multimodal, as its success depends on the composer’s understanding that the audience might be looking at one channel of information (the image or photograph), while listening to, and maybe watching another separate channel (the voice and appearance of the narrator). In this particular Talk-time space, adult caregivers and educators co-construct the digital artefacts in Tapestry and also the oral text that accompanies the artefacts. The digital artefact and discourse that anticipates and accompanies its making and publishing, and any discourse that is co-constructed as the artefact is described and shared, can be regarded as sediments of a rich process of composition, where the digital text in Tapestry anchors the layering of the other compositional acts through time and space. In this example, the introduction of the significant digital artefact to the composition process serves to stimulate an in-the-moment oral narrative, which is unbounded by the usual transcriptional demands that children meet as they begin their journey as writers, where letter formation and spelling conventions dominate and sometimes overwhelm the process. Instead, the use of Tapestry can be seen to promote composition as a highly social endeavour. This social view is accounted for in the work of Anne Haas Dyson, who has argued forcefully that composing is an act that is situated in “enacted child relations” and that solidifies into peer practices (2010: 15), opening up social worlds through talk and play around text making (p. 20). The collaborators within the composition process in Talk-time and around Tapestry are both present and invisible and include those in and beyond the classroom. This collaborative style of composition is made possible by the online affordances of Tapestry, and can be seen to differ from more traditional ways of sharing and recounting (involving a paper-based text or artefact – perhaps a new toy, momento, or drawing/piece of mark-making that the child has brought from home) where the child talks about their artefact or experience in a presentational style that only involves those who are physically present. Working with Bakhtin’s account of expression as a responsive act (1986: 69), I suggest that in the Tapestry example, the child’s construction of text is supported by multiple influences, including the carers’, the teachers’, the feedback from the children in the audience and the presence of the digital text being shared. In this situation, the child is supported responsively and in many ways: in part, dialogically by their teachers’ encouragement, modelling and questioning; in part by the expectation of their realized audience and social experience of language in action with friends and family; and in part by the digital image or video that is being shared on the screen. For the young child, this development of early writerly behaviour using Tapestry in Talk-time involves a process that is enlarged by the affordances of the screen. The process is responsive, multimodal and multi-channel. It is an act of responsive oral composition comprising words of their own and words of others, made at the same time more individual and more social through recourse to the highly significant digital artefact that is being shared and that, in its own way, introduces the voices and expectations of the wider audience – for example, the family members – to the text under construction. These texts intersect with more discourses than would be afforded without the use of Tapestry. In this complex writerly activity, the children are composing differently than they would be if playing together, mark-making using available resources, formally using paper-based resources to practise writing their names and simple sentences, or even working collaboratively and in concert with their friends and teachers as they co-construct multimodal texts through drama and play. Significantly, this activity directs attention away from the skill of transcription as described in curriculum materials, and toward more authentic writerly behaviour for the digital age. While Alamargot and Fayol (2009: 24) argue that a full developmental model of written production that accounts for process and product does not yet exist, the work of scholars in this area can be used to consider children’s writing in the early years. Here, the significance and presence 264

Children’s writing in the 21st century

of the digital artefact is key to the young child’s compositional process and is instrumental in supporting their retrieval and generation of ideas. From the cognitive process perspective of proficient writers (as originally outlined by Flower and Hayes in 1981, and subsequently in representations that build from this model by Bereiter and Scardamalia in 1987, and Berninger and Swanson in 1994 – see Alamargot and Fayol 2009: 23–28), the use of Talk-time and Tapestry can be seen to support young children’s oral composition, as the realization of significant digital texts assists young writers to recall events, and generate ideas, an act that is otherwise dependent on the ability to access the long-term memory. This is traditionally described as part of the planning stage of writing, that precedes writing down and reviewing stages. It is a goal-directed act, where content is defined in relation to the purpose and audience for whom it is intended (Alamargot and Fayol 2009: 25). While this degree of intentionality is normally associated with much older and expert writers, who have mainly been the focus for research in this field (Alamargot and Fayol 2009: 24), the potential for developing writerly behaviours in young children appears to be assisted by recourse to digital texts that have significance for the child writer. From this cognitive process perspective, the generation of text is usually contingent on the gradual automation of transcriptional skills. Indeed, transcriptional difficulties are noted for their ability to compromise text generation, as children’s capacity is over-stretched when having to attend to transcriptional and compositional elements. In the case of orally composing around Tapestry, transcriptional challenges are reduced, and the focus of the activity is redirected toward genuine composition that does not have to be driven by notions of transcriptional correctness, or conformity. Regarded in this way, the simple act of inviting a child to participate in Talk-time, alongside a screen that carries a digital text of significance becomes a new form of writerly behaviour, that refocuses attention to the generation of meaningful text and that invokes present and virtual audiences who, in turn, lend meaning and purpose. Finally, it was apparent that composing in Talk-time was regarded as beneficial to the children involved. The teachers provided several positive accounts of instances where the Talk-time activity had clearly built children’s confidence and cemented relationships with their peers; or had supported the development of relationships with schools and family members in distant destinations, thereby enriching the children’s social world. The teachers also particularly valued the use of Tapestry to support collegial composing – a natural activity for young children, where compositions are built dialogically and through improvisation (see Dyson 2010: 20–24). They also noted the value of composing with Tapestry as a way of introducing significant events and engaging content, leading to purposeful and playful child-centred text making. As Dyson has noted, educators working with these perspectives enable children’s composition to become child-led, rather than driven by behaviourist norms where children are expected to conform to models of correctness and linear skill acquisition (p. 25). The teachers’ appropriation of Tapestry as a resource to promote early writerly behaviour can therefore be regarded as innovative and child-centred. However, alongside this expanded sense of writerly behaviours, through the conversation it became apparent that Talk-time with Tapestry was also being used to scaffold children to achieve the statutory DfE (2013) transcriptional and compositional curriculum requirements for writing: In regards to Tapestry, I know that I sometimes, in the beginning, I put on things from myself and my family that I send to them. Then, I’ll model a recount of my weekend or something so that they are hearing, I went to the beach. I’ll sometimes do a bad model as well and I’ll go, “This is my picture.” Then they’ll just stare at me, but then they start understanding that that’s not interesting. Then they can build on using exciting words or telling me something you found or just giving more detailed information. 265

Clare Dowdall

Throughout the conversation, the teachers emphasized their play-based, child-centred philosophy, and their role as enhancers of children’s self-initiated practice in relation to writing and learning more generally. However, the teachers also referred extensively to their use of modelling and scaffolding to promote children’s writing, and the discussion indicated that they took a large amount of responsibility for facilitating children’s writing-based activities: Talk-time was “modelled”; imaginative language was “given to” the children; composing was modelled using the interactive whiteboard; and existing textual artefacts were used as the basis (as models) for the children’s own writing. Successful child writers were described as those who could voluntarily sit with a paper and pencil and write pages. Their accounts resonate with Dyson’s observation that educators struggle to support children’s intentional, collegiate composition while also helping them to achieve curricular goals (2010). Despite its potential to support the former, the use of Tapestry in this Foundation unit was being justified by the teachers mainly in relation to the latter. The teachers’ approach within their play-based and child-centred philosophy can be attributed to the high-stakes accountability context that is endemic in English schools within the early years, as teachers strive to support children to meet expectations for the functional skills listed in the statutory requirements for composing orally and writing in the Early Learning Goals (ELGs) (DfE 2017: 10–12), and the imposed expectation of ‘readiness’ for the national curriculum expectations in year 1 and beyond. During our conversation, these skills became the cornerstones to which the teachers returned when describing the challenges of supporting children as composers in the 21st century. As they talked, the positioning of writerly behaviour moved from the examples of play-based, collaborative and agentive practice and instead became associated with a skills-based rather than imaginative activity; and a preparation for subsequent learning in later years. This is perhaps a result of the looming presence of the developmental trajectory used by the school to monitor children’s progress as writers from year one to year six; and by the accountability measures more widely at play in the current era.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have endeavoured to identify and problematize what young children’s writing in the 21st century might involve, and identify some of the challenges for the educators responsible for developing it. Borrowing from Marsh and Millard’s (2000: 17) use of the term “slippage” to describe meandering definitions of popular culture in relation to children’s literacy, it can be asserted that in the 21st century, young children’s ‘writing’ is another term subject to slippage; subject to technical and political interpretations (Bearne 2017) that might limit the opportunities for young children as they become writers in an exciting textual landscape that has long been described as offering unprecedented opportunities for text production, creativity and communication (Carrington and Robinson 2009; Willett et al. 2009). This tension has been explored here by seeking the views of a group of early years educators who are working within a climate of imposing accountability and performativity. The disparities for these educators, seeking to justify their approaches to promoting writerly behaviour among very young children can be seen as a tension point, and one that is articulated clearly by Moss (2017: 56), who describes how education system reform and literacy policy can interplay over time to create a plausible and sustaining narrative that brings into being a “social imaginary” (a term that Moss has borrowed from Rizvi (2007) and Lingard (2010), both cited in Moss (2017)) that is at odds with the experiences of children and their families. The ‘social imaginary’ at play in the experiences of the three early years educators discussed here can be seen to both open up and constrain opportunities for children to become writers who engage fully with the possibilities of 266

Children’s writing in the 21st century

the digital age and more expansive notions of text making. A recognition of the tension inherent in this social imaginary could serve to broaden what teachers have come to understand by the term ‘writing’, and move them beyond the skills-orientated definition that currently pervades their practice (Gardner 2018). In their recommendations for children’s writing with and on screens, Kucirkova et al. (2017) call for a broader definition of children’s writing; one where teachers and early years practitioners consider the “diverse meaning-making modes for children”, referring to the modes invoked through art-making, play and text, on and off screen. Through the analysis presented here, I have tried to construct a definition of early writerly behaviour that fully embraces the increasing multimodality of children’s 21st-century textual experiences (Wells-Rowe 2009: 220), and that also recognizes that this writerly behaviour might involve multiple channels as well as multiple modalities (Gee and Hayes 2011). In this 21st-century context, children compose for, through and alongside significant screen-based textual artefacts, giving rise to more complex and composite co-constructed textual forms than possible before the screen and activities like Talk-time around Tapestry entered the classroom. Returning to Gee’s description of the writing in the digital age as involving active and relational identity enactment, the Talk-time example presented here illustrates how young children’s writerly behaviour can be regarded as both personally fulfilling and socially connected. Beyond this, I have endeavoured to reach a new understanding of what writing in the 21st century might involve, as a way of challenging the tension for early years educators who are tasked with supporting young children to become engaged and purposeful writers, connected to the widest range of caregivers and peers, facilitated by and in the presence of digital technologies. This may introduce young writers to notions of audience and text that exceed the possibilities offered by curriculum-bound and assessment-driven activities, as well as make evident to teachers the possibilities for purposeful and significant composition in the digital age. Acknowledgement: This research is funded by a UKLA research grant.

References Alamargot, D., and Fayol, M. (2009). Modelling the development of written composition. In: R. Beard, D. Myhill, J. Riley and M. Nystrand (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Writing Development (pp. 23–47). London: Sage. Bakhtin, M. M. (1986). Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Bauman, Z. (2005). Liquid Life. Cambridge: Polity. Beard, R., Myhill, D., Riley, J., and Nystrand, M. (eds.) (2009). The Sage Handbook of Writing Development. London: Sage. Bearne, E. (2002). Making Progress in Writing. London: Routledge Falmer. Bearne, E. (2017). Assessing children’s written texts: a framework for equity. Literacy Special Issue: Assessment, Accountability and Policy, 51(2): 74–83. Brandt, D. (2015). The Rise of Writing, Redefining Mass Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brooker, L. (2002). Starting School: Young Children Learning Cultures. Buckingham: Open University Press. Burnett, C. (2016). The Digital Age and its Implications for Learning and Teaching in the Primary School. CPRT Research Survey 7 [Online]. Available at: http://cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/ Burnett-report-20160720.pdf (accessed 30 September 2017). Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2015). The challenge of 21st-century literacies. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 59(3): 271–274. doi:10.1002/jaal.482 Carrington, V., and Robinson, M. (2009). Digital Literacies: Social Learning and Classroom Practices. London: Sage. Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing Grounded Theory. London: Sage. Clark, C., and Teravainen, A. (2017). Enjoyment of Writing and its Link to Wider Writing: Findings from Our Annual Literacy Survey 2016. London: National Literacy Trust [Online]. Available at: https://literacytrust. 267

Clare Dowdall

org.uk/research-services/research-reports/writing-enjoyment-and-its-link-wider-writing-findingsour-annual-literacy-survey-2016-report/ (accessed 18 January 2018). Clough, P., and Nutbrown, K. (2012). A Student’s Guide to Methodology. London: Sage. Cremin, T., and Oliver, L. (2017). Teachers as writers: a systematic review. Research Papers in Education, 32(3): 269–295. Cremin, T., and Myhill, D. (2012). Writing Voices: Creating Communities of Writers. London: Routledge. Cremin, T., Flewitt, R., Swann, J., Faulkner, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2017). Storytelling and storyacting: co-construction in action. Journal of Early Childhood Research. First published 26 December 2017 [online first]. Available at: http://journals.sagepub.com.plymouth.idm.oclc.org/home/ecr (accessed 17 January 2018). Department for Education (2017). Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. London: DfE. Department for Education (2013). English Programmes of Study: Key Stages 1 and 2 National Curriculum in England. London: DfE. DigiLitEy [Online] Available at: http://digilitey.eu (accessed 22 July 2017). Dowdall, C. (2006). Ben and his army scenes: a consideration of one child’s out-of-school text production. English in Education, 40(3): 39–54. Dowdall, C. (2009). Impressions, improvisations and compositions: reframing children’s text production in social network sites. Literacy, 43(2): 91–99. Dyson, A. Haas (2010). Writing childhoods under construction: re-visioning ‘copying’ in early childhood. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(1): 7–31. Flower, L., and Hayes, J. (1981). A cognitive process theory of writing. College Composition and Communication, 32(4): 365–387. Gardner, P. (2018). Writing and writer identity: the poor relation and the search for voice in ‘personal literacy’. Literacy, 52(1): 11–19. Gee, J. P. (2017). Identity and diversity in today’s world. Multicultural Education Review, 9(2): 83–92. doi: 10.1080/2005615X.2017.1312216. Gee, J. P., and Hayes, E. R. (2011). Language and Learning in the Digital Age. London: Routledge. Glassie, H. (1999). Material Culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Grainger, T., Goouch, K., and Lambirth, A. (2005). Creativity and Writing: Developing Voice and Verve in the Classroom. London: Routledge. Halliday, M. A. K., and Hasan, R. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman. Harwood, D. (2017). Crayons and iPads. London: Sage. Hyland, K. (2009). Teaching and Researching Writing. 2nd ed. London: Longman. Keddie, A. (2016). Children of the market: performativity, neoliberal responsibilisation and the construction of student identities. Oxford Review of Education, 42(1): 108–122. Kress, G. (1997). Before Writing: Rethinking the Paths to Literacy. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: Exploring Contemporary Methods of Communication. London: Routledge. Kucirkova, N., Wells-Rowe, D., Oliver, L., and Piestrzynski, L. E. (2017). Children’s Writing With and On Screen(s): A Narrative Literature Review. COST ACTION ISI1410 DigiLitEY [Online]. Available at: http://digilitey.eu (accessed 9 January 2018). Mackey, M. (2016). One Child Reading: My Auto-Bibliography. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press. Marsh, J., Kumpulainen, K., Nisha, B., Velicu, A., Blum-Ross, A., Hyatt, D., et al. 2017). Makerspaces in the Early Years: A Literature Review. University of Sheffield: MakEY Project. Marsh, J., and Millard, E. (2000). Literacy and Popular Culture: Using Children’s Culture in the Classroom. London: Sage. Moss, G. (2017). Assessment, accountability and the literacy curriculum: reimagining the future in the light of the past. Literacy Special Issue: Assessment, Accountability and Policy, 51(2): 56–64. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1): 60–93. Ofcom (2017). Children and Parents: Media Use and Attitudes Report [Online]. Available at: www.ofcom. org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/108182/children-parents-media-use-attitudes-2017.pdf (accessed 3 December 2017). Ofsted (2017). Bold Beginnings [Online]. Available at: www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/ attachment_data/file/663560/28933_Ofsted_-_Early_Years_Curriculum_Report_-_Accessible.pdf (accessed 15 January 2018). Olson, D. (2009). The history of writing. In: R. Beard, D. Myhill, J. Riley and M. Nystrand (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Writing Development (pp. 6–16). London: Sage. 268

Children’s writing in the 21st century

Reedy, D., Dowdall, C., and McClay, J. (2017). Editorial. Literacy Special Issue: Assessment, Accountability and Policy, 51(2): 53–55. Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., and Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a research agenda for the digital literacy practices of young children: A White Paper for COST Action IS1410 [Online]. Available at: http:// digilitey.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/DigiLitEYWP.pdf (accessed 14 June 2017). Wells-Rowe, D. (2009). Early written communication. In: R. Beard, D. Myhill, J. Riley and M. Nystrand (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Writing Development (pp. 213–231). London: Sage. Whitehead, M. (2004). Language and Literacy in the Early Years. 3rd ed. London: Sage. Willett, R., Robinson, M., and Marsh, J. (2009). Play, Creativity and Digital Cultures. London: Routledge.

269

19 Digital reading in the early years Expertise, engagement and learning Íris Susana Pires Pereira, Cristina Vieira da Silva, Mônica Daisy Vieira Araújo and Maria Manuel Borges

Introduction Children are compulsive meaning-makers (Kress 2013). They construct their own personal theories about natural phenomena as well as about the cultural context of their experience, seeing “the world of objects as fully meaningful” (Kress 1997: 142). Computers, tablets or smartphones are clear instances of the world of objects with which children ubiquitously interact and make meanings long before entering school (Rowsell et al. 2013). This chapter looks into digital meaning-making practices, with the aim of contributing to the understanding of digital reading in the early years. We begin by outlining a conceptual framework of digital reading that builds upon theoretical tenets drawn from new literacy studies, social semiotics, multiliteracies, cognitive theories on reading, and embodied cognition. We identify multimodality, interactivity and interconnectedness as central features of digital texts, and discuss how such features contribute to making digital reading a multi-skilled, embodied, metacognitive and critical meaning-making process. We then use this framework to conduct a narrative literature review of pre-school children’s digital reading, identifying and discussing expertise, engagement and learning as distinctive dimensions of reading enacted by children before they begin formal education. These findings are finally used to question the concepts of emergent reading and pre-readers and to set out a future research agenda.

Digital texts and digital reading Digital communication is an integral part of social complexity in the 21st century, dominated by the expectation that people are reflexive agents, freely constructing knowledge, and becoming active citizens enacting a plural identity. Multiliteracies defines the set of literacy practices, increasingly mediated by digital media and digital genres, which underpin this new social complexity (New London Group 1996; Cope and Kalantzis 2000; Kalantzis and Cope 2012; Pahl and Rowsell 2012; Rowsell et al. 2013; Mills 2016). Digital reading utilizes these new literacy practices in a process of meaning-making with digital genres (Walsh 2006; Serafini 2014). As such, it involves the activation of cognitive processes 270

Digital reading in the early years

including the decoding of represented information as well as the construction of culturally and experientially situated interpretations by inferring and elaborating personal meanings, understanding textual aims, structures and main ideas, predicting, imaging, analysing and evaluating textual representations. Yet, digital reading is quite distinct from print-based forms of reading, essentially due to the particular characteristics of digital texts, whose affordances introduce different possibilities for meaning-making, entailing new demands (Walsh 2006; Rowsell et al. 2013). A distinctive feature of digital texts lies in the multiplicity of semiotic resources (or modes) that are used to represent meanings (Kress 2010). Modes constitute material resources for meaningmaking that are “socially shaped and culturally given” (p. 79). In digital texts, visual and aural semiotic modes may be used, as well as oral and written language, to build up representations and communicate meaning. As such, digital texts exemplify the understanding of text as more than language (Kress 2010), indeed leading to their characterization as multimodal ensembles. This is far from being a novelty in terms of text design, but the affordances of digital media have turned modal complexity into a key feature of digital texts (Kress 2010; Serafini 2014). When used simultaneously in digital texts, modes are diversely meaningful, each conveying specialized meanings with the aim not of duplicating, illustrating or embellishing meanings represented by other modes, but rather of having a multiplicative effect on the meanings represented by other modes, such as concurrence, complementarity or resonance (Lemke 2002; Kress 2003, 2010; Jewitt 2008; Rowsell et al. 2013). Digital reading, therefore, encompasses a set of perceptual skills that go well beyond those involved in making meaning with written language (Serafini 2014). Readers are called to activate multiple semiotic conventions in order to decode meanings and integrate them into an orchestration of multi-layered, coherent units of meaning (Kress 2010). As a further consequence of their multimodal nature, digital texts are displayed across the screen in a modular format, challenging the strict linearity/directionality which characterizes “the densely printed page, left-right and top-bottom” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006: 205). In multimodal texts, reading paths “may go from centre to margin, or in circular fashion, or vertically, etc.” (p. 178). Although “in many pages composition does set up particular hierarchies of the movement of the hypothetical reader within and across their different elements” (p. 204), multimodal texts, nevertheless, offer readers “a choice of routes for making meaning” (Kress 2010: 165), leaving each individual free to decide how to navigate the textual space and to sequence and connect the discontinuous and interdependent multimodal representations. Another distinctive feature of digital texts is their interactivity. Digital texts are dynamic, a feature that has recently been enhanced by the haptic affordances of touchscreens. Hands (fingers) are now required to directly activate and access texts and are used to manipulate them, so that the reading process has come to incorporate physical actions such as tapping, scrolling, sliding, swiping, maximizing or minimizing screens (Walsh and Simpson 2013, 2014). The multimodal nature of digital texts and the haptic affordances of the devices that display them have, together, transformed digital reading into a fully fledged embodied experience (Bezemer and Kress 2014; Mangen 2016). Eyes and ears combine with hands in a set of perceptual and motor skills, whose significance goes well beyond the obvious technical and operational dimension. As a result, it would appear that digital reading potentially impacts on higher order processes, such as conceptualization (Lakoff and Johnson 1999; Pfeifer and Bongard 2006; Varela, Thompson and Rosch 1991), as well as emotional involvement and engagement (Pahl and Rowsell 2012; Walsh and Simpson 2014; Rowsell and Harwood 2015; Mangen 2016). Research on embodied cognition has shown the tight coupling of perception and motor action in humans as the basis of such processes: “Motor theories of perception indicate that we mentally simulate movements and actions even though we only see (or only hear, or only touch) them” (Mangen 2016: 463). 271

Pereira, Silva, Araújo, and Borges

Another key finding of research on embodied cognition is the multisensory nature of the human neocortex (Ghazanfar and Schroeder 2006), which ultimately performs the synchronous orchestration of perceptual and motor data, spontaneously creating an optimal fit between the body that perceives and acts, and the categories that make sense of the experiences perceived and acted upon. As such, the new haptic affordances have the potential to enhance meaning-making by promoting the reader’s embodied meaning-making, that is, understanding and involvement by doing (Moreno and Mayer 2007), perhaps at the expense of some paper-based perceptual affordances, such as a better sense of reading progression (Baron 2015). Interconnectivity is another unique feature of digital texts. Web 2.0 affordances, further enhanced by the synchronous convergence of interactive touch devices, have transformed digital texts into a potentially infinite web of textual interfaces. The unbounded nature of hypertexts (Lemke 2002) provides access to potentially relevant information for meaning-making, which is far less immediate in print-based reading. Nevertheless, it considerably complicates the setting of the reading path and the text that is finally read when navigating between screens, since “each successive page may have a different reading path” (Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006: 179). Unless it is self-determined and closely monitored according to pre-set reading interests (Coiro 2011; Rowsell et al. 2013), reading might be reduced to an inattentive activity leading to the accumulation of random information (Baron 2015; Wolf 2016). Moreover, the use of online information in meaningmaking also causes readers to develop an inquisitive attitude toward potentially inaccurate or biased information (Coiro 2015; Wolf 2016). Deep online reading, essential for learning and gaining insight, therefore means taking a complex strategic stance that is both metacognitive and critical (Wolf 2016), and adopting a set of reading skills recently recognized by PISA (OECD 2011, 2014). The multimodal, interactive and interconnected nature of digital texts has clearly challenged notions of what reading means as well as what it means to be a reader. In particular, digital reading practices are transforming readers’ agency (Jewitt 2008; Cope and Kalantzis 2009; Walsh 2009; Kress 2010; Rowsell et al. 2013). Agency was amply discussed with reference to print-based reading (Eco 1981), but has gained an unprecedented new breadth in the context of digital communication. It has been the focus of inquiry with school-based readers, leading to the introduction of the concept of dynamic materiality to designate the embodied, touch-screen navigation between modes and texts to make meaning (Walsh and Simpson 2014). Interestingly, however, research has begun to reveal signs of such agency among pre-school readers, as is demonstrated through the review of research that we present below.

Digital reading in the early years Young children’s digital reading is a recent field of research and as yet findings are scarce (Merga and Mat Roni 2017). Bearing that in mind, we have developed a narrative literature review aimed at identifying key themes in existing studies as well as areas in which research is needed in order to extend knowledge in the field. Approximately 40 research papers, chapters and research reports were closely read, from which we have identified three clearly defined trends in research, focusing on young children’s reading skills, narrative experience and learning. In this section, we present an overview of the main findings.

Extended reading skills A distinctive topic in research on young children’s digital reading concerns reading skills. It arises from both (quasi) experimental and observational studies and clearly divides into two major trends.

272

Digital reading in the early years

One of these trends has looked at the impact of digital reading upon the emergence of printrelated literacy skills focused on written language. Having been recognized as crucial in setting the foundations for success in formal reading and writing (Whitehurst and Lonigan 1998), emergent literacy skills encompass pre-school children’s knowledge, experiences and attitudes about print. In fact, as pointed out by Zucker, Moody and McKenna (2009), it should be expected that e-book reading would be associated with additional/further decoding skills than those involved in traditional reading since e-books can offer both implicit decoding supports (such as written words or sentences being highlighted as narrated) and explicit decoding assistance (letter-by-letter pronunciation or read-aloud facilities). In this respect, talking e-books have been assumed to provide a useful and distinctive digital scaffold for children’s emergent literacy. Indeed, some studies conclude that children who are beginning to read (Pearman and LefeverDavis 2006; Moody, Justice and Cabell 2010) and disadvantaged children – that is, children from a low socioeconomic status or immigrant background, as well as those who are bilingual or with learning difficulties (Shamir and Shlafer 2011; Shamir, Korat and Fellah 2012) benefit from e-book reading affordances as evidenced in the development of their vocabulary, phonological awareness or concepts about print. Nevertheless, several other studies (Jong and Bus 2004; Noorhidawati, Ghalebandi and Siti Hajar 2015; Takacs, Swart and Bus 2015; Neumann 2016) have somewhat devalued the above-mentioned benefits, which Bus, Takacs and Kegel (2015) clearly relate to the interactive distractors that pop up in many digital e-books and other apps, in line with findings concerning storybooks augmented with manipulatives (Chiong and DeLoache 2013). Another trend of research has been to look into digital reading by itself. Such studies point to an expansion of literacy skills in general, and of digital reading skills in particular, which emerge and develop in these digital environments when compared to the skills displayed by young children interacting with print texts (Crescenzi, Jewitt and Price 2014; Merchant 2015). Walsh (2009), for instance, reports on kindergarteners who, after reading a picture book, engaged in digital activities to construct concepts of healthy food and mathematical shapes. Walsh directs attention to the possibility of analysing these actions theoretically through specific multimodal lenses, accordingly arguing that the articulation and interdependence of different modes available on screen, and the concomitant demand of their simultaneous processing, are a sign of a new multimodal reading skill being enacted by such children (Walsh 2008, 2009). This is in line with other research results, such as Bearne et al. (2007) and Levy (2009), who have also concluded that multimodal orchestration on screen provides young readers with affordances for new reading skills. The recent introduction of tablets has brought with it a new focus on operational or technical dimensions involved in digital reading. Research has highlighted young children’s skilful expertise with touch interactive devices whereby they have the opportunity to “explore their natural strategies that rely on a wider range of sensory-motor forms of interaction” (Crescenzi, Jewitt and Price 2014: 87). Research has shown that children as young as two years old develop a “positive visceral reaction” (Michael Cohen Group Llc 2011: 7) to the tablet due to its materiality (weight, size and portability facilitating very young children’s manipulation) and the interactive affordances of the touch-screen interface, which together enable them to access texts, play and learn driven by curiosity and eagerness to explore their own reading path. Research further shows that trial and error exploration are central in this process and that tablet usage develops children’s digital reading skills from novice to mastery when using well-designed apps with progressive levels that increase children’s agency (Levy 2009; Michael Cohen Group Llc 2011).

273

Pereira, Silva, Araújo, and Borges

Reading engagement Very young children frequently carry out digital e-book reading, and such reading practices have begun to be investigated from various perspectives. In general, studies are conducted in educational or in domestic spaces with families, either by creating controlled experiments or by observing children interacting with digital devices, especially the iPad, which is the most used among this age group (Miller and Warschauer 2014). In general, research suggests that children’s participation in digital narrative reading promotes engagement (Dooley, Martinez and Roser 2013) but it also reveals new challenges for children’s comprehension as well as for the dialogic construction of narrative meaning. From a socio-discursive perspective, research has pointed out that genre identification is an important aid in young children’s construction of meaning from digital narratives (Dooley, Martinez and Roser 2013). The studies reviewed by Dooley, Martinez and Roser (2013), conducted in a pre-iPad era (between 2000 and 2010), show that even young children perceive differences in textual genres and that pre-school children with a more sophisticated knowledge of reading seek to identify the genre right from the moment they start reading and change their reading behaviour accordingly, with corresponding influences on the construction of meaning. This fact clearly points to the importance of experience and familiarity with literary text in young children’s digital narrative meaning-making. Indeed, research has further revealed that children draw on knowledge originating in print-based reading practices (Rvachew et al. 2017) as well as in other literacy practices (Burnett and Merchant 2013) in order to make digital meaning. Another research perspective has focused on the multimodal and interactive nature of digital narratives and their effects upon children’s construction of narrative meaning. Digital narratives show differentiated levels of multimodality and interactivity: some are a transposition of printed works incorporating varying degrees of moving images, sounds and story narration, while others involve greater interactivity, demanding the direct participation of the reader so that the story develops through the activation of hypertextuality, sounds, gamification and moving images, among other semiotic resources (Dooley, Martinez and Roser 2013; Kucirkova et al. 2014). Zucker, Moody and McKenna (2009) suggest that reading such e-books can go beyond the opportunities for interaction provided by narrative print reading, thus having the potential to boost narrative comprehension. They specifically attribute this to interactive scaffolds, such as on-demand word definitions and comprehension strategies that foster the use of the multimodal features of e-books and support “processing, memory or motivation, which, in turn, lead to superior comprehension” (p. 51). Nevertheless, Bus, Takacs and Kegel’s (2015) study on the affordances and limitations of electronic storybooks for young children’s emergent literacy highlights some risks and potential downsides for story comprehension, a conclusion echoed in other studies (Jong and Bus 2004; Korat and Shamir 2007; Roskos, Brueck and Widman 2009; Zucker, Moody and McKenna 2009; Parish-Morris et al. 2013). Bus, Takacs and Kegel (2015) argue that the dissonance or delay between verbal and non-verbal information (whether in the form of animated pictures, videos or even aural stimulus) might hamper (instead of promoting) story and language comprehension by depleting information processing resources. By exposing the lack of educational quality, and the risk of the reading experience from some e-books becoming merely a game experience, they thus denounce some alarming effects of both multimodal and interactive affordances that should be given more attention by educators and parents: Technology currently provides one of the most important sources of literacy development for children of all ages but without a balanced set of hypermedia, there is a serious risk of a downward reading spiral in the long-term. Considering the numerous distractors in 274

Digital reading in the early years

popular apps, we suspect that the many hours spent with screen media cannot replace the time spent sharing print books with parents and teachers. (Bus, Takacs and Kegel 2015: 93) The quality of the social nature of reading practices is a related topic of emergent research into digital narrative reading in the early years. Socio-interactionist studies have been examining how the innovative opportunities provided by iPads for early literacy learning are being increasingly exploited by parents, teachers and children (Miller and Warschauer 2014; Flewitt, Messer and Kucirkova 2015). Whereas some studies reveal that parent–child dialogic reading was negatively affected by the presence of electronic features (Parish-Morris et al. 2013), others suggest that a greater degree of agency, whether in the form of adult or child participation, is possible in digital narrative reading than in reading of printed texts. This particularly occurs with digital texts that demand greater interactivity (Mangen 2016; Aliagas and Margallo 2017). Research has therefore highlighted the importance of a ‘more proficient’ adult to scaffold the young reader through a steady dialogue, by encouraging them to click on links and characters, dragging objects or performing other actions in order to unfold the narrative, and by pointing out and elaborating on the varied semiotic resources used in the digital text, so that the child can be assisted to create a coherent meaning. Research has also evidenced that the role of the adult is modified as the young child understands what gestures and behaviours are necessary to engage in multimodal, interactive digital reading (Dooley, Martinez and Roser 2013).

Enhanced learning From the perspective of semiotic theories, every process of meaning-making entails personal renewal or transformation, that is, learning: In the life of the meaning-maker, this process of transformation is the essence of learning. The act of representing to oneself the world and others’ representations of it transforms the learner themselves. The act of Designing leaves the designer Redesigned. (Cope and Kalantzis 2009: 177) Researchers have begun to ask legitimate questions about the role of digital meaning-making in young children’s learning and personal transformation. Yelland and Gilbert (2013) and Yelland (2015) provide a very significant example. Their qualitative and exploratory research was developed in educational settings, such as pre-schools and kindergartens, involving collaborative participatory research with children’s teachers. Their study aimed to explore the possibilities of introducing touch technology (tablets), among other usual tangible tools and practices, for children to playfully explore a variety of contexts for building new concepts and learning about the world. The learning process experienced by these children led them to create multimodal digital reading contexts across different informative genres, and digital reading thus became an integral part of the learning situations reported. Although reading was not the specific focus of inquiry, the general conclusions are significant. One major finding of their research was the enhancement of 4–6-year-old children’s learning as well as their persistence, concentration and enthusiastic involvement. The researchers explain how tablets supported children’s deep engagement in playful, open-ended experiments that enabled the children to create personally significant knowledge through the multimodal texts that were afforded to them to make meanings with. They also concluded that the use of tablets had a positive impact on children’s communicative competences, especially on their 275

Pereira, Silva, Araújo, and Borges

interactions with others, as well as their capacity to represent (apply) their new learning in new multimodal digital texts, which they then used in order to share and reflect upon their learning, by reading them with a renewed dynamism. In one of the learning situations reported, a multimodal text was read, stimulating children to find out about sounds in their own environment and document their learning by creating their own multimodal text. In another situation, tablet affordances were used to expand children’s lived experience by enabling them to search on the internet for more information about a crab living in their room and also to document their learning by saving photos for later discussions. Further learning scenarios included creative e-book construction, digital camera use, digital drawings and voice recording, the results of which were always available for subsequent meaning-making by being read in class. Similar findings are reported in Walsh (2009). The reference to this research topic is relevant for two reasons. First, it clearly illustrates the strong potential inherent in multimodal meaning-making theories to expand traditional conceptions of children as learners, of learning processes and indeed to transform early childhood pedagogy (Yelland et al. 2008; Yelland 2011; Lotherington 2017). Well-established theories have assumed children to be active knowledge constructors and have identified positive emotions; playful, socially situated, socially supported, hands-on experience; and effective communication as being fundamental aspects of young children’s learning (Carr 2001). The results of the research conducted by Yelland et al. (2008) show the potential for digital multimodal theories to enhance such conceptions, in particular by revitalizing the idea that multiple modes are a fundamental tool for young children to understand, articulate and communicate concepts and ideas (Yelland et al. 2008). Semiotic approaches are, therefore, contributing to the expansion of sociocultural theories of learning through the acknowledgement that language is but one among a plethora of (multimodal) resources for cognitive development (Flewitt 2013). This research trend also shows that digital touch devices are powerful material tools that scaffold children’s multimodal learning (Yelland 2015). Second, it suggests that digital reading plays a substantial part in pre-literate children’s multimodal learning. Indeed, the reports suggest that children’s digital meaning-making goes well beyond the orchestration of multimodal meanings in a given digital text, indicating their capacity to further develop multimodal layering (Walsh and Simpson 2013, 2014; Simpson and Walsh 2017). They suggest that young children are capable of following reading paths between interconnected digital texts and to relate and integrate each layer of multimodal meanings, constructed in different texts, into new, coherent, multimodal layered complexes (in their minds) and then to use such final complexes as trigger-texts for conscious learning. The descriptions also suggest the unique role played by touch devices in the enhancement of young children’s reading agency, pointing to the configuration of their digital reading experiences as fully embodied and imbued with dynamic materiality (Walsh and Simpson 2013, 2014) between texts and learners.

Looking to the future: renewed understanding and research agenda Research has begun to endorse the idea that children read long before they engage in schooling practices (Levy 2009; Rowsell et al. 2013), in fact revealing their considerable agency in digital meaning-making. This is evident in children’s multi-skilled expertise, engagement in digital narrative experiences and enhanced construction of knowledge through the use of multimodal, interconnected and interactive texts. In our opinion, two major implications arise from these findings. The first is theoretical. Our findings suggest the inadequacy of 20th-century conceptualizations of young children as pre-readers to describe and understand 21st-century digital reading as enacted by this age group. 276

Digital reading in the early years

The concept of pre-readers was developed under the umbrella of emergent literacy (Whitehurst and Lonigan 1998), which focused on written (and oral) language exclusively as a means for literate meaning-making. Pre-readers were accordingly characterized as pre-alphabetic or partial-alphabetic (Ehri 1999), described as reading words exactly as they read images and drawings while conceiving print and other visual codes to be indistinguishable semiotic resources (Ferreiro and Teberosky 1982). Children’s multimodal meaning-making was therefore off the theoretical radar. The findings arising from our review point in a radically different direction by recognizing children as (complex) multimodal meaning-makers long before the beginning of formal education. A different conceptualization of young children as digital readers is thus now required. The second implication is practical and concerns curriculum development and research. Our findings suggest that it is appropriate to acknowledge the intentional promotion of young children’s active participation in diverse digital reading practices. Such immersion is seen as essential to enhancing children’s digital reading capacity and socializing them in the multiliteracies in which they live (Flewitt 2013; Lotherington 2017). As Rowsell et al. have timely argued, through such practices there is an accommodation to the principles that are evident in the shape of a text and, over time, a habituation to the social and semiotic characteristics that have given rise to the features of texts in their ontological and epistemological potentials and affordances for access to and participation in social life. Consequently, practices of reading, forms of readership, and kinds of readers . . . are shaped in encounters with texts in production through the possibilities of their dissemination and in the encounters of reading. (Rowsell et al. 2013: 1189) Besides being compelling, the research results that we have reviewed open up important new avenues for research on digital reading in the early years in order to highlight the key implications for the intentional promotion of such immersion. When looked at through the lenses of theoretical understanding outlined above, such results point to the need to extend research into the possibilities and demands introduced by the multimodal, interactive and interconnected nature of digital texts. As we see it, further inquiry is needed on how young children understand the specificities of each mode in order to discover patterns of individual achievement vs. areas of necessary scaffolding in multimodal meaning-making. Another major topic of research seems to be how these children proceed to set their reading paths on screen (cf. Kress and Van Leeuwen 2006). Bearne et al. (2007) identified “radial reading” for older readers, who proceeded from the centre to the borders when reading on screen, and it would be interesting to know whether or not the same strategy applies to young readers. We believe that more research is also needed to characterize the digital genres that young children engage with, whether literary or not. In line with the research that has been referred to, we emphasize the need for research that seeks to highlight the role of children’s recognition of genre in meaning-construction as well as the transfer of reading strategies that occurs between digital and non-digital reading experiences. Crucially, more research is necessary on dialogic reading established between children and adults, as it is clearly essential for scaffolding children’s dispositions to make use of embodied digital affordances so as to focus on meaning and avoid distractors in multimodal, interactive narrative comprehension. More research also seems needed on the impact of embodied engagement as afforded by touch screens in the development of emotions associated with narrative reading. 277

Pereira, Silva, Araújo, and Borges

From our findings, it has become apparent that digital meaning-making (and indeed the dynamic materiality that these young learners appear to readily engage in) is part and parcel of young children’s conceptual growth. More detailed research is now needed, paying close attention to the unfolding of the learning process, studying whether young children can develop and sustain self-determination in the definition and enactment of reading paths between hypertexts and convergent screens as well as the role of each modal layer in eventually developing deeper coherence. It would also be important to examine the impact of the embodied dimension afforded by touchscreens in the development of young children’s critical reading and social engagement. It is our conviction that such research might shed definitive light upon our preliminary idea of young children being capable digital readers. By contributing to the eventual development of a metalanguage of digital reading for teachers, such research would contribute to the redefinition of curricula, in particular to a better understanding and promotion of smooth transitions into the formal learning of reading that takes place at school (cf. Levy 2009).

Acknowledgements This work is funded by CIEd – Research Centre on Education, projects UID/CED/1661/2013 and UID/CED/1661/2016, Institute of Education, University of Minho, through national funds of FCT/MCTES-PT and also by CIEC (Center for Research in Child Studies at the University of Minho), project UID/CED/00317/2019.

References Aliagas, C., and Margallo, A. M. (2017). Children’s responses to the interactivity of storybook apps in family shared reading events involving the iPad. Literacy, 51(1): 44–52. doi: 10.1111/lit.12089. Baron, N. S. (2015). Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World. New York: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1163/1878-4712-11112105. Bearne, E., Clark, C., Johnson, A., Manford, P., Mottram, M., and Wolstencroft, H. (2007). Reading on Screen. Leicester: UKLA. Bezemer, J., and Kress, G. (2014). Touch: a resource for making meaning. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 37(2): 77–85. Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2013). Learning, literacies and new technologies: the current context and future possibilities. In: J. Larson and J. Marshall (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. 2nd. ed. (pp. 575–586). London: SAGE. doi: 10.4135/9781446247518.n32. Bus, A. G., Takacs, Z. K., and Kegel, C. A. T. (2015). Affordances and limitations of electronic storybooks for young children’s emergent literacy. Developmental Review, 35: 79–97. doi: 10.1016/j.dr.2014.12.004. Carr, M. (2001). Assessment in Early Childhood Settings: Learning Stories. London: Paul Chapman. Chiong, C., and DeLoache, J. S. (2013). Learning the ABCs: what kinds of picture books facilitate young children’s learning? Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 13(2): 225–241. doi: 10.1177/1468798411430091. Coiro, J. (2011). Predicting reading comprehension on the internet: contributions of offline reading skills, online reading skills, and prior knowledge. Journal of Literacy Research, 43(4): 352–392. doi: 10.1177/1086296X11421979. Coiro, J. (2015). Purposeful, critical, and flexible: key dimensions of online reading and learning. In: R. J. Spiro, H. Klautke, and A. K. Johnson (eds.), Reading at a Crossroads? Disjunctures and Continuities in Current Conceptions and Practices (pp. 53–64). New York and London: Routledge. Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (eds.) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literacy Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London and New York: Routledge. Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2009). ‘Multiliteracies’: new literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal, 4(3): 164–195. doi: 10.1080/15544800903076044. Crescenzi, L., Jewitt, C., and Price, S. (2014). The role of touch in preschool children’s learning using iPad versus paper interaction. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 37(2): 86–95. 278

Digital reading in the early years

Dooley, C. M. M., Martinez, M., and Roser, N. L. (2013). Young children’s literary meaning making: a decade of research 2000–2010. In J. Larson and J. Marshall (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. 2nd ed. (pp. 395–408). London: SAGE. doi: 10.4135/9781446247518.n23. Eco, U. (1981). Lector in fabula: La cooperación interpretativa en el texto narrativo. 3rd ed. Barcelona: Editorial Lumen. Ehri, L. (1999). Phases of development in learning to read words. In J. Oakhill and E. Beard (eds.), Reading Development and the Teaching of Reading: A Psychological Perspective (pp. 79–108). Oxford: Blackwell Science. Available at: http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1999-02941-004 (last accessed 21 April 2019). Ferreiro, E., and Teberosky, A. (1982). Literacy before Schooling. Exeter, NH: Heinemann Educational Books. Flewitt, R. (2013). Multimodal perspectives on early childhood literacies. In: J. Larson and J. Marshall (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. 2nd ed. (pp. 295–310). London: SAGE. doi: 10.4135/9781446247518.n17. Flewitt, R., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2015). New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. doi: 10.1177/1468798414533560. Ghazanfar, A., and Schroeder, C. (2006). Is neocortex essentially multisensory? Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 10(6): 278–285. doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2006.04.008. Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and literacy in school classrooms. Review of Research in Education, 32: 241–267. doi: 10.3102/0091732X07310586. Jong, M. T, and Bus, A. G. (2004). The efficacy of electronic books in fostering kindergarten children’s emergent story understanding. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(4): 378–393. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.39.4.2. Kalantzis, M., and Cope, B. (2012). New Learning: Elements of a Science of Education. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781139248532. Korat, O., and Shamir, A. (2007). Electronic books versus adult readers: effects on children’s emergent literacy as a function of social class. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 23(3): 248–259. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2729.2006.00213.x. Kress, G. (1997). Before Writing: Rethinking the Paths to Literacy. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the New Media Age. London and New York: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9780203299234. Kress, G. (2010). Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London and New York: Routledge. Kress, G. (2013). Perspectives on making meaning: the differential principles and means of adults and children. In: J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy. 2nd ed. (pp. 329–344). London: SAGE. doi: 10.4135/9781446247518.n19. Kress, G., and van Leeuwen, T. (2006). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K., and Panadero, C. F. (2014). Children’s engagement with educational iPad apps: insights from a Spanish classroom. Computers & Education, 71: 175–184. doi: 10.1016/j. compedu.2013.10.003. Lakoff, G., and Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind & Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Lemke, J. L. (2002). Travels in hypermodality. Visual Communication, 1(3): 299–325. doi: 10.1177/ 147035720200100303. Levy, R. (2009). “You have to understand words . . . but not read them”: young children becoming readers in a digital age. Journal of Research in Reading, 32(1): 75–91. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9817.2008.01382.x. Lotherington, H. (2017). Elementary language education in digital multimodal and multiliteracy contexts. In: S. Thorne and S. May (eds.), Language Education and Technology. 3rd ed. (pp. 1–15). New York: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-02328-1_7-1. Mangen, A. (2016). What hands may tell us about reading and writing. Educational Theory, 66(4): 457–477. doi: 10.1111/edth.12183. Merchant, G. (2015). Keep taking the tablets: iPads, story apps and early literacy. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 38(1): 3–11. doi: 10.1111/1467-9345.3701002. Merga, M. K., and Mat Roni, S. (2017). The influence of access to eReaders, computers and mobile phones on children’s book reading frequency. Computers and Education, 109: 187–196. doi: 10.1016/j. compedu.2017.02.016. Michael Cohen Group Llc (2011). Young Children, Apps & iPad. New York. Available at :http://mcgroup. wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ipad-study-cover-page-report-mcg-info_new-online. pdf (accessed 21 April 2019). 279

Pereira, Silva, Araújo, and Borges

Miller, E. B., and Warschauer, M. (2014). Young children and e-reading: research to date and questions for the future. Learning, Media and Technology, 39(3): 283–305. doi: 10.1080/17439884.2013.867868. Mills, K. A. (2016). Literacy Theories for the Digital Age: Social, Critical, Multimodal, Spatial, Material and Sensory Lenses. Bristol and Ontario: Multilingual Matters. doi: 10.1080/01434632.2016.1218652. Moody, A. K., Justice, L. M., and Cabell, S. Q. (2010). Electronic versus traditional storybooks: relative influence on preschool children’s engagement and communication. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(3): 294–313. doi: 10.1177/1468798410372162. Moreno, R., and Mayer, R. (2007). Interactive multimodal learning environments. Educational Psychology Review, 19(3): 309–326. doi: 10.1007/s10648-007-9047-2. Neumann, M. M. (2016). Young children’s use of touch screen tablets for writing and reading at home: relationships with emergent literacy. Computers & Education, 97: 61–68. doi: 10.1016/j. compedu.2016.02.013. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66(1): 60–92. Noorhidawati, A., Ghalebandi, S. G., and Siti Hajar, R. (2015). How do young children engage with mobile apps? Cognitive, psychomotor, and affective perspective. Computers & Education, 87: 385–395. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2015.07.005. OECD (2011). PISA 2009 Results: Student on Line: Digital Technologies and Performance (Volume IV). Paris: OECD Publishing. doi: 10.1787/9789264112995-en. OECD (2014). PISA 2012 Technical Report. Paris: OECD Publishing. Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2012). Literacy and Education: Understanding the New Literacy Studies in the Classroom. 2nd ed. Los Angeles, CA, and London: SAGE. doi: 10.4135/9781473915237. Parish-Morris, J., Mahajan, N., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Michnik Golinkoff, R., and Fuller Collins, M. (2013). Once upon a time: parent-child dialogue and storybook reading in the electronic era. Mind, Brain, and Education, 7(3): 200–211. doi: 10.1111/mbe.12028. Pearman, C. J., and Lefever-Davis, S. (2006). Supporting the essential elements with CD-ROM storybooks. Reading Horizon Journal, 46(4): 301–313. Pfeifer, R., and Bongard, J. (2006). How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Book. Roskos, K., Brueck, J., and Widman, S. (2009). Investigating analytic tools for e-book design in early literacy learning. Journal of Interactive Online Learning, 8(3): 23. Rowsell, J., and Harwood, D. (2015). ‘Let it go’: exploring the image of the child as a producer, consumer, and inventor, Theory Into Practice, 54(2): 136–146. doi: 10.1080/00405841.2015.1010847. Rowsell, J., Kress, G., Pahl, K., and Street, B. (2013). The social practice of multimodal reading: a new literacy studies–multimodal perspective on reading. In: D. E. Alvermann, N. J. Unrau and R. B. Ruddel (eds.), Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading. 6th ed. (pp. 1182–1207). Newark, DE: International Reading Association. Rvachew, S., Rees, K., Carolan, E., and Nadig, A. (2017). Improving emergent literacy with school-based shared reading: paper versus ebooks. International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction, 12(12): 24–29. doi: 10.1016/j.ijcci.2017.01.002. Serafini, F. (2014). Reading the Visual: An Introduction to Teaching Multimodal Literacy. New York: Teachers College Press. Shamir, A., and Shlafer, I. (2011). E-books effectiveness in promoting phonological awareness and concept about print: a comparison between children at risk for learning disabilities and typically developing kindergarteners. Computers and Education, 57: 1989–1997. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2011.05.001. Shamir, A., Korat, O., and Fellah, R. (2012). Promoting vocabulary, phonological awareness and concept about print among children at risk for learning disability: can e-books help? Reading and Writing, 25(1): 45–69. doi: 10.1007/s11145-010-9247-x. Simpson, A., and Walsh, M. (2017). Mobile literacies: moving from the word to the world. In: C. Burnett, G. Merchant, A. Simpson and M. Walsh (eds.), The Case of the iPad (pp. 257–265). Singapore: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-4364-2_16. Takacs, Z. K., Swart, E. K., and Bus, A. G. (2015). Benefits and pitfalls of multimedia and interactive features in technology-enhanced storybooks: a meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 85(4): 698–739. doi: 10.3102/0034654314566989. Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., and Rosch, E. (1991). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

280

Digital reading in the early years

Walsh, M. (2006). The ‘textual shift’: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 29(1): 24–37. Walsh, M. (2008). Worlds have collided and modes have merged: classroom evidence of changed literacy practices. Literacy, 42(2): 101–108. doi: 10.1111/j.1741-4369.2008.00495.x. Walsh, M. (2009). Pedagogic potentials of multimodal literacy. In: L. T. Wee Hin and R. Subramaniam (eds.), Handbook of Research on New Media Literacy at the K-12 Level (pp. 32–47). Hershey, PN: IGI Global. doi: 10.4018/978-1-60566-120-9.ch003. Walsh, M., and Simpson, A. (2013). Touching, tapping thinking: examining the dynamic materiality of touch pad devices for literacy learning. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 36(3): 148–158. Walsh, M., and Simpson, A. (2014). Exploring literacies through touch pad technologies: the dynamic materiality of modal interactions. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 37(2): 96–106. Whitehurst, G. J., and Lonigan, C. J. (1998). Child development and emergent literacy. Child Development, 69(3): 848–872. Wolf, M. (2016). Tales of Literacy for the 21st Century: The Literary Agenda. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yelland, N. (2011). Reconceptualising play and learning in the lives of young children. Australasian Journal of Early Childhood, 36(2): 4–12. Yelland, N. (2015). Understanding Digital Technologies and Young Children. Ed. by S. Garvies and N. Lemon. London and New York: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315753027. Yelland, N. J., and Gilbert, C. L. (2013). iPlay, iLearn, iGrow: Research report presented to IBM. Yelland, N., Lee, L., O’Rourke, M., and Harrison, C. (2008). Rethinking Learning in Early Childhood Education. Berkshire: Open University Press. Zucker, T. A., Moody, A. K., and McKenna, M. C. (2009). The effects of electronic books on pre-kindergarten-to-grade 5 students’ literacy and language outcomes: a research synthesis. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 40(1): 47–87. doi: 10.2190/EC.40.1.c.

281

20 Children’s reading in the digital age A research summary of children’s digital books Natalia Kucirkova

Children’s reading on screens: how do children make meaning from digital books and what is the role of adults in this process? The aim of this chapter is to discuss the current state of knowledge concerning children’s digital books and to suggest a research agenda designed to enhance the field of children’s independent and shared e-reading practices. The chapter summarizes extant research on parent–child reading of digital books at home as part of daily routine as well as at research sites as part of laboratory studies, including both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Methodological, theoretical and practical suggestions are made to stimulate future interdisciplinary and methodologically diverse research of children’s reading on screen, with the aim of inspiring innovative design and effective use in practice.

Delineation of terms: digital books Digital books carry many names, including e-books, ibooks, apps, storybook apps, iPad books or digital stories. In some literature, the label ‘apps’ is used for interactive digital books and ‘e-books’ for digital books with no hyperlinks or hotspots. To avoid generic terms, some researchers describe a particular resource using several terms, e.g. “book-like e-book apps that include multimedia, but little digital interactivity” (Zipke 2016: 5). While the term ‘iPad books’ is relevant for digital books developed only for iPad platforms, the terms e-books and digital books better reflect the fact that most of today’s software is platform-agnostic. For inclusiveness, this review therefore uses the umbrella term ‘digital books’ but emphasizes the particular dimensions of individual digital books. The review builds on the author’s review of digital interactive books, which was specifically focused on the interactivity feature (Kucirkova 2017b). Not all digital books are interactive, so the present review is broader in scope.

The scope of the review This review provides an overview of research studies published between 2011 and 2017, identified through searching two main databases (Psychinfo and ERIC), through the author’s familiarity 282

Children’s reading in the digital age

with the research field and by asking lead researchers in the field for recommendation. The review is narrative in nature, aimed to map the field, outline and integrate key studies concerned with children’s digital books. Although focused on the last six years and the era of touchscreen devices, the review should not be read as touchscreen-specific because it includes some results of meta-analyses, which, in their calculations, included studies examining digital books available for classic desktop computers. The review is concerned with studies related to children’s independent and shared adult–child book reading sessions, which occurred in formal and informal learning contexts. The reviewed studies are divided into two broad conceptual groups, according to the focus of the individual researchers. Drawing on the reference triangle, also known as a joint attention triangle, between an adult, object and a child, the review considers the reading impact on the child, on the book’s features, or on the relationship between the child and the adult. The research reported in this chapter is arbitrarily divided according to these three axes to facilitate interpretative synthesis.

Studies focused on the features of digital books Authors in the first group of studies ask detailed questions about the features of digital books that have an effect on the child. For example, Takacs, Swart and Bus (2014) conducted a metaanalysis focused on the benefits of multimedia features (animated illustrations, background music and sound effects) as opposed to interactive features, which the authors defined as scaffolding supports provided in a print-based story or a print-like story presented on a screen. The printbased or print-like stories included only text and static pictures and were presented to the child with and without adult support. Although some of the studies included in the meta-analysis focused on the parent–child relationship, the focus of the meta-analysis was on the book features and the role of interactivity and multimedia in children’s learning. Overall, the meta-analysis included 29 studies with 1,272 children and found that for children’s story comprehension and vocabulary, the multimedia features in digital books were more effective than print books when read without adult support (effect sizes: (g+ = 0.40, k = 18) and (g+ = 0.30, k = 11)). There was no difference between multimedia story and paper book when read with adult support. In a follow-up meta-analysis, Takacs, Swart and Bus (2015) examined the benefits of multimedia features in comparison to interactive features. Multimedia features were those that were aligned with the storyline, while interactive features were additional activities embedded in the digital books, such as puzzles, memory tasks, amusing visual or sound effects that were available through the user’s activation and hyperlinks. Forty-three studies including 2,147 children, were included in the meta-analysis, with a comparison between digital and print-based books. The meta-analysis found that the interactive features did not support children’s story comprehension and vocabulary learning (regardless of whether or not they were congruent with the story). On the other hand, digital books, which complemented the story with multimedia features (i.e. through pictures, sounds and voiceovers), supported children’s story comprehension and expressive vocabulary, when the children either had the story read to them by an adult or by an audio-recording (Takacs, Swart and Bus 2015; effect sizes g+ = 0.17 for story comprehension and g+ = 0.20 for expressive vocabulary). These findings are in accordance with studies that examined learning from videos (see e.g. Nussenbaum and Amso 2015) or desktop computer e-books (e.g. Korat, Shamir and SegalDrori 2013) and found positive learning effects of multimedia that are congruent with the narrative, as would be predicted by the dual-coding theories (see Bus, Takacs and Kegel 2015). As I have written before (Kucirkova 2014c), these results also align with studies showing that alphabet flap books (i.e. print books with manipulable flaps) that distract a child’s attention 283

Natalia Kucirkova

are less conducive to children’s word learning, when compared to simple print books (Tare, Chiong, Ganea and DeLoache 2010). However, the meta-analytic results have not been corroborated with recent empirical research that examined interactive features in children’s digital books. For example, Zipke (2016) examined the effects of interactivity in two digital books on children’s word recognition and story comprehension. Twenty-five US 4–5-year-olds participated in two experiments. All children were pre-readers and had not read any digital books before. Children’s word recognition and story comprehension scores were highest in the interactive digital book condition, read by the children on their own. The interactive features used in Zipke’s study consisted of elements that offered an additional experience to a print book, such as for example: spoken narration, text highlighting, sound effects, music and moving characters. Within one of the tested digital books, there were also small games, which were related to the story characters. Qualitative observations explained that children’s independent manipulation of hotspots enhanced their story comprehension through interest-driven, self-motivated exploration. Kelley and Kinney (2016) conducted two experiments with 30 pre-schoolers, focused on the comparison between ‘interactive’ and ‘non-interactive’ books for children’s word learning and story comprehension. The researchers found no difference between the interactive and non-interactive books for children’s learning on either of the measures, even after three reading sessions. The main reason for the different results relates to the definition of interactivity in the meta-analytic and experimental investigations. Interactivity was touted to be “the most grossly misunderstood and callously misused term associated with computers” (Crawford 2005: 25) and in the field of digital reading, there is also a range of uses and meanings associated with the term. Zipke (2016) suggests that the definition of interactivity in Takacs et al. (2015) was too broad; the more constrained definition employed by Zipke might explain why her studies found beneficial effects of interactivity for children’s learning in contrast to Takacs et al. Since many interactive features are subsumed by multimedia, or they work because of multimedia (e.g. tapping a hotspot on the screen activates a sound recording), it is difficult to draw a clear line between what counts as an interactive and what as a multimedia feature. In Kucirkova (2017b), I argue that focus on interactivity as a unified variable might be misleading and outline five key ingredients of interactivity: synaesthesia, scaffolding, datafication, user control and computer vision techniques. A focus on specific types of interactivity might help overcome methodological discrepancies and inconsistent findings in the literature. A precise definition of individual features is crucial in studies focused on interactivity but also other types of digital books. The next section illustrates this point by drawing on my own empirical data concerned with personalized digital books. This section is intended to provide a concrete example of how the study of narrowly defined features of digital books might provide distinct insights into parent–child and child–text engagement patterns.

Personalization as an example of detailed feature analysis In 2014, I put forward the thesis that unlike customization that is available for PC-based or simple e-reader books, personalization becomes significantly foregrounded in children’s iPad books (Kucirkova 2014a). This is because digital books available on touchscreen devices offer the child seamless and multimedia options for individualizing the reading content and context. Namely, children can create their own audio-recordings, texts, pictures, drawings or short videos and, with a single tap, include these in the story they read. There are open-ended applications that allow children to create personal digital books based entirely on the child’s own 284

Children’s reading in the digital age

content (e.g. Our Story) and there are apps that provide children with a template that they can personalize with specific multimedia elements (e.g. Mr Glue Stories). Personalization is thus a feature that further specifies interactive and multimedia features and, in terms of children’s learning, its impact relates to five possible variables (the so-called 5As framework): authenticity, attachment, authorship, autonomy and aesthetics (Kucirkova 2017a). These effects can be either positive or negative, depending on the context and content of reading, but also on the child’s agency in influencing the personalization process (Kucirkova 2018). Together with my colleagues, I have studied children’s reading on screen through the lens of positive affect during parent–child joint reading of digital books at home (Kucirkova, Messer, Sheehy and Flewitt 2013). This finding was an important addition to the literature concerned with children’s reading on screen and some early studies comparing print versus digital medium (e.g. Parish-Morris et al. 2013; Krcmar and Cingel 2014). Rather than focusing on digital books as an unvarying, homogeneous format, our observation study revealed positive engagement patterns in relation to a personalizable digital book, which enriched rather than diminished the parent–child conversation. Later on, we hypothesized these effects to be a result of the parent’s and child’s increased motivation in a reading activity that is about them rather than a fictional character and that provides various opportunities for the child’s autonomy, authorship and an authentic, aesthetically pleasing, content. In the next section, I provide a vignette to illustrate the significant relationship between the personalization features and the child’s and parent’s engagement in the reading process.

Vignette This vignette draws on data collected as part of a research study conducted together with Dr Mona Sakr (Middlesex University) in 2016/2017. The participants were a 5-year-old girl and her father, who were observed using the app called Mr Glue Stories. The pair used the app on a weekday evening in the home of the child’s grandparents. Mr Glue Stories allows users to change the name of the main story character to a name of their choice. The user’s name then automatically replaces all instances of the main story character’s name, giving the impression that the story is about the user rather than a fictional character. Users can also personalize the illustrations by adding their own drawings and they can add their own audio-recordings or voiceovers to selected pages of the book. The vignette is taken from the first father–child observed interaction that lasted for 23 minutes and 55 seconds. The interaction was video-recorded and later transcribed and analysed with multimodal analysis method. For the purpose of the present discussion, I selected three short excerpts that illustrate the points advanced in relation to personalization and parent–child reading dynamics. Time stamp: 0.21–0.49 (D = child’s father; C = child) D is reading out the story blurb from the screen D: What am I looking at M? Is it a game? Is it a story? C: It’s a game and a story. D: I see something flashing up there that says ‘recording studio’ Time stamp: 0.55–1.06 C: No you don’t need to press it . . . so you can say anything D: Ok 285

Natalia Kucirkova

C: D: C: D

No you can make up, and when I press this, you’ve got to say something So shall we read these and then we’ll say something? Ok, read that reads out loud

Time stamp: 4.00–5.00 C: D: C: D: C: D: C: D: C: D: C: D:

But who is that? Create a book that says, no that one says go back, that one says create a book Who’s doing it me or you? We’re both Are you showing me something that you made last week or are we doing a new one? We’re doing a new one So what can we say? It’s a girl and a boy so It’s a girl Or a goy Girl or boy? Erm, I say dirl A dirl? A daddy and a girl . . . a daddy and a daughter Look look I’ll do this That’s going to confuse it, but ok It’s accepted something

Time stamp: 5.00–5:45 D: Go on then let’s do it C: Daddy! Cos you’re new to it, you’re new, let’s do you D: Dalika C: No, just daddy, just daddy D: Good job good job Excellent spelling Then click ok Music starts D: Err . . . ready? D starts reading out, with the name change ‘Daddy’ recurring Continues reading Time stamp: 15:33–16:21 D begins reading out loud C laughs C: He keeps on saying daddy because he typed in daddy, because it’s daddy and me doing it, but we just typed in daddy And then it keeps on saying daddy daddy . . . daddy shouted out for Jenny . . . daddy did this daddy did that . . . He’s not even a kid! D continues reading out loud C interrupts – and Jenny isn’t even his friend; Jenny isn’t his friend 286

Children’s reading in the digital age

C laughs She’s my friend C continues laughing while D reads out loud I put in Jenny and Jenny isn’t even daddy’s friend D: I’m now on an adventure with your friend from school and I’m getting rescued by a fiveyear-old C laughs C: It’s meant to be you rescuing her D: We should’ve put in [child’s name] or Dalika or Malikada C: No we should’ve put in Jenny and Daddy saved Jenny D: Yeah that would’ve been much better C: But now Jenny saved you C laughs again D continues to read out loud

Commentary on the vignette The beginning of this extract shows typical patterns that occur during parent–child shared use of digital books. The participants negotiate who holds the device, who taps which button and how the story progresses. The interaction dynamic and the child’s level of participation change dramatically at minute 15:33, when the father starts reading the personalized portion of the story. The child bursts into laughter and cannot resist shouting and sharing her enthusiasm with the researcher, who has been quietly observing the interaction from the back of the room. The child is clearly amused that the main character turned to be her dad and that her best friend Jenny features in the story. The focus of the parent–child conversation moves from the device manipulation to a more personal territory, with the parent and child discussing friendships and possible story plots. This shift in discourse and overall atmosphere of the interaction are directly traceable to the personalization affordances of the Mr Glue Stories app. Namely, the possibility to change the name of the story character and to see the new name being seamlessly replaced in the story text is a unique feature of the app. With a non-personalizable digital book the parent could pretend to be the story character and perhaps pretend that his name is part of the text, he could have acted out the story and dramatized it outside the text. Here, however, the personalizing process becomes ‘cemented’ in the story, through a quick and seamless process. This contributes to the positive atmosphere of story-sharing and adds an element of surprise for both reading partners. An analytic focus on the personalization features thus allows for a more fine-grained perspective on the interaction at stake here.

Studies focused on the parent–child relationship In the second group of studies reviewed in this chapter, the investigation emphasis is laid on the interactivity that happens around the book. Scholars following this research tradition ask detailed questions about the context of the reading interaction and study closely the parent– child dynamics. Early comparative research found that pre-recorded messages and interactive hotspots in digital books disrupt the parent–child dialogue during book reading and, subsequently, negatively affect children’s story comprehension (Parish-Morris et  al. 2013; Krcmar and Cingel 2014). However, some reading styles adopted by the parents can overcome this limitation: Hassinger-Das et al. (2016) carried out an experiment with 86 parent–child dyads of 3–5-year-olds and compared the child’s story comprehension in relation to a traditional paper 287

Natalia Kucirkova

book, an e-book with many additional activities, a simple e-book with no hotspots and an audio book with pre-recorded narration of the text. The study did not examine other possible influencing factors and interactions (e.g. child’s language and the parent–child dynamics), but found that even with highly interactive digital books, children whose parents used distancing talk – that is talk that linked the story plot to the child’s own life experiences – scored highest on the story comprehension test, regardless of the reading condition. Thus far, most children’s e-reading research has focused on fiction, with the exception of Strouse and Ganea (2016), who compared children’s learning of biological concepts after the reading of non-fiction books by adults as opposed to non-fiction books read independently by the child. The results of an experiment with 91 4-year-olds showed that for children’s learning of biological concepts, parents’ prompting was as effective as the prompting provided by the digital book. If we were to analyse the parent–child relationship in the aforementioned vignette, we could focus on the parent’s use of language, his choice of vocabulary, intonation and dramatization of the story. We could examine the affective relationship between the parent and child as they read the personalized book together and analyse their verbal as well as physical engagement with the digital book. Such a focus would place the emphasis on the parent’s and child’s response to the book’s features. Unlike in a study focused on the book’s features, this lens of analysis would assign the agency and volition to the interaction partners who are actively shaping the interaction, rather than being subjects or recipients of the book’s influence. In a detailed observation of two parent–child dyads reading a personalizable digital book together, Kucirkova, Sheehy and Messer (2015) noted that the “trialogical perspective of learning appears to be a suitable framework for future studies seeking to analyse both the process and product of knowledge representation during parent–child iPad story sharing” (p. 11, italics added). The open-ended character of the digital books in our study invited the parent’s and child’s direct contribution to the story content, with their own audio-recordings, digital photos and text added to the story. The session involved the sequence of collaborative projects of planning, composing, reviewing and correcting (Fernández Cárdenas 2004) and contributed to a range of literacy and digital literacy skills practised by the child. The teacher–apprentice notion reminiscent of Vygotsky’s “more knowledgeable other”, who scaffolds the child’s learning in the zone of proximal development, needed to be extended to an “intermental development zone” (Mercer and Littleton 2007), where both the adult and child learn from each other and construct new knowledge. The analytical focus can also be directed to the child’s individual response, reviewed next.

Studies focused on the child’s response to digital books Research shows that open-ended digital storybooks that encourage the child to become the hero of the story and which reposition both the child and parent as active agents in the storysharing, can encourage the child to produce unique and empowering responses to the text (Aliagas and Margallo 2016). If, in the presented vignette, the research focus was on the child, then factors such as the child’s increased language would be considered relevant for the analysis. We could have analysed the girl’s attempt at involving other adults in the room in the conversation and her enthusiastic and sophisticated response to the app’s personalization features. The analytical focus would be shifted to the child’s verbal and physical engagement with the app and those around her and would foreground the child’s abilities, skills and engagement patterns rather than the dialogue with the father or the influence of the app’s features. Children’s individual characteristics are, potentially, important sources of variability in the impact of digital books on their learning. Recent research by Strouse and Ganea (2017) shows 288

Children’s reading in the digital age

that for younger children (toddlers between 17 and 26 months) parent–child reading of digital books is more beneficial than reading print books because the toddlers pay more attention and are more participative in the reading interaction with digital books. This is different from preschoolers where interactivity was found to be impeding parent–child conversation. So, the first marker of individual differences that researchers need to better understand is children’s age, followed by possible gender differences and other key markers of self. Research that is focused on the child highlights children’s unique needs, preferences and talents, which can be effectively supported with the customization and personalization possibilities available within digital books. In Kucirkova, Messer, Critten and Harwood (2014), we saw how the use of the story-making application Our Story supported children’s unique story-telling profiles in two different schools catering for children with complex educational needs. The teachers noted children’s enthusiasm to share their ideas expressed in the format of a multimedia story and commented on the benefits of easy and seamless personalization options of the storymaking app. This was echoed by practitioners in a study with two African adolescents with severe speech and communication difficulties, who used the Our Story app to support the two boys’ multimedia story-making (Critten and Kucirkova 2015). Digital books can be used to support personalized and therefore highly authentic content, as well as customized content relevant for groups of children/individuals. For example, Walker, Adams, Restrepo, Fialko and Glenberg (2017) showed how the possibility of Spanish text within an English-language digital book supported story comprehension of children whose first language was not English. These children benefited from the presence of interactive additions in the book, even though they were not story-related. The interactive features provided explanation in the children’s native (Spanish) language, which facilitated the children’s text comprehension in English.

Future research The three review axes concerning the features of digital books, parent–child interaction patterns or children’s individual characteristics, are a crude illustration of possible research foci in the field. Researchers’ theoretical frameworks and epistemologies will guide their decisions. It is likely that those who follow a socio-cultural orientation (e.g. Vygotsky 1978) would favour a focus on parent–child interaction, while researchers who follow a constructivist tradition (e.g. Papert and Harel 1991) might favour a focus on the individual books’ features. Regardless of the theoretical or epistemological orientation adopted by the researchers, there are three key areas that need to be refined and examined in future research on children’s digital books. These three areas relate to the nomenclature and methodological and theoretical extensions.

Nomenclature For research to provide productive guidance for future design of children’s digital books, there is a need for a more precise and detailed definition of the key features studied by researchers, notably in relation to interactive and multimedia digital books. Whether researchers conceptualize interactivity as a variable influencing the child’s response directly or via a parent’s mediation, it is important to clearly name and delineate individual features that comprise it. Isolating individual features elucidates the mechanisms of learning (see Takacs and Bus 2016) and some exciting lab-based studies are progressing the research in this area. In parallel, it is important to recognize that individual features always work in conjunction with different story contents and story genres and these interactions need to be addressed by both qualitative and quantitative research. 289

Natalia Kucirkova

The issues related to defining interactivity in children’s digital books highlights the need for a careful assessment of continuities and discontinuities between old and new reading formats. Some recently developed digital books have the option of personalizing the story characters (e.g. My Story™) and customizing the story plot by choosing the story ending (e.g. The Little Red Riding Hood app by Nosy Crow™). Such possibilities imply the need for studying the active, autonomous and agentic role children can take on when they interact with customizable digital books (interactive versus interpassive).

Methodological extensions Thus far, research emphasis has been on children’s cognitive and mental responses to digital books. However, reading involves a range of physical, emotional and social responses and it evokes corporal and physical responses too. As Mangen (2016) writes: “kinesthetic aspects of reading merit more scholarly attention in a time when reading texts on the substrate of paper (print) gives way to reading on an increasing diversity of screens” (p. 458). We noted the embodied nature of children’s engagement with touchscreens and the children’s profound affective response to the digital books was documented in a qualitative study in a special needs school (Kucirkova, Messer, Critten and Harwood 2014). The use of touchscreens implies that children employ a wider range of touch movements than they do when manipulating paper-based resources. These include tapping, pressing, scratching and, when adding their own drawings and early marks, also using straight and circular strokes (Price, Jewitt and Crescenzi 2015). Notably in relation to newer digital books formats, which include augmented reality features, research needs to concentrate on the importance of touch and body for children’s cognitive as well as affective response. Importantly, the touch-sensitivity of touchscreens can influence children’s subsequent fine-motor development, which is an important developmental milestone (Bedford et al. 2016). Children’s embodied responses can be studied in the moment of interaction, but also in relation to their accumulation over time (see Mackey 2016). While print-based books preserve traces of frequent use and touch on their pages, digital books can change in content as updated versions of the same book become available or as parents and children modify the book’s content in the process of book sharing. The flexibility of the digital format is likely to affect parent–child interaction in a different way than sharing a static printed book. In particular, repeated readings of digital books include new contents, which is not the case with print books. Longitudinal studies are, therefore, required to elucidate how digital books affect children’s preferences for specific books and their lifelong love of reading. In addition to readily apparent responses, future research in this area might extrapolate from adult studies the focus on readers’ mental stimulation, which occurs as a result of tactile perception (Brunyé et al. 2012). In this vein, neuro-imaging studies that examine how changes to content (e.g., fiction versus non-fiction) and to first-, second- and third-person narration influence text processing (see e.g. Tettamanti et al. 2005; Brunyé et al. 2009) would be invaluable.

Theoretical extensions Children’s reading in the digital age is “much more eclectic, fast-moving and multi-layered” (Sefton-Green, Marsh, Erstad and Flewitt 2016: 19) than reading on paper. This implies refined models of children’s contemporary reading practices, which would include alternative outcome measures as well as a wider range of comparison conditions. Moreover, the criteria for categorizing children’s responses need to be expanded in light of new theoretical insights. For example, systematic observations of children’s play with a range of 290

Children’s reading in the digital age

apps, including literacy apps, led Marsh, Plowman, Yamada-Rice, Bishop and Scott (2016) to conclude that there is an additional category to consider when studying children’s engagement with touchscreens: transgressive play, which relates to children “transgressing” the original design of the apps, by extending it to a new kind of play. They also suggest that “it is not so much the types of play that have changed as a result of new digital contexts as the nature of play” (Marsh et al. 2016: 243, italics added). Similar reasoning might well apply in measuring children’s responses to the digital books and identifying possible learning mechanisms. For instance, children’s reading is often categorized as involving two main types: reading for pleasure and reading for learning. With digital books, the nature of reading changes, with many digital books designed to support children’s learning of words through hotspots and hyperlinks, all embedded in an immersing narrative. Digital books understood as a new genre that can hybridize several polarities in children’s reading research and practice is one of their greatest potentials (Kucirkova 2014b). In addition, digital books could expand the model of parent–child book reading to peerto-peer interaction. While traditional research of parent–child reading focuses on adult–child interaction, digital books could inspire more child-to-child reading interactions. In a study we conducted with Spanish pre-schoolers and a range of apps, we found that the feedback from peers was instructive in supporting effective peer talk among the participating children (Kucirkova, Messer, Sheehy and Panadero 2014). In another study, peer feedback led to collaboration among US and Turkish kindergartners when observed during ‘buddy reading’ at school (Christ, Wang and Erdemir 2016). Interestingly, Troseth, Russo and Strouse (2016) suggest expanding the analytical lens from co-reading and co-viewing to co-playing. Such an analytical lens would move from the traditionally dialogic and dyad-based research to more community-oriented studies. Clearly, the applicability of these methodological and theoretical extensions to the book context will need to be studied in relation to diverse and varied populations of parents/caregivers and their children. Current research on book reading, and educational research more broadly, are often approached from a biased Anglo-centric Western viewpoint, which can dominate the study design and conclusions drawn from research.

Practical considerations The model of “many-to-many” has taken a step toward a participatory approach to the production and distribution of digital games, with user-generated content shared widely on social media and community-driven digital spaces. This could be expanded to digital books’ production, with teachers and parents developing their own story contents in local languages, reflecting a diverse range of contents. Indeed, in many studies that I conducted with the Our Story story-making app, parents, children and teachers co-created their own multimedia content. These self-made digital books were directly relevant to the 5As of personalization, and children’s agency in shaping the content they consume on screen is an important consideration for future work. While participatory approaches (such as design-based research, action research and formative experiments, see Reinking and Watkins 2000) are well known in human–computer interaction studies and classroom research, they are less known in the book reading area and ought to be explored. In addition to participatory approaches, children’s designers and researchers could work together in partnerships. For example, Rees, Rvachew and Nadig (2016) worked with the company Triba Nova and co-developed a suite of reading apps. Academia–industry collaboration could significantly contribute to the improvement of the low quality of digital books currently on the market. Vaala, Ly and Levine (2015) analysed the content of best-selling apps on 291

Natalia Kucirkova

the US app market and found that the majority targeted only rote academic skills, missing the creative potential offered by digital books. Similarly, an analysis of Greek digital books available on the Android app store concluded that they “in no way justify their title as educational, as they do not meet the developmental needs of the target age group” (Papadakis, Kalogiannakis and Zaranis 2018: 150). It is important to be aware of these content-related concerns. As discussed in Chapter 22 in this book, the quality of many European digital books is extremely low and many often do not even offer stories in local languages. The content and format are intimately interlinked in children’s books and this applies to digital books with even more urgency. Researchers who are associated with the Working Group3 of the DigiLitEY COST project are dedicated to addressing this issue through their work with local governments, literacy charities and publishers. In conclusion, digital books are an intrinsic part of children’s contemporary reading experiences. The integration of multiple forms of engagement (music, audio, text and illustrations) in digital books has intensified the discussions about differences in reading on screen and reading on paper. Moreover, the advent of touchscreen devices and the possibility to interact with digital books through direct manipulation has brought to the fore issues around children’s own involvement in the reading experience and innovative personalization design. Current research provides some answers to how digital books might affect parent–child interaction and how children’s own characteristics and the books’ features might influence children’s learning from the books. However, there are many more questions than answers and it is essential that interdisciplinary and multimethod approaches inform the theoretical discussions preceding the formulation of research questions. There is no doubt that researchers need to collaborate more actively with the industry to improve the current low content quality offered to our young/emerging readers, and examine in more detail the individual facets that add value to children’s reading on screen. As advocated in the DigiLitEY Action, it is only through multiple-stakeholder engagement that researchers can successfully sculpt the landscape of children’s digital literacies.

References Aliagas, C., and Margallo, A. M. (2016). Children’s responses to the interactivity of storybook apps in family shared reading events involving the iPad. Literacy, 51(1): 44–52. doi: 10.1111/lit.12089 Bedford, R., Saez de Urabain, I. R., Cheung, C. H. M., Karmiloff-Smith, A., and Smith, T. J. (2016). Toddlers’ fine motor milestone achievement is associated with early Touchscreen Scrolling. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01108 Brunyé, T. T., Ditman, T., Mahoney, C. R., Augustyn, J. S., and Taylor, H. A. (2009). When you and I share perspectives: pronouns modulate perspective taking during narrative comprehension. Psychological Science, 20(1): 27–32. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02249.x Brunyé, T. T., Walters, E. K., Ditman, T., Gagnon, S. A., Mahoney, C. R., and Taylor, H. A. (2012). The fabric of thought: priming tactile properties during reading influences direct tactile perception. Cognitive Science, 36(8): 1449–1467. doi: 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2012.01268.x Bus, A. G., Takacs, Z. K., and Kegel, C. A. T. (2015). Affordances and limitations of electronic storybooks for young children’s emergent literacy. Developmental Review, 35: 79–97. doi: 10.1016/j.dr.2014.12.004 Christ, T., Wang, X. C., and Erdemir, E. (2016). Young children’s buddy reading with multimodal app books: reading patterns and characteristics of readers, texts, and contexts. Early Child Development and Care, 188(8): 1012–1030. Published online before print. doi: 10.1080/03004430.2016.1241776 Crawford, C. (2005). Chris Crawford on Interactive Storytelling. Berkeley, CA: New Riders. Critten, V., and Kucirkova, N. (2015). Digital personal stories: a case study of two African adolescents, with severe learning and communication disabilities. Journal of Childhood & Developmental Disorders, 1(1): 1–9. Fernández Cárdenas, J. M. (2004). The appropriation and mastery of cultural tools in computer supported collaborative literacy practices. Doctoral dissertation, Open University. 292

Children’s reading in the digital age

Hassinger-Das, B., Mahajan, N., Metz, R., Ramsock, K., Margulis, K. Hirst-Pasek, K., et  al. (2016). Shared book-reading in the digital age: examining differences in traditional and tablet books. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Washington, DC. April, 2016. Kelley, E. S., and Kinney, K. (2016). Word learning and story comprehension from digital storybooks: does interaction make a difference? Journal of Educational Computing Research, 55(3): 410–428. doi: 10.1177/0735633116669811 Korat, O., Shamir, A., and Segal-Drori, O. (2013). E-books as a support for young children’s language and literacy: the case of Hebrew-speaking children. Early Child Development and Care, 184(7): 998–1016. doi: 10.1080/03004430.2013.833195 Krcmar, M., and Cingel, D. P. (2014). Parent–child joint reading in traditional and electronic formats. Media Psychology, 17(3): 262–281. doi: 10.1080/15213269.2013.840243 Kucirkova, N. (2014a). Children creating and sharing stories in old and new book formats: Investigating the effects and processes of personalization. Doctoral dissertation, thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Faculty of Education and Language Studies (FELS), The Open University. Kucirkova, N. (2014b). Kindle vs books? Children just don’t see it that way. The Conversation, April 18, 2014. Available online from: https://theconversation.com/kindle-vs-books-children-just-dont-see-itthat-way-25725 (accessed 11 November 2018). Kucirkova, N. (2014c). Shiny appy children. The Guardian, December 15, 2014. Available online from: www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/dec/15/shiny-appy-children (accessed 11 November 2018). Kucirkova, N. (2017a). Digital Personalization in Early Childhood: Impact on Childhood. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Kucirkova, N. (2017b). An integrative framework for studying, designing and conceptualising interactivity in children’s digital books. British Educational Research Journal, 43(6): 1168–1185. Kucirkova, N. (2018). Children’s agency and reading with story-apps: considerations of design, behavioural and social dimensions. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 1–25. doi: 10.1080/14780887.2018.1545065 Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Critten, V., and Harwood, J. (2014). Story-making on the iPad when children have complex needs: two case studies. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 36(1): 44–54. Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K., and Flewitt, R. (2013). Sharing personalised stories on iPads: a close look at one parent–child interaction. Literacy, 47(3): 115–122. Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K., and Panadero, C. F. (2014). Children’s engagement with educational iPad apps: insights from a Spanish classroom. Computers & Education, 71: 175–184. Kucirkova, N., Sheehy, K., and Messer, D. (2015). A Vygotskian perspective on parent–child talk during iPad story sharing. Journal of Research in Reading, 38(4): 428–441. Mackey, M. (2016). Literacy as material engagement: the abstract, tangible and mundane ingredients of childhood reading. Literacy, 50(3): 166–172. Mangen, A. (2016). What hands may tell us about reading and writing. Educational Theory, 66(4): 457–477. doi: 10.1111/edth.12183 Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J., and Scott, F. (2016). Digital play: a new classification. Early Years, 36(3): 242–253. doi: 10.1080/09575146.2016.1167675 Mercer, N., and Littleton, K. (2007). Dialogue and the Development of Children’s Thinking: A Sociocultural Approach. London: Routledge. Nussenbaum, K., and Amso, D. (2015). An attentional Goldilocks effect: an optimal amount of social interactivity promotes word learning from video. Journal of Cognition and Development, 17(1): 30–40. doi: 10.1080/15248372.2015.1034316 Papadakis, S., Kalogiannakis, M., and Zaranis, N. (2018). Educational apps from the Android Google Play for Greek preschoolers: a systematic review. Computers & Education, 116: 139–160. Papert, S., and Harel, I. (1991). Situating constructionism. Constructionism, 36(2): 1–11. Parish-Morris, J., Mahajan, N., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Golinkoff, R. M., and Collins, M. F. (2013). Once upon a time: parent-child dialogue and storybook reading in the electronic era. Mind, Brain, and Education, 7(3): 200–211. doi: 10.1111/mbe.12028 Price, S., Jewitt, C., and Crescenzi, L. (2015). The role of iPads in pre-school children’s mark making development. Computers & Education, 87: 131–141. Rees, K., Rvachew, S., and Nadig, A. (2016). Adults and children make meaning together with e-books. In: N. Kucirkova and G. Falloon (eds.), Apps, Technology and Younger Learners (pp. 141–156). London: Routledge. 293

Natalia Kucirkova

Reinking, D., and Watkins, J. (2000). A formative experiment investigating the use of multimedia book reviews to increase elementary students’ independent reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 35(3): 384–419. Sefton-Green, J., Marsh, J., Erstad, O., and Flewitt, R. (2016). Establishing a research agenda for the digital literacy practices of young children. White Paper for the COST: DigiLitEY Group. Strouse, G. A., and Ganea, P. A. (2016). Are prompts provided by electronic books as effective for teaching preschoolers a biological concept as those provided by adults? Early Education and Development, 27(8): 1190–1204. doi: 10.1080/10409289.2016.1210457 Strouse, G. A., and Ganea, P. A. (2017). Parent-toddler behavior and language differ when reading electronic and print picture books. Frontiers in Psychology, 8. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00677 Takacs, Z. K., and Bus, A. G. (2016). Benefits of motion in animated storybooks for children’s visual attention and story comprehension: an eye-tracking study. Frontiers in Psychology, 7. doi: 10.3389/ fpsyg.2016.01591 Takacs, Z. K., Swart, E. K., and Bus, A. G. (2014). Can the computer replace the adult for storybook reading? A meta-analysis on the effects of multimedia stories as compared to sharing print stories with an adult. Frontiers in Psychology, 5. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01366 Takacs, Z. K., Swart, E. K., and Bus, A. G. (2015). Benefits and pitfalls of multimedia and interactive features in technology-enhanced storybooks: a meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 85(4): 698–739. doi: 10.3102/0034654314566989 Tare, M., Chiong, C., Ganea, P., and DeLoache, J. (2010). Less is more: how manipulative features affect children’s learning from picture books. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 31(5): 395–400. doi: 10.1016/j.appdev.2010.06.005 Tettamanti, M., Buccino, G., Saccuman, M. C., Gallese, V., Danna, M., Scifo, P., and Perani, D. (2005). Listening to action-related sentences activates fronto-parietal motor circuits. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 17(2): 273–281. doi: 10.1162/0898929053124965 Troseth, G. L., Russo, C. E., and Strouse, G. A. (2016). What’s next for research on young children’s interactive media? Journal of Children and Media, 10(1): 54–62. doi: 10.1080/17482798.2015.1123166 Vaala, S., Ly, A., and Levine, M. H. (2015). Getting a Read on the App Stores: A Market Scan and Analysis of Children’s Literacy Apps. Full Report published by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop, New York, USA. Vygotsky, L. (1978). Interaction between learning and development. Readings on the Development of Children, 23(3): 34–41. Walker, E., Adams, A., Restrepo, M. A., Fialko, S., and Glenberg, A. M. (2017). When (and how) interacting with technology-enhanced storybooks helps dual language learners. Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 3(1): 66–79. Zipke, M. (2016). Preschoolers explore interactive storybook apps: the effect on word recognition and story comprehension. Education and Information Technologies. doi: 10.1007/s10639-016-9513-x

294

21 The role of moving images in young children’s literacy practices Margaret Mackey

Children learn to interpret moving images at a very young age. In the 21st century, they process these moving images in ever more complex ways. This chapter explores the contemporary challenges of changes in the world of film, television, app, and live video conversation. To begin with, it is useful to assess what we know about how young children learn to process “old-style” non-interactive moving images – film and television. As Roberts and Howard (2005) point out, there is a shortage of research into the ways that under-twos take on the challenges of making meaning out of moving images; nevertheless, we know that babies and toddlers are hard at work, coming to cognitive terms with a significant element of their surroundings. This gap in the research literature might partly reflect the methodological difficulties involved in working with children who are in the early stages of language acquisition, but we suspect it probably has more to do with a general reluctance to see such young children as “viewers” and a lingering concern, perhaps, about the power of television to corrupt the innocence of childhood. Being a member of an audience, however, is no longer an exceptional event; rather, it is constitutive of everyday life even for the very young (Roberts and Howard 2005: 91). Part of the difficulty lies in the fact that young children’s emerging literate understanding is rooted in the exigencies of their home life and it is difficult to gain relatively natural access to their domestic routines (Vandewater et al. 2005; Plowman and Stevenson 2013). Parental reporting can be unclear; for example, it is not always clear whether children are exposed to foreground or background television: Foreground television is programming to which very young children overtly attend in a sustained manner. [. . .] Background television consists of programming to which very young children pay little overt attention. Such programming is generally not produced for children and would be largely incomprehensible to them. (Anderson and Pempek 2005: 506) A further complication lies in the fact that moving images are often now interactive rather than reception-only, and that some screen exchanges are actually personal to a child. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which for a long time was well known for insisting that children should have no exposure to screens before the age of two, has now altered its official view: 295

Margaret Mackey

For babies younger than 18 months, AAP still says no screens at all are the best idea – with one notable exception: live video chat. Surveys indicate that families already popularly believe that “Facetime doesn’t count,” or at least that the benefit of virtual visits with grandparents or other relatives outweighs the potential cost of exposing babies to the laptop or phone. The AAP doesn’t cite positive evidence that infants actually get something out of this kind of “conversation” the way that they clearly do from live social interaction. But there is some observational research that infants as young as 6 months old are emotionally engaged by playing live peekaboo with Grandma on Skype. (Kamenetz 2016: n.p.) Apps for young children need not offer quite such individualized communication, but they do make room for even toddlers to interact with the screen, learning what Espen Aarseth (1997: 1) has called a form of “ergodic” literacy, that is, one involving the reader in non-trivial decision-making. Even as these changes alter how young children learn to think about screens, television remains a mainstay of early childhood. Roberts and Howard (2005) offer evidence of very young children learning to view Teletubbies, a programme designed to attract the attention of toddlers and even babies, which was new to Australian television at the time of their study. Roberts and Howard filmed 20 children under the age of two as they watched the programme, and set up a double screen to analyse the Teletubbies content in coordination with the children’s responses, moment by moment. All had already enjoyed previous shows in the series. Roberts and Howard (2005) analysed the toddlers’ reactions to a previously unseen instalment under eight headings: attention level, parasocial response, TV literacy response, verbal echoing, cognitive response, pleasure, action around the TV set, and sharing with a companion (pp. 95–98). Contrary to conventional wisdom about young children’s short attention span, these children focused keenly. Sound effects increased the intensity of their attention (p. 98). Their manifestations of pleasure included squirming with glee, bouncing up and down, beating hands on the floor, standing closer to the TV, jigging – all while watching the screen very closely (p. 103). Roberts and Howard (2005) identified a set of viewing skills among these under-twos that would perhaps surprise many. In our analysis of the children’s response we found a pervasive matching of reality and television image in, for example, their recognition of familiar objects, situations and routines. In addition, the children engaged with cognitive puzzles that required them to exercise developing theories of cause and effect, prediction and inference. A strong feature of the data was the young viewers’ discovery of pleasure in seeing familiar characters; in responding to music and rhythm; in recognising tricks and rudimentary slapstick. (p. 105) Cary Bazalgette (2016–17) studied her toddler twin grandchildren as they responded to moving images on their home television set, taking advantage of the domestic normality of her grandmotherly presence to gather evidence of the children’s unmarked tastes and habits. She gathered evidence of many tiny physical features of intense attention, which seemed to me to signify more than just figuring out what was going on. [. . .] There seemed to be more than cognitive operations going on here. The children were also choosy about what they paid attention 296

The role of moving images

to: before they were two, they already expressed definite preferences about what they wanted – and didn’t want – to watch. So their attentiveness could not be ascribed to the “mesmerizing” effect of all television content, as alleged by some commentators. (p. 4) The cognitive engagement manifested in these responses contests the clichéd perception that television offers a passive experience. It is clear these reactions develop in response to the content of the programme, and, in the terms of Jacobs and Ludtke (2017: 70), the children’s absorption draws on “sensory-motor, peripheral-physiological, neuronal, perceptual, attentional, affective, cognitive, immersive or affective processes”. How complex a cognitive task are these very young children mastering? One partial answer to that question comes from Andrew Burn’s (2017) “metamodal kineikonic”, a model of film composition and comprehension that distinguishes between “orchestrating modes” and “contributory modes” (pp. 377–378). The contributory modes involve specific signifying systems, and the diagram highlights only the most common elements in one particular kind of artefact, a live-action movie. The two orchestrating modes provide spatial and temporal “meta-modes. [. . .] Filming produces spatial framing, angle, proximity and camera movement and provisional duration; editing produces temporal framing, and the orchestration of other contributory modes, especially sound and graphics” (p. 377, emphasis added). Burn’s diagram enables us to specify many of the elements that children learn to interpret as they come to terms with films, television programmes, and other video options. These elements, of course, interconnect with and influence each other; it is not a case of learning each ingredient separately. Children (and indeed adults as well) may respond to these components of a film without necessarily being able to specify them. In their early years, they might not even be able to make sense of certain elements of composition, such as cuts and montage. But observation of the young Teletubbies viewers and Bazalgette’s recordings of her grandchildren make it very plain that toddlers can make enough sense of what they see to register enjoyment, and, of course, pleasure will bring them back for more. In contrast to the curricular efforts invested into teaching children to read, it would seem to be assumed (and rightly so, to a certain extent) that children will bootstrap themselves into comprehending the moving image. Burn’s diagram (see Figure 21.1), however incomplete, is a reminder of the complexity of this achievement, with elements of comprehension nested inside and/or interacting with each other. In addition to such components of moving image communication, children also come to terms with issues of modality, an old concept with a new and extended contemporary application. Hodge and Tripp (1986) use the term to denote “the reality attributed to a message” (p. 104), but they trace concerns about truth and fiction all the way back to Plato (p. 101). The challenge of discerning the relationship to reality contained in a cartoon as opposed to a filmed documentary is one that children learn to address – but for 21st-century children, the spectrum of available texts has lengthened; the relationship to reality of that peek-a-boo game with Grandma “earths” the screen’s connection to the known world in new ways (that children, of course, simply take for granted). We know too little about how children learn to master the specific complexities of comprehending the moving image. But today, it is not simply a case of calling for more fine-grained observation of children reacting to movies or television programmes (although more of this kind of work is certainly needed). In the 21st century we cannot really understand children’s progress in this area without looking at the rapidly changing context of their viewing. At the heart of contemporary changes, for many children in the Westernized world, lies a very new item of technology, the tablet computer. 297

Margaret Mackey Orchestrating modes

Filming (frame, angle, proximity)

Editing (segment, transition, counterpoint)

Contributory modes

Embodied modes

Auditory modes

Visual modes

Dramatic action

Speech

Music

Lighting

Set design

Gesture

Lexis

Melody

Direction

Architecture

Facial expression

Grammar

Harmony

Intensity

Imagery

Movement

Tone-tonicity

Rhythm

Focus

Texture

Proxemics

Metre

Dynamics

Colour

Colour

Make-up

Dynamics

Instrumentation

Etc.

Etc.

Costume

Timbre

Etc.

Figure 21.1  The metamodal kineikonic (Burn 2017: 378). Used by permission of Andrew Burn.

The iPhone appeared in 2007. The first iPad shipped in 2010 (http://ipad.about.com/od/ ipad_details/a/The-History-Of-The-iPad.htm). Together they disrupted many forms of literacy. Reading, viewing, listening, interacting – all such literate activities converge on these forms of mobile small screens, produced both by Apple and by its competitors. It is my contention that young children today, taking such convergence completely for granted, learn about the moving image in ways less isolated, less singular, and less purely receptive than what is implied in Burn’s useful diagram and Hodge and Tripp’s assessment of modality markers.

A new context Today’s young audience is increasingly likely to be found online rather than in front of the television set. From 2016 onwards, surveys show children in both Britain and Australia spending more time participating in online activities than viewing their TV sets (Childwise 2016; Coughlan 2016; Dickson 2016; Hoh, 2017; Sweney 2018). Of particular interest are the statistics from the Monitor Preschool Report, which suggest that one in three of British under-fives “has his or her own tablet computer, and this number increases to nearly half among three- to four-year-olds” (Dickson 2016). Seventy per cent of preschoolers have domestic access to either a tablet or a computer. At the age of three or four, a majority of them can “open their preferred apps, use the volume, on/off and camera controls on their tablet and navigate multiple apps” (Dickson 2016). As tablet usage increases, preschoolers’ use of mobile phones has dropped from half of the children surveyed in 2015 to a third in 2016 (Dickson 2016). 298

The role of moving images

These numbers seem to represent a radical change, but what we see here is not so much a manifest alteration in viewing tastes and choices, but rather, to a considerable extent, a simple shift in platforms. Children are watching video on demand (VOD) via subscription services (SVOD), primarily Netflix; they are also accessing television and other content through the mediating platform of YouTube, or via the YouTube Kids app. This content can be watched on the portable tablet and taken with them as they move about, or it can be linked to the television screen and viewed in what we now think of as the normal domestic setting of sitting in front of the larger screen. Additionally, they might move between film and television content (straightforward examples of moving image texts as we have long conceived them) and more interactive texts that include moving images as part of a more responsive apparatus. The standard concept of the moving image involves some form of projection on a screen, large or small, and comprises a range of instantiations, moving from short to long, and from local to global. Below, I list different forms of moving image production and reception contexts likely to be familiar to young children in the developed West and elsewhere. Production – forms of text a

b c

d

e

Familiar/familial. More and more children receive their first exposure to the moving image in the context of home videos and FaceTime exchanges with relatives; their early concept of moving image is self-directed and domestic. Responsive. Many apps involve images that move only in response to a user’s finger, remaining static until dragged into the appropriate place or tapped into animated life. Fragmented. An increasing number of moving image segments for children are designed to operate in conjunction with other media forms, augmenting or interrupting a larger text form that may include printed words, audio, or assorted modes of interactive engagement. (In games, particularly, the moving image segment is sometimes offered as a reward for success in solving a particular challenge.) Short-form. Many texts aimed at children, especially the assorted forms of animation, range from five to 15 minutes in length and are designed to be viewed (either one at a time or in multiples) in a single sitting. Extended. Full-length feature films are the obvious example. Many of the most popular with young children are animations, often from Disney.

(Such a list does not represent a complete taxonomy. What is striking about it is that the first three of its five items are completely new, and that their existence impinges on the two more familiar entries that conclude the list.) Reception – contexts of viewing a

b c d

Unique. This category is rarer than it used to be. Children used to take utterly for granted that they would see most of their films and television programmes once only; the chance would not come again. Serial. Series television programmes fall under this heading, but many children also watch a succession of short-form programmes as part of a regular routine. On demand. Today’s children are often provided with a menu of choices from which they can select at will. Repeat. This category is mutating. A film remains identical, no matter how many times it is repeated (though the experience is never the same). It is difficult to repeat an interactive text in exactly the same configuration. 299

Margaret Mackey

Not so long ago, children learned to watch extended moving image forms by practising with short-form and serial productions. Now, in very many cases, their earliest expectations include a responsive element (either from a person on the screen or from a game or app) in ways simply not offered via the last two elements on the first list. They may also build up to watching a full-length film by sampling readily available excerpts from it posted on YouTube. Short-form, serial, and long-form texts have not disappeared; they simply operate as part of a broader and perhaps more sophisticated ecology that young children now take for granted. The three new items on the first list stand out from the more traditional examples, in part by offering new forms of control to young interpreters. For organizing purposes, this chapter draws on that concept of control, and on the impact of the potential for active response. We need to look at both new forms and old forms to gain a strong sense of what today’s youngest interpreters are learning about viewing, reading, and playing. A focus on the role of autonomy and control in reception practices offers one helpful way of categorizing experiences. And, of course, any full conceptualization of children’s textual spectrum will include picturebooks, which scaffold access to other formats and vice versa.

Agency and mobility Contemporary Western – and many other – children inhabit a world full of moving images. Many of their first screen encounters involve themselves, their near relations, and everyday objects of their homes. Domestic photographs and videos, saved on a handy parental phone, open to the directive tap of remarkably young viewers, who learn early to develop control over this digital family album. Such personal scaffolding makes a moving image repertoire accessible even to babies. Many children graduate to a tablet of some kind, sometimes freestanding, sometimes hooked up to a television screen. The tablet might offer digital books, short animations, excerpts from longer films, streamed full-length movies, and an assortment of apps and games involving onscreen movement that, crucially, is directed by the child player. In such a world it is difficult to focus exclusively on film as other kinds of moving image texts occupy the same platform, and children operate on the basis of sensibilities developed in multiple forms and formats. In such a world, it is perhaps not surprising that the creators of picturebooks feel impelled to address issues of mobility and agency, nor that child readers of these books bring sophisticated concepts of stillness and movement to bear on the challenge of interpreting them. The page turn is the point of dynamism in the otherwise static text of a picturebook; it often also represents the locus of child control over the experience of the story. The paradox of the page turn is that the image itself remains fixed, even while moving. Pop-up books, also (and tellingly) known as movables, provide something rather closer to the action of a verb. For example, in Is There a Dog in This Book? (Schwarz 2014), one of a lively pop-up series about three cats (see also Schwarz 2008, 2010), the suspicious felines finally meet the dog whose potential presence in the book has greatly distressed them. The dog is pictured on the left-hand page; layered cut-outs of the three cats are attached to the right-hand page in such a way that when a reader folds them over, two of the cats make physical contact with the dog, patting his fur. This active touching changes the direction of the plot as the cats discover the dog is soft and friendly, rather than fearsome. The cats are in actual motion on this page opening, moved by a reader’s hand. Other books present a simulation of movement. In some cases, they present a commentary on the differences between books and their app counterparts. Press Here (Tullet 2011, 2012) exists in both formats, but the constrictions of the book offer the better joke. All the instructions to the young readers 300

The role of moving images

(“Press the yellow dot”, etc.) set up a scenario that implies change is a consequence of the child’s actions. (For example, after the page turn, the yellow dot disappears.) The pretence of movement, set in the framework of the fixed paper images, to my mind is more engaging than the unlimited options of real movement in the app of the same name. For the most part, movement in paper books is implied rather than actual – normally conveyed through conventions of drawing. Lines of motion and speed surround characters who are running, for example, and indicate the swiftness of their progress – at the same time offering material for a modality assessment of this particular reminder of stylized removal from reality. But inferred action is not the only kind associated with picturebooks. We should not be blinded by custom to the material facts that a bound book and its digital facsimile on a screen both require action by the reader to move the images, and that such movement has consequences for the development of the story, as well as for the development of young readers’ awareness of their relationship to the physical manifestation of text.

Making the transition An instructive comparison between a paper book, a faithful adaptation into a YouTube film, and an app version allows us to pursue the different reader actions invited (indeed required) by different kinds of moving image. The Monster at the End of This Book (Stone 1999) first appeared as a Little Golden Book that became the bestselling Sesame Street title of all time. Appropriately for my purposes here, it makes a major plot point out of the action of turning the page. Grover the Muppet reads the title, takes fright at its implications, and begs his readers not to turn the pages of the book because each turn will get everyone closer to the monster at the end. He ties pages up, nails them together, even constructs a brick wall, in order to prevent readers from making that fateful page turn – but in vain. At the end of the book, the monster turns out to be Grover himself. YouTube offers what seems to be an unofficial adaptation of this book into film. Mounted by Paul Ramsey (www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JVK0-4HQTY), the video rendition simply provides a soundtrack in Grover’s voice with a bit of music and a few sound effects. The only animation is the turning page – and the effect of this video effect is to remove all agency for disobeying Grover’s wishes from the viewer. The pages turn themselves with a mysterious autonomy; no hand ever appears. The forward progression toward the eponymous monster can only be halted by the pause button. In its evisceration of agency, this film highlights the impotence of the viewer to change anything about the action. In contrast, the app version (Stone 2014) animates Grover’s movements as well as his voice, invites actions in response, and requires reader-viewer-players to move the book forward by means of clicking a right arrow. Grover’s panic builds to a frenzy as players progress through the pages. At no point does the app lose sight of the significance of the page turn as an essential element in the plot. Grover himself, in his lively animated terror, flings himself into activity, building the barriers to page-turning; but the end of his creative efforts is invariably a page identical to the one in the paper book; this is a very conservative adaptation, and the addition of movement to the images does not really change the essentials of the story. Reader-players are invited to destroy Grover’s efforts by tapping the knots, nails, walls, etc. – but reader defiance of Grover is just as necessary to the progress of the plot in the paper version because without the page being turned against his wishes, there is no story. In the book, Grover communicates with his uncooperative readers via the medium of printed word and still image, but the impact is interactive all the same. The addition of moving image and soundtrack enlarges but does not effectively alter the nature of the second-person address by the character to the reader. Unlike the film version, the book and app both invite reader agency as a crucial plot element. 301

Margaret Mackey

From tinkering to thinking When Roberts and Howard explored the responses of their young participants to Teletubbies, they were able to sync two screens: one bearing the contents of the programme and the other presenting the moment-by-moment responses of the viewers. It was straightforward to connect production and response in direct ways. But if the image emerges only under the auspices of interpreter decision-making, we are dealing with a very fluid scenario. The relationship between interpreter and text is constantly under negotiation, and the challenge of pinning it down enough to analyse it might present difficulties. Two concepts, one evinced many decades ago and the other one relatively new to the interpretive world (though an equally old idea in its origins) might help us make some progress. Years ago, Betts, decrying a popular emphasis on phonics and decoding, raised the importance of learning “how to think in a reading situation” (1959: 146, emphasis in original). We still live in a world where phonics and decoding are over-valued, but Betts’ priority remains paramount, and open to enlargement. Today’s children need to learn how to think in a variety of interpretive situations. In a world of moving images, children need to learn to make sense of cuts and edits and other elements of moving image composition, as Burn shows us. Learning how to think in this context, however, is a larger challenge. To investigate how children might grapple with this challenge in the context of their early apps and games, a concept arising from the new universe of Makerspaces is also helpful. A Makerspace is a place where tools, materials, and some start-up expertise are collected together in order to enable participants to fiddle with creative possibilities. A word that frequently arises in connection with Makerspaces is “tinker”, and the idea of tinkering – low-risk and openended activities that do not begin from the idea of a fixed destination – is a very helpful tool in terms of investigating children’s relationships to interactive moving images. A fluid and tentative app image is open to change as the interpreter affects it, though in ways that are usually not completely open-ended. The cognitive space suggested by the spectrum that opens up between tinkering and thinking is likewise fluid and gives us some useful ways of talking about the emergent encounters between interpreter and text. The concept of tinkering also gives us a tool to consider the difference between moving images that respond to non-trivial actions by interpreters and moving images that, overall, resist such forms of interaction. A minimally interactive app designed for very young children provides a useful working example. Toca Boca’s Toca Tea Party provides images that mostly move only when the interpreter’s hands make them “go”, not many steps removed from the cats in the paper pop-up book. This gentle game draws on the player’s schema of tea parties, capitalizing on the popularity of toy tea sets. In this game, players are given a choice of tablecloth, plates, cups, cakes, drinks. The main action entails dragging the selected items to their place on the screen. To eat and drink, you tap the cake and the beverage. If a drink spills, a box of tissues appears, inviting someone to mop up the mess. A radio offers a choice of two unremarkable melodies, changed by tapping a button. When the plates are cleared, the dishes automatically slide into a basin of soapy water. The game is low on narrative excitement, to be sure. Yet even in this unassuming scenario, the child gamer learns how to read the screen. The game invites both tinkering with the options and thinking about the low-key but real decisions involved in the tea party scenario: who is host, who are the guests, who is permitted to make the crucial decision about what cakes are selected, what kinds of turn-taking apply?

302

The role of moving images

A grammatical analysis In the kind of fluid space we are exploring here, it can be helpful to focus on the verbs of what happens. Toca Tea Party offers a “training-wheels” form of exposure to a newer art form in which moving images are paramount: the video game. Barry Atkins (2006) makes a helpful distinction in contrasting the old narrative question, “What happens next?” with the gamer’s newer question: “What happens next if I . . .?” (p. 137). He elaborates on these contrasting questions: The screen represents the past of play. It presents us with a report that conveys information about the game state that is essential to successful play, but the player’s gaze actually lingers elsewhere. [. . .] To the player [the screen] is full of rich possibilities of future action, pointing always off to the moment at which it will be replaced by another image and then another. Its purpose, if it fulfills its function, is to insist on its own erasure as it prompts the player to move on and look elsewhere. (p. 135) Toca Tea Party’s modest options for alternative actions provide this split perspective in utterly unthreatening ways. The current game image renders the past-tense consequences of decisions so far, but players are invited to consider the impact of the next action on the changeable and future-oriented screen. I would argue that the potential to move the cat to pat the dog, or to press the yellow dot also enters the realm of “What happens next if I . . .?” It is easy to dismiss these books as gimmicks but maybe a more complex form of hybrid thinking is involved. Atkins deals with content but Henkel (2016) argues that we must also take account of the materiality of the app and its relationship with its user. One possible answer to that call comes from Merchant (2014), exploring the physical interactions of very young children engaging with interactive texts on iPads in a nursery setting. Merchant’s participants must find ways to manage the device as well as process the content. Drawing on research conducted in two early years settings and exploring the behaviours of babies and toddlers under the age of three, Merchant develops a typology of hand movements used with the iPad. This taxonomy provides a useful tool for assessing aspects of reader control. Recording the actions of children working with adults, Merchant (2014) and his co-researchers discovered patterns of action that they separated into three categories: We can distinguish between (1) stabilizing movements – responses to the weight and shape of the iPad that are necessary in order to hold the device steady, so that users can see sufficient detail on the screen; (2) control movements, which are essential for basic operations, accessing apps, and navigating texts on-screen; (3) deictic movements, used to draw attention to the screen or to point out specific features. (p. 124) Stabilizing the book and pointing out salient features in the still images of the paper page are very comparable to items (1) and (3) on Merchant’s list. The very common activity of watching a film or video on a tablet would also focus on (1) and, perhaps to a lesser extent, on (3). (Watching film on a vertical screen is usually facilitated through remote control; there is no direct contact between hand and screen and viewer movement is reduced overall.) It is in item (2) that we see the major differences: Merchant refers to general tapping, precision tapping,

303

Margaret Mackey

swiping, and thumb pressing as control movements (p. 124), and it is probably fair to say that such movements come more readily to an inexperienced hand than the precision skills needed to isolate a single paper page and turn it over. The accessibility of the iPad to small hands is important, because in many ways it stands at the epicentre of the current textual revolution. A tablet computer allows children to gain access to their domestic recordings, activate and/or interact with the fragmented images of apps and games – or to settle down for short-term, long-term, and serial viewing. All they need to do is learn the stabilizing, control, and deictic techniques described by Merchant.

The moving image and its objective forms Film notionally presents us with “moving images” but what we are actually seeing is the flicker of fast-moving still images. A cut from one set of rapidly moving stills to another represents some of the same function and energy as a page turn. The position of the camera “places” the viewer in relation to characters on the screen. Children learn to “read through” cuts to shape a sense of coherent action in their minds; they acquire conventions of shots and edits, and assemble a gestalt out of figure and ground. They learn to interpret the soundtrack of what might be called composed films (as opposed to the slice-of-life family vignettes on the mobile phone), to establish the significance of diegetic and non-diegetic music and sound effects as well as the tone of voice of any narrator and of all characters. In large part, this learning is motivated by questions of “what happens next?” In the context of film, it is less relevant to ask the game question: “What happens next if I . . . tinker with the screen by tapping and swiping?” The first break with the external control of viewing times associated with television and movies came not with Netflix in 2016 but in the 1980s with the advent of the videotape. Families developed their own video libraries, and children could watch films and television programmes as often as they (or their parents) liked. Serial viewing was augmented by repeat viewing. But the content did not change and viewers could only start, stop, and replay; they could not effect alterations. Prior to the 1980s, the moving image was reified into physical objects, of course – large film reels, smaller home movie cassettes, and the like. With the significant exception of the home movies, however, domestic access to the moving image was essentially transitory. Video recording altered that situation significantly, and young children learned to insert, run, and eject their personally owned recordings. Many mastered pausing and rewinding as well, giving them radical new forms of control over their recorded films and television programmes. Today, this revolution is partially reversed. The moving image text is no longer a tangible thing, holdable, stored on a shelf or in a drawer. Yet the tablet itself is comfortable to hold in the hand, unlike a TV set. And children retain the capacity for control granted them by video recording; the moving image remains open to their rewinding, pausing, and fast-forwarding manipulation. Repeat performances remain identical to their predecessors unless the child edits by skipping or repeating. Film offers a different category of answer to this fleshed-out question: “What happens next if I . . . interfere with the progression of the program to rewind and replay?” The answer is quite simple: “What happens next on the screen is exactly what happened the last time I did this”. A viewer’s experience is mutable, but a film text remains the same. Forms of repeat viewing therefore differ in constitutive ways, depending on whether the viewer is repeating a film or an interactive text. Today’s children are very familiar with this difference. Interactivity is not the only significant change in the 21st century. We need further research into how the physicality of watching moving image compositions is affected through conversion

304

The role of moving images

onto the screen of a handheld object. Do we attend differently to a large screen presenting vertically versus a smaller one held horizontally in our lap? Is it salient that we establish an appropriate focal distance manually rather than by moving our bodies in relation to a vertical screen? Does scale make a difference? Many questions call for our attention.

Building blocks How do we develop useful ways to understand and critique the distinctions between the traditional moving image and the newer interactive one? Burn has elaborated some of the complexities of moving image comprehension. Meyers, Zaminpaima, and Frederico (2014) provide a diagram that moves that cognitive achievement into a broader context. This figure comes from a poster report on how to evaluate book apps as multimodal reading experiences; their approach combines textual and multimodal features with usability features in a very helpful relationship (see Figure 21.2). The diagram, which is directed to reviewers rather than child users, draws our attention to the nature of the book app as an object with a commercial and a technological as well as a creative place in the world. It is instructive to overlay Merchant’s typology of child activities on this outline. Strikingly, his observations relate to all three sides of this triangle. Control movements relate to the interactivity specified under the heading of Multimodal Features and to the customizability listed under Usability Features. Stabilizing movements connect most closely to the issues of navigation, under Usability; and deictic movements relate to the elements coded under Textual Features. The audio elements (narration, soundscape) remain impervious to touch while still directing attention; not every element is tangible.

Textual Features

Usability Features

Evaluation of narrative elements artifact

Evaluation of the media Navigation

Story

Customizability

Text

Safety & Privacy

Illustration Paratext

Book App

Value

Multimodal Features Evaluation of multimedia elements Animation Interactivity Narration Sound/scape

Figure 21.2 The expanded ecology of the book app (Meyers, Zaminpaima, and Frederico 2014: 918). Used by permission of Eric M. Meyers.

305

Margaret Mackey

Looking at moving images with a divided gaze Atkins’ distinction between the past-tense gaze of what has been accomplished so far and the future-oriented gaze envisaging possible futures is relevant to a consideration of where moving images are now headed. Film, television, and video texts retain a form of inviolate autonomy; they resist post-production alteration as a condition of viewing (though, of course, once digitized, they are open to reworking like every other kind of digital text). It is useful to return briefly to the idea of “foreground” and “background” viewing (Anderson and Pempek 2005). Television remains the outlier in this area, joined perhaps by radio, background music, and some of the more irritating musical toys. But most of the new media formats described here, like the old format category of the book, operate in “foreground” mode or not at all. An app needs attention to work. A book might passively lie around on the floor creating clutter, but it must be read to have any textual existence. The organization of a child’s attention that these formats invite is active rather than default. Today’s young viewers, operating in a world of options, bring with them a sensibility of interaction that imbues their understanding that film, television, and video are simply one kind of moving image engagement. The capacity to contrast these fixed forms to other open-ended options means that the limits of the particular commitments required for such viewing are visible today, even to the very young. They are also aware of the different affordances of new forms of moving image, and will be alert to the development of new alternatives in the future. With so many alternatives on offer, the role of the moving image in children’s lives is very much “foregrounded”. Their perspectives on the old, the new, and the potential moving image will shape their comprehension of this important form of communication.

References Aarseth, E. J. (1997). Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Anderson, D. R., and Pempek, T. A. (2005, January). Television and very young children. The American Behavioral Scientist, 48(5): 505–522. Atkins, B. (2006). What are we really looking at? The future-orientation of video game play. Games and Culture, 1(2): 127–140. Bazalgette, C. (2016–17). The role of emotion in early movie-watching. Media Education Journal, 60. Retrieved on 28 April 2019 from www.researchgate.net/publication/312044785_THE_ ROLE_OF_EMOTION_IN_EARLY_MOVIE-WATCHING Betts, E. A. (1959, February). Reading is thinking. The Reading Teacher, 12(3): 146–151. Burn, A. (2017). The kineikonic mode: towards a multimodal approach to moving-image media. In: C. Jewitt (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Multimodal Analysis, 2nd ed. (pp. 375–385). London: Routledge (originally published 2014). Childwise. (2016). Childhood 2016. Press release. Retrieved on 28 April 2019 from www.childwise. co.uk/uploads/3/1/6/5/31656353/childwise_press_release_-_monitor_2016.pdf Coughlan, S. (2016, January 26). Time spent online “overtakes TV” among youngsters. BBC News. Retrieved on 28 April 2019 from www.bbc.com/news/education-35399658 Dickson, J. (2016, September 20). What uk preschoolers want: tablets, YouTube & Netflix. Kidscreen. Retrieved from http://kidscreen.com/2016/09/20/what-uk-preschoolers-want-tablets-youtube-netflix/ Henkel, A. Q. (2016). Exploring the materiality of literary apps for children. Children’s Literature in Education. Online first. doi: 10.1007/s10583-016-9301-7. Hodge, B., and Tripp, D. (1986). Children and Television: A Semiotic Approach. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hoh, A. (2017, February 14). Kids now spending more time online than watching television, survey shows. ABC Radio Sydney. Retrieved on 28 April 2019 from www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-15/ children-now-spend-more-time-online-than-watching-tv/8272708

306

The role of moving images

Jacobs, A. M., and Ludtke, J. (2017). Immersion into narrative and poetic worlds: a neurocognitive poetics perspective. In: F. Hakemulder, M. M. Kuijpers, E. S. Tan, K. Balint, and M. M. Doicaru (eds.), Narrative Absorption (pp. 69–96). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kamenetz, A. (2016, October 21). American Academy of Pediatrics lifts “no screens under 2” rule. National Public Radio. Retrieved on 28 April 2019 from www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/21/498550475/ american-academy-of-pediatrics-lifts-no-screens-under-2-rule Merchant, G. (2014). Young children and interactive story-apps. In: C. Burnett, J. Davies, G. Merchant, and J. Rowsell (eds.), New Literacies around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy (pp. 121–139). New York: Routledge. Meyers, E. M., Zaminpaima, E., and Frederico, A. (2014). The future of children’s texts: evaluating book apps as multimodal reading. iConference 2014, 916–920. Retrieved on 28 April 2019 from www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/47386/312_ready.pdf?sequence=2 Plowman, L., and Stevenson, O. (2013). Exploring the quotidian in young children’s lives at home. Home Cultures, 10(3): 329–348. Roberts, S., and Howard, S. (2005). Watching Teletubbies: television and its very young audience. In: J. Marsh (ed.), Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood (pp. 68–80). London: RoutledgeFalmer. Schwarz, V. (2008). There Are Cats in This Book. London: Walker Books. Print. Schwarz, V. (2010). There Are No Cats in This Book. London: Walker Books. Print. Schwarz, V. (2014). Is There a Dog in This Book? London: Walker Books. Print. Stone, J. (1999). The Monster at the End of This Book. Illus. Michael Smollin. New York: Golden Books. Print (originally published 1971). Stone, J. (2014). The Monster at the End of This Book. Illus. Michael Smollin. Grover performed by Eric Jacobson. New York: Sesame Workshop Apps (first released in 2011). Sweney, M. (2018, March 28). Younger viewers now watch Netflix more than the BBC, says corporation. The Guardian. Retrieved on 28 April 2019 from www.theguardian.com/media/2018/mar/28/ bbc-younger-viewers-now-watch-netflix-more-on-demand Toca Tea Party. (2013). Version 1.0.5. San Francisco: Toca Boca USA. App. Tullet, H. (2011). Press Here. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. Print. Tullet, H. (2012). Press Here. San Francisco: Chronicle Books. App. Vandewater, E. A., Park, S. E., Huang, X., and Wartella, E. A. (2005, January). “No – you can’t watch that”: parental rules and young children’s media use. The American Behavioral Scientist, 48(5): 608–623.

307

22 Availability and quality of storybook apps across five less widely used languages Adriana G. Bus, Trude Hoel, Cristina Aliagas, Margrethe Jernes, Ofra Korat, Charles L. Mifsud and Jan van Coillie

Introduction Traditionally, paper has been the main source for joint storybook reading experiences, but with new digital technologies we now have other opportunities for the mediation of narratives, increasingly in the form of downloadable apps on mobile phones and tablets. Now that more than a million apps are available, among which many educational apps, an important question is to what extent storybook apps are part of this supply of apps. There is strong evidence that, in particular, narratives as a main source of information in storybooks can boost children’s development: apart from narrative comprehension children may learn sophisticated words and expressions that are less common in daily conversation (e.g. Montag, Jones and Smith 2015) and familiarize themselves with less common grammar (e.g. Wagner 2013). To develop these basic skills, it is vital that children encounter narratives and narrative discourse from a very young age and receive guidance to ensure they learn from this experience. Therefore, a main aim of this chapter is to describe the availability and accessibility of digital books for children aged 0–8 years with narration as a main source of information. Given that parents still prefer paper to digital for book-sharing with their child (van Coillie and Raedts 2016), parents may be more inclined to download games or films instead of book-like narrative apps for their children to use when interacting with new media. As digital devices and the Internet are widely available to children, and children spend increasingly more time with digital devices, digital books may offer new intensive opportunities for literary experiences from an early age. Apart from the aim of getting more of a sense of the availability of digital books for young children, in our content analysis we tested whether the availability of storybook apps varies across less widely used languages. All children need to come into contact with their mother tongue in what is a crucial phase in their language learning. However, across countries, children may not have access to digital stories in their mother tongue to the same extent as to those produced in English. In less wealthy countries, tablets and Smartphones are less common and this may create a digital divide between countries (Warschauer 2003). At the outset of our review, we suspected that there are far fewer narrative 308

Storybook apps across five languages

apps for children in less widely used languages than in global languages such as English, and that a good and competitive offer in the smaller languages is lacking. For instance, in a status report on Norwegian languages, the Language Council of Norway displays a deep concern for children’s decreasing use and knowledge of the mother tongue, due to the overwhelming use of English in media (Språkrådet 2017). The report shows that only three out of ten children under the age of 11 encounter Norwegian languages when they watch videos on YouTube or play computer games. A recent content analysis in four European countries, Hungary, Turkey, Greece and the Netherlands, showed that the quality of educational apps is mostly unsatisfactory, to the potential detriment of children most in need of stimulating materials (Sari, Takacs and Bus 2017). For instance, in less wealthy countries with not so widely used languages, apps (including storybook apps) are not available in the mother tongue. Neither do they include localized content since many apps are developed by big international companies. We expected a similar result for digital storybooks, and that the availability of digital books in the mother tongue would not be comparable with the abundance of international narrative apps. In addition to the availability of digital stories in the mother tongue, we need to know whether these digital books facilitate children’s engagement in stories. Therefore, we also explore the features in digital stories and whether these support children’s engagement with stories and cognitive development. Based on experiments with digital books carried out since the first digital books appeared in the 1980s, there is currently a better understanding of which features – so-called digital storytelling techniques – are beneficial for children’s engagement and story comprehension, and which ones distract children’s attention from the narration (Bus, Takacs and Kegel 2015). From research evidence to date, it appears that most storybook apps include additional playful elements, yet instead of immersing children in stories, these additions may detract their attention from the storyline and interfere with story comprehension (Bus et al. 2015). This may be because extraneous materials, even when they are tangential to the narrative or central theme, take attention away from the storyline, which in turn may have a negative impact on engagement and comprehension (e.g., Parish-Morris, Mahajan, Hirsh-Pasek, Michnick Golinkoff and Collins, 2013). Less is more seems to apply here! On the other hand, helpful interactivity that ties directly into (the main character’s) attempts to solve a problem – actions that are natural ingredients of the narrative – is rather rare (Yokota and Teale 2014). A well-known example of a storybook app that successfully integrates interactivity with the narrative line is the There’s a Monster at the End of this Book story (Callaway Digital Arts 2010). The interactivity features of “Monster” tie directly into Grover’s attempts to keep the child reader from turning the page because of the monster at the end of the book. Grover ties knots, nails up boards, builds a brick wall; the child is able to break through each of these by touching hot spots, thus moving the story forward. In describing digital books for children aged 0–8 years, we were particularly interested in finding digital books where interactivity forms a natural ingredient of the narrative, as is the case with “Monster”. Digital books may include additional multimedia features that provide opportunities to enhance learning even more than paper book-reading (Bus et al. 2015). For instance, there is evidence for the hypothesis that camera movements, such as zooming in, may help children to comprehend the story, and that books including such additions provide guidance to young children’s visual attention and thus help them to understand the narration. A Dutch example of such a digital book is Tim op de Tegels (Pete on the Pavement), written by Tjibbe Veldkamp and animated by Het Woeste Woud. When, for instance, the computer voice reads aloud that a truck 309

Adriana G. Bus et al.

driver wants to lift Pete off some paving stones, the camera zooms in on Pete and the driver and, in synch with the narrative, we see the driver reaching his arms out toward Pete. By thus synchronizing narrative and visualization, this animation may facilitate the learner’s understanding of the narrative, including complex expressions like “lift off” (Schnotz and Rasch 2005).

This study To get more of a sense of the number of digital books, their quality and the supply of these books per language, we describe the available digital books for young children in five relatively small languages (Simons and Fennig 2017). Compared to English, spoken by 955 million people, Dutch (20 million speakers), Catalan (11.5 million speakers), Maltese (less than half a million speakers), Norwegian (about 5 million speakers) and Hebrew (about 9 million speakers) are small languages. The app market is dominated by commercial companies operating internationally, the result being that only a few apps are available in the mother tongue with localized content (Sari et al. 2017). We thus collect information about the available apps that may contribute to a better understanding of the home and educational literacy environment of young children in this digital era to replace the descriptions of the traditional home literacy environment. The following questions are at the heart of this content analysis: 1

Availability of digital books: •• •• ••

2

Quality of digital books: •• ••

3

How many digital books are available per language? Are they already available for children at a very young age? Is the number of digital books increasing over the years?

Do digital books meet paper book quality standards? Are digital storytelling techniques appropriate to promote language skills and comprehension?

Accessibility of digital books: •• ••

How can parents and kindergarten teachers find well-designed digital books and download them? Are digital books cheaper than paper books and thus probably in wider use?

Method Target languages Five areas, each with one common language, are targeted in this chapter: Malta, the northern part of Belgium (Flanders)/the Netherlands, Israel, Norway and the Catalan area of Northeast Spain (Catalonia). In these areas, not so widely used languages are the official language and the language of teaching in school. We exclude the big, global languages (such as English, French and Spanish) because we are especially interested in opportunities to acquire the mother tongue even when the language is spoken by small populations. Our focus is on digital books that came out, originally or in updates, in the official languages of these areas between 2010 and 2017. We expected to find that the availability of digital books depends on language domains (e.g. the less widely used the language, the fewer books in the mother tongue). 310

Storybook apps across five languages

Digital books for young children We focus on storybook apps that, just like typical picture storybooks, include a narrative as the main source of information. We do not consider PDFs – scanned versions of paper books – to be digital books, even though they are available in a digital medium. We do, however, include all other books with minor multimedia additions, such as print that lights up while the text is read aloud or pictures enriched with hotspots that, if clicked on or touched, cause some unexpected effect. The books can be digitally originated literature (new stories that do not exist as paper books) or digitally re-contextualized (a fairy tale or other narrative newly presented multimodally as an app) (Unsworth 2006).

Procedure We composed lists of all available digital books for the age range 0–8 years in the five target languages, using all available information sources: personal experience, the Internet, app stores, journals, libraries, websites, blogs, brochures, etc. The lists were composed from June 2017 to January 2018 and include basic information about digital books (i.e. publisher, publication date, updates, price, awards, websites and critiques). The authors of this chapter composed the lists, familiarized themselves with all the available digital books for their language, and noted the sources where parents and early childhood educators can find and download digital books.

Data analysis We ordered the books according to three age categories: (1) 0–2 years, (2) 3–6 years, (3) 6+ beginning readers/easy to read. We did not code the quality of all the books but the authors of this chapter described examples from their list that they considered to be well-designed books, along with examples that they considered to be poorly designed. The group of authors had developed a common framework to recognize more and less valuable materials. During four DigiLitEY COST Action meetings that took place between 2015 and 2018, the authors discussed the quality of digital books available for young children in the participating countries and research carried out with these materials. We deliberately chose not to develop and systematically apply a detailed coding scheme to all books on the lists in order to be open-minded to new, not yet described, formats and features. In response to the research questions listed above, we quantify the numbers of digital books found to be available in each “small language” mother tongue and we present qualitative descriptions of features that were common across the corpus. Based on the lists of digital books, we also present and discuss examples of poorly designed and well-designed storybooks.

Results and discussion Availability of digital books per language Number of digital books: The number of digital books for children varies across languages with, overall, a relatively higher score for Dutch, the larger language (20 million speakers), than for the other languages (see Table 22.1). Among the other languages, low numbers are reported for Hebrew, Catalan and Maltese, while more than 300 digital books were found for Norwegian speakers (5.3 million speakers). However, compared to paper, the number of digital books in all five languages is limited. A main reason, we surmise, is the limited financial return that can 311

Adriana G. Bus et al.

be made from digital books due to the comparatively small market for books in these languages. Our study found that there are only a few private entities that are interested in producing storybook apps for less widely used languages. It is advisable therefore, in order to compensate for this lack of commercial investment, for government initiatives to ensure children’s access to stories in their mother tongue. For instance, in Catalonia, the Catalan Government (Direcció General de Política Lingüística i la Secretaria d’Afers Exteriors de la Generalitat de Catalunya) ensures that children’s digital books appear in Catalan. Similarly in Malta, as very few private companies have shown interest in producing storybook apps in Maltese, the government has actively supported the production of digital storybooks. In Norway, with its comparatively small population and several written languages, the official language policy and government support play an important role in the production and distribution of cultural facilities for children. About 350,000 people speak the Frisian language in the northern part of the Netherlands, where five digital books have been produced with government support. By contrast, in Israel, there is no government support for the production of digital books in Hebrew. Where more than one language is used, i.e. the Netherlands, Israel and Norway, books in the main language – Dutch, Hebrew or Bokmål, respectively – dominate (see Table 22.1). In Norway, the numbers of books in Sami and Nynorsk are small compared to Bokmål, the largest language. When another main language is spoken in the same area, for instance English in addition to Maltese, books in English dominate. In Catalonia, apps in Spanish dominate as these products have the potential to be sold in the broader Spanish market (Spain, Latin American countries, USA). On the international distribution platforms (e.g. Apple App Store), commercial English texts dominate in all language areas. Especially in middle- and upper-class families, there is a trend to consider these literary apps as an opportunity to introduce English into their young children’s lives (Sari et al. 2017). Digital books for the very young: As shown in Table 22.1, by far the most digital books are aimed at 3–6-year-olds, as compared to 0–2 and 6+. These books look like picture storybooks and include, in addition to print and illustrations, oral narration and additional digital features. Especially, books for the very young are rare with the exception of Norway. Ninety-one Dutch digital books (19%) received the label 2+ from the publisher. However, after inspecting the books we categorized the majority as more suitable for 3–6 years. Only three books in Dutch got the label 1+ (in the App Store, on iKids or by the publisher). Thus, rated books were mainly books with a repetitive pattern, like the very popular book Nighty Night published by Fox & Sheep (over 4 million downloads all over the world), available through the Apple App Store.

Table 22.1  Number of digital books per language and age, in parentheses the number of books that are free of charge Country/area

Belgium/the Netherlands

Israel

Norway

Written languages 0–2 3–6 Beginning readers In total

Frisian

Dutch

Hebrew Arabic

Bokmål

Nynorsk

0 5 0

3 (2) 0 392 (56) 35 (0) 83 (7) 7 (0)

0 0 0

34 (0) 141 (0) 83 (0)

5

478 (65) 42 (0)

0

258 (0)

312

Malta

Catalan area of Spain

Sami

Maltese

Catalan

5 (0) 27 (0) 30 (0)

0 2 (0) 0

0 3 (3) 6 (6)

2 (2) 38 (13) 17 (6)

62 (0)

2 (0)

9 (9)

57 (21)

Storybook apps across five languages Table 22.2  Number of digital books for children published in Catalan and Dutch since 2010

Catalan Dutch

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2 7

3 30

2 16

11 30

5 13

2015 7 4

2016 7 4

2017

Forthcoming

17 2

4 ?

Note: The Dutch scores are a rough estimate and only give an indication since it was very hard to find dates of publication.

To turn off the lights in the farm the child should push on the window. Behind each window the user finds an animal (cow, sheep, duck, etc.) that makes a sound after touching it. Books for 6+, beginning readers, typically present a simple text on each screen. The words light up when they are spoken aloud by the computer voice (e.g. Sparrow on the Web [Mus op het Net] by Rian Visser). Such books are available in all language areas, albeit in lower numbers than for 3–6 years. Is the number of digital books increasing? Given the growing popularity of digital devices among the very young, the number of digital books might be expected to increase every year. Table 22.2 illustrates the yearly increase in digital books for Catalan since 2010 with (probably accidental) peaks in 2013 and 2017. With government support, Samy apps has been quite active as a publisher of Catalan apps since 2015 – in all they published nine apps – and their website announces four new apps in Catalan forthcoming in 2018. Most apps brought out by this publisher were first published in Catalan and then translated into other European languages, and even into Japanese and Russian. For Dutch, by contrast, we found less evidence for increasing numbers of digital books (Table 22.2). The boom period seems to be 2011–14, when Fundels, WePbooks and Bereslim became very active, along with app developer Rian Visser and publisher Gottmer. In Norway, following a remarkable spike in releases in 2014 (123 publications), the development of new storybook apps seems to have been shelved by traditional developers and publishers in more recent years. According to one publisher, this abrupt halt in children’s digital book production was the result of the very low prices in the Apple App Store – Norway is a small market and publishers are unable to produce for App Store prices. To solve this problem, publishers are now trying to move away from the App Store and to create online bookshops that are available as free apps in the App Store and Google Play. The apps sold in these stores are more expensive than those in the App Store.

Quality of digital books Print book quality standards Most digital books are based on existing paper books that meet standards concerning the quality of the narration and the illustrations. Particularly in digitally re-contextualized literature (such as a fairy tale or other narrative newly presented as an app with additional multimodal features), the narration may include archaic language. Exemplary of this is the first page in a recent Norwegian app published by Pickatale: “One day, this girl’s father, a gentle but weak man, got a new wife. She had a dark mind and was unable to really love anyone other than herself” (En dag fikk denne jentas far, en godmodig men svak mann, en ny kone. Hun hadde en mørk sjel og var ute av stand til virkelig å elske noen andre enn seg selv). The illustration added to this narration does not provide much help for children to understand this narration. If stories/characters/authors are well known, it may make digital books easier to sell. This may explain why many digital books are adaptations of classic stories (Pinocchio, Jungle Book in the series 313

Adriana G. Bus et al.

by Wissl Media Chocolapps) or fairy tales (e.g. the Nosy Crow Apps The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood brought out in many languages). Only a few digital books are based on awardwinning paper books (e.g. Boer Boris gaat naar zee (Farmer Boris Goes to the Ocean), authored by Ted van Lieshout, Gottmer publishers) or part of a popular series. Only in Norway and the Netherlands did we find series of digital books like the Little Sister-series in Norway, consisting of ten books recommended for children aged 0–3 years (e.g. Lillesøster i butikken (Little Sister in the Shop), Lillesøster hos tannlegen (Little Sister at the Dentist) authored by Kari Grossmann, Gyldendal forlag). In the Netherlands, several prizes for children’s literature are awarded every year, and one of the winners of “The Picture Book of the Year” is often digitized, such as We hebben er een geitje bij (We Have a Little Goat) in 2016 and Boer Boris gaat naar zee in 2017. However, from the books that won a Golden Brush (the Netherlands’ most prestigious award for children’s book illustrations) only two during the last ten years have been digitized (Sieb Posthuma’s Een vijver vol inkt (A Pond Filled with Ink) and Annemarie van Haeringens’ Beer is op vlinder (Bear Is in Love with a Butterfly)). In all target languages, none or very few books had been first published in digital formats – most had first been published in print formats (see Table 22.3). The only exception is Malta, where all available digital books were original, as local publishers, who already operate in a very small market, are reluctant to allow story apps to be based on print books as they expect that this would eat further into their limited print book profits. We rate the literary quality of these digital books as fair, but they are not on the same level as the higher quality paper books available in Maltese.

Characteristics of digital books It would be rather easy to add more than one language to digital books, thus allowing the reader to make a choice, and from a commercial perspective, this may be an interesting addition because it expands the commercial market. However, we found very few books with this option. In the Netherlands, the number of books offering a choice of languages is comparatively high thanks to the Fundels series and some (private) developers like Tizio, aiming at an international market. In the other countries involved in this study, the score is very low or zero. Only recently, one new international publisher, Pickatale, became active in Norway, producing digital books in the dominant language, Bokmål, as well as English, Swedish, Chinese and Danish. Possible reasons for the limited number of language options in digital books may be related to the difficulty of translating stories, maintaining the story content and literary quality of the narration (van Coillie and Verschueren 2006). The Dutch Fundels, for instance, includes a Turkish

Table 22.3  Characteristics of digital books per language Country/area Remediated paper books First edition, not available in print Series Well-known stories (from TV, fairy tales) Awarded books Available in several languages

314

Belgium/ Netherlands

Israel

Norway

Malta

Catalan region of Spain

437 41 40 16

42 0 0 42

316 8 21

2 7 1 0

33 21 0 0

8 186

1 0

1 0

0 1

3 0

Storybook apps across five languages

translation that, according to Turkish parents, is very poor. Often, translations are too literal, resulting in unnatural language which may impede fluent reading.

Digital storytelling techniques In addition to print and illustrations, digital books include extra multimedia features that have various functions and can take different forms. The most common additional features in our corpus are: 1

Almost all the digital books have a voice-over; sometimes there is the possibility to record the parent’s or child’s voice, but this option is much less frequent. 2 Most books include games, puzzles, songs, information, drawing, pictures for colouring, etc. 3 Many books are interactive: specific areas on the screen present sounds, animations or both when the user clicks on them. 4 Some books include illustrations that are animated by adding camera movements and motion in order to guide children’s visual attention while looking at the illustrations. 5 Mainly in books for beginning readers, a “karaoke bar” can be built in, meaning that print is highlighted when it is read aloud. As explained in the introduction, it can be helpful to animate illustrations by zooming in on details or setting details in motion in ways that help to synchronize the illustration with the narration. However, such additions are infrequent in our corpus of digital books. Most common are books that have interactive features as a way to engage children in the story (Richter and Courage 2017), with specific areas on screen that emit sounds or animations after activation, often inconsiderate with the story. However, these interactive features have been found to interfere with understanding the storyline. For example, the Israeli digital book The Beat Monsters (published by Rubinger in 2010) is about a green monster who plays the contrabass. When the child clicks on the green monster it starts to play the instrument. Even though the child may thus receive information about the meaning of a not so familiar word – contrabass – this addition may distract children’s attention from the storyline. Such interactive app features may thus cause cognitive overload by introducing an event, the green monster playing the contrabass, that may clarify vocabulary but interrupts the storytelling. Our corpus contains numerous digital books that may cause cognitive overload in a similar way. The Norwegian app Askepott (Cinderella, produced by Pickatale) is yet another retelling of the ever-popular folk tale about unjust oppression and triumphant reward. After touching or clicking on details in the illustrations, the word appears in print while it is read aloud. In the app Askepott, virtually every detail is made interactive in this manner, with 13 potentially distracting hotspots on the first page alone: “trees”, “fountain”, “flowers”, “grass”, “stone”, “girl”, “man”, “rainbow”, “clouds”, “sky”, “birds”, “horse” and “mountain”. Using a similar form of interactivity, the Catalan App, Sant Jordi, la llegenda (Saint George, the Legend) by Kirian Angles González, tells the story of Saint George. Children can save the life of the sheep, dress the princess, cook with the dragon or kill the dragon. Before being able to carry out these actions, which can promote children’s engagement in the story, they need to read or listen to the text – yet overall the nature of this interactivity leads to the reading sessions being game-like. It is encouraging that in recent digital books in Hebrew the number of automatic animations and hotspots has decreased as compared to digital books that were analysed ten years earlier, perhaps as a result of the greater awareness of the learning processes of young children that take place during story-listening (Korat and Falk 2017). 315

Adriana G. Bus et al.

In the current corpus, we found only a few examples of interactivity with actions that complement or enhance the narrative (cf. Yokota and Teale 2014). In the Norwegian app De tre Bukkene Bruse (The Three Billy Goats Gruff, produced by Agens AS), available in Bokmål and English, child readers use their finger to drag one goat at a time through the woods and up onto the bridge where they – the goat and thus also the child – are confronted by the furious Troll. Without the child reader’s participation, the story will not proceed. Interactivity in this narrative, based on a well-known Norwegian folktale, aligns the story events very well and may help to engage the child in the story without causing distraction. Similarly, the narrative in the Dutch story app Bliksem (Lightning, produced by Het Woeste Woud) is interrupted when events take place that raise questions or predictions, and the child has to prompt the story to continue by clicking on an on-screen icon, which causes the narrative to continue. For instance, the narrative is interrupted where the main character in this story, a little boy, sitting in front of the dashboard of the weather-making machine, is trying to figure out which button on the dashboard he should push to make lightning. The selected button lights up and, to forward the narrative, the child reader has to touch this button, even though it is the wrong button. Observations of children interacting with this story, corroborate the expectation that this action to forward the story (touching the wrong button) stimulates children to reflect on the consequences of the action and what will happen next. Some digital stories make books interactive by turning the child into a storyteller or a story character (Aliagas and Margallo 2017). In El ladrón de estrellas (The Stolen Stars) by Alpixel, for example, the reader chooses an avatar (a boy or a girl) and during the adventure his or her decisions (e.g. choosing objects, choosing paths in the forest) orient the story. In all, the story has 54 choices. A large set of credible courses of action in a narrative is difficult to create, which may make such books far-fetched and/or self-defeating.

Accessibility of digital books Downloading digital books The most common and straightforward ways to find and access digital books are the App Store or Google Play; see Table 22.4. These possibilities are available in all five target languages. In three languages (Dutch, Hebrew and Catalan) publishers provide direct access through their webpages. Less common are websites that enable free downloads, e.g. Wepboek.nl in the Netherlands or schooltv.nl offering animated picture books, or platforms that require a subscription to a large set of digital books. An example for toddlers and kindergarten children is the platform Bereslim in the Netherlands, with about 60 digital picture storybooks for young children, aged 3–7 years. Similar platforms offering downloads for older children are published by Zwijsen, Averbode and Booqees, all focusing on children from 4 to 12 years. Similar possibilities are available in Norway. Only in Belgium/the Netherlands do libraries provide access to storybook apps. In Belgium, public libraries offered Fundels to access digitally. Originally, the Fundel Loan Kit consisted of a rucksack with a Fundel reader and several books with a chip. However, as Fundel technology is now outdated, these digital books are no longer being developed. Through Dutch libraries, children can get free access to the platform Bereslim, offering about 60 digital books for children aged 3–7 years. The municipal libraries in Israel offer a digital catalogue with digital books or print books that have been digitized, but this catalogue does not include books with additional multimedia features.

316

Storybook apps across five languages Table 22.4  Ways in which consumers get access to digital books per language area Country/area

Belgium/ Netherlands

Israel

Norway

Malta

Catalan region of Spain

App Store Google Play Amazon Publisher (web page)

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes Yes No Yes

Yes Yes No No

Yes (one) Yes (the rest) No No

Yes Yes

Publisher (subscriptions/ membership) Websites for free downloads of digital books Platforms/subscription needed Libraries

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes (booktrailer videos and information) No

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

Yes

No

No

No

No

Finding (high-quality) digital books Traditionally, book stores and libraries have been the main ways to find books that match children’s interest and can guarantee a good choice. As shown in Table 22.5, the most common ways for finding high-quality digital books are webpages, such as Leesplein in the Netherlands. This webpage, which offers descriptions of apps for young children with ratings of their quality, is commissioned by the Ministries of Education, Culture and Science and Healthcare, Welfare and Sports. Cinekid Applab is another source offering reviews of apps for children, with a special section for stories. Blogs published by private individuals can be another rich source of information, for example www.jufjannie.nl, written by an enthusiastic teacher who writes reviews and develops educational games and animated books for children. Likewise, the research group GRETEL in Barcelona, started researching literary apps with funding from the Spanish government in 2012, and began to disseminate the results of their research in a range of ways beyond academia, with teachers and families as the target audience. The research group has a website (www.gretel.cat/recomanacions-lij-digital/) with agerelated recommendations of literary apps, mainly in Spanish and English, but also in French and German. Another way in which parents and teachers learn about literary apps in Catalan for

Table 22.5  Finding digital books for children per language area Country/area

Belgium/Netherlands

Israel

Norway

Malta

Catalan region of Spain

Reviews in magazines/ journals Schools Libraries Web pages Private persons who publish a blog Awards

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes

No No No No

No No No No

Yes Yes Yes No

No No Yes Yes

Yes

No

No

No

No

317

Adriana G. Bus et al.

very young children is Faristol, a journal about books for children and youth. This journal is promoted by Consell Català del Llibre Infantil i Juvenil (ClijCAT) with funding from Institució de les Lletres Catalanes. Some Catalan publishers, such as Samy apps, have a blog and website to orient families and teachers in their use of digital apps (not just books) and websites, such as “Tablets per nens”. In Malta and the Netherlands, schools may offer parents access to digital books, thus helping them to select appropriate books. In the Netherlands the Bereslim platform is part of a wider scheme of intervention projects targeting families with low literacy, and digital books are integrated in several intervention programmes, such as VVE-thuis (Early Education at Home).

Low cost: an incentive? Compared to print books, digital books are much cheaper, with most costing about a quarter to one-third of the price of a print book. However, consumers may not perceive digital books as cheaper because they just pay for content without receiving an object. Consumers may even perceive digital books as expensive because they compare digital books not with print books but with educational apps and YouTube videos that can be played time and again, often free of charge.

Conclusions For all five target languages – Catalan, Dutch, Hebrew, Maltese and Norwegian – we found digital books for young children, although their number was low compared to print books. The numbers of digital books differ across the languages we focused on. For Dutch- and Bokmålspeaking children there is a comparatively rich supply, while for Maltese, Catalan and Hebrew the number of available digital books is much smaller. There is some support for the hypothesis that the less widely used the language, the lower the number of commercially produced digital books, though there is an exception to this rule: Norway has a small population but an exceptionally high number of digital books. This suggests that the wealth of the country makes a difference (cf. Sari et al. 2017). We consider the overall rather low numbers of digital books in local languages as a missed opportunity, taking into account the increasing amount of time young children spend with new devices. Despite exposure to language, and particularly to language in books, being vital for language acquisition between 0 and 8 years, the corpus of available digital books that may enable such development is small. Overall, appropriate materials to enrich children’s language experiences are not widely available. “For the publisher, the price tag is quite a barrier”, complains Marius van Campen, sales director of Gottmer, a Dutch publisher. Gottmer released several digital books between 2011 and 2014 but discontinued this policy because they found that the Dutch market is too small to make profitable, high-quality apps. To protect the less widely used languages, governmental support is sometimes provided to produce digital books, but the funding is limited and does not enable large-scale, high-quality production in local languages. Digital books produced for an international market, with less widely used languages in addition to mainstream languages, may be a safer guarantee for the production of high-quality reading apps, provided that translations safeguard both the story content as well as the literary and linguistic quality of the narration. It is hard to find sound reasons why so few digital storybooks are produced for the international market.

318

Storybook apps across five languages

Experimental research has revealed the potential of well-designed digital books for young children’s literacy and language development, and has clearly specified which multimedia additions are beneficial and which are not (e.g. Bus et al. 2015). However, despite this literature about promising features showing beneficial effects, in particular for children who are lagging behind in language and literacy skills, well-designed digital books form a minority in our corpus. From our content analysis, it appears that many books provide playful elements to make books attractive to young children, such as activating hotspots in the illustrations, resulting in visual and sound effects. However, although attractive and interactive, most of these features are not related to the storyline, and according to the research so far (see Bus et al. 2015), such books may not support engagement in a story or effectively support story comprehension and language growth. Some of these additional features may even interfere with learning. In an ideal situation, the skilful design of interactivity helps children to immerse themselves in the story and it may thus deepen their story and language comprehension. However, examples of helpful interactivity, as in the Norwegian app The Three Billy Goats Gruff or the Dutch app Lightning, are rare. The full potential of interactivity is not (yet) realized in the available corpus of digital books. Among the current digital books are also books that include promising features that are not only beneficial for story comprehension but also for expanding children’s language development, including words and grammar. Exemplary of this are some books with animated pictures. In these books, camera movements and motion added to on-screen illustrations guide children’s visual attention in a way that helps to concretize the narrative language and the story progression. These features fulfil similar roles to adults when they point to details in story illustrations as they read with a child (Bus et al. 2015). However, app developers complain that such books do not sell very well, arguing that parents compare the film-like illustrations with YouTube films that are available at no cost, so they are not willing to pay for these books. This attitude overlooks the fact that the design of these storybook apps is highly effective in supporting children’s engagement in the story and in promoting their understanding of sophisticated narrative language and the storyline. The distinction between enhanced digital books with a narrative as the main source of information and other digital products (including films and games) does not seem to be evident to parents and teachers. This may, therefore, account for why digital books with a film-like format are not as widely available as game-like, interactive books, which do not support children’s early reading as effectively. Another hindrance to the production of these film-like versions of storybooks is the cost. The creation of such books requires input from computer experts, animators and storytellers to animate the illustrations and voice the text, in addition to writers and illustrators. Creating circles in water after something falls into a pond implies many hours of work for an animator and sound designer, and is therefore costly. However, it may not be necessary to add such details to realize the main aim: guiding children’s visual attention through the illustrations in order to synchronize what they focus on in the illustrations with what the narration at the same time is telling. It is our impression that this can be realized with comparatively simple means, such as panning to the relevant part of the illustration and zooming in on the details (for instance, see the screendumps in Figure 22.1). When the boy explains why he is so eager to go to the weather school (“today I learn to make lightning”), the camera zooms in on the eager boy (screen dump 2). When the weather school is mentioned, the camera pans in that direction and zooms in on the school (screen dump 3). Experimental evidence supports the hypothesis that stories with such built-in camera movements are better understood than stories that do not guide children’s visual attention.

319

Adriana G. Bus et al. 1

2

   Woehoe

3

   Today I learn to make lightning!

On the weather school!

Figure 22.1 Screendumps from the digital book Lightning (Copyright 2017 by Het Woeste Woud, the Netherlands). Used by permission of Het Woeste Woud.

Another missed opportunity is that digital books rarely include more than one language option, even though it is possible to publish books with a choice of languages. By combining less widely used languages with international languages, publishers can expand their selling market. From the perspective of acquiring a second language, it may also be fruitful to have the possibility to hear the story in the mother tongue as well as a second language, especially for the ever-expanding group of children who are taught in a language other than their mother tongue. There is an urgent need for international research to test digital books as a useful tool to stimulate the language development of second-language learners. For the public, it is difficult to find out about digital books and to learn about their quality. Information sources, such as reviews, blogs or websites, are scarce in most languages. Of the countries included in our analysis, only in the Netherlands can parents of young children find reliable recommendations on the Internet and, possibly more importantly, also through the nationwide network of public libraries. It is possible to get access to high-quality storybook apps through libraries in Belgium and the Netherlands, which offer ways for parents and teachers to familiarize themselves with digital books and experience their effect on young children. In conclusion, it seems to be of utmost importance to break the current deadlock and make more storybook apps available that meet high literary standards, and include helpful digital storytelling techniques created by experts. It is also important that we make parents and teachers aware of the new literacy learning possibilities offered by digital books. We need to find ways to encourage stakeholders to support the production of high-quality digital books for children, as a basic contribution to children’s language and literacy learning. We should do this in such a way that all European children can benefit from the potential of new digital resources, including, for instance, providing a choice of languages in digital stories (e.g. less widely used languages, in addition to the more widely spoken English or Spanish). Every year, young children aged up to 8 years spend increasing amounts of time on Smartphones and tablets, and it is important that this time is well-spent time and includes book-reading as a main incentive for language and literacy development, preferably in the mother tongue.

References Aliagas, C., and Margallo, A. M. (2017). Children’s responses to the interactivity of storybook apps in family shared reading events involving the iPad. Literacy, 51: 44–52. Bus, A. G., Takacs, Z. K., and Kegel, C. A. T. (2015). Affordances and limitations of electronic storybooks for young children’s emergent literacy. Developmental Review, 35: 79–97. 320

Storybook apps across five languages

Korat, O., and Falk, Y. (2017). Ten years after: revisiting the question of e-book quality as early language and literacy support. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1468798417712105 (accessed 22 October 2018). Montag, J. L., Jones, M. N., and Smith, L. B. (2015). The words children hear: picture books and the statistics for language learning. Psychological Science, 26: 1489–1496. doi: 10.1177/0956797615594361 Parish-Morris, J., Mahajan, N., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Michnick Golinkof, R., and Collins, M. F. (2013). Once upon a time: parent-child dialogue and storybook reading in the electronic era. Mind, Brain, and Education, 7: 200–211. Richter, A., and Courage, M. L. (2017). Comparing electronic and paper storybooks for preschoolers: Attention, engagement, and recall. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 48: 92–102. Sari, B., Takacs, Z. K., and Bus, A. G. (2017). What are we downloading for our children? Bestselling children’s apps in four European countries. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy. doi: 10.1177/1468798417744057 (first published 14 December 2017). Schnotz, W., and Rasch, T. (2005). Enabling, facilitating, and inhibiting effects of animations in multimedia learning: why reduction of cognitive load can have negative results on learning. Educational Technology Research and Development, 53: 47–58. doi: 10.1007/BF02504797. Simons, G. F., and Fennig, C. D. (2017). Ethnologue: Languages of the World, 20th ed. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Available at: www.ethnologue.com (accessed 23 October 2018). Språkrådet (2017). Språkstatus: Språkligpolitisk tilstandsrapport frå Språkrådet 2017 [Language Status 2017. Language Policy Report from the (Norwegian) Language Council]. Available at: www.sprakradet. no/globalassets/vi-og-vart/publikasjoner/sprakstatus/sprakstatus-2017.pdf (accessed 23 October 2018). Unsworth, L. (2006). E-literature for Children. London and New York: Routledge. van Coillie, J., and Raedts, M. (2016). Digikleuter ook boekenwurm? Onderzoek naar digitaal mediagebruik van Vlaamse kleuters en de relatie met voorlezen in het gezin. Mediawijs, KULeuven en Iedereen Leest. Available at: https://mediawijs.be/sites/default/files/artikels/bestanden/rapport_jvc_mr_mediawijs. pdf (accessed 23 October 2018). van Coillie, J., and Verschueren, W. P. (2006). Children’s Literature in Translation. Manchester: St. Jerome. Wagner, L. (2013). By the numbers: a quantitative content analysis of children’s picturebooks. Frontiers in Psychology, 4: Art. 850. Warschauer, M. (2003). Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Yokota, J., and Teale, W. H. (2014). Picture books and the digital world: educators making informed choices. The Reading Teacher, 67: 577–585.

321

Part V

Negotiating digital literacy lives in hybrid virtual and physical spaces

23 Young children’s e-books as digital spaces for multimodal composing, translanguaging and intercultural sharing Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe

Emergent bilinguals comprised 9.6% of all kindergarten through twelfth grade students in U.S. schools during the 2014–2015 school year, and several states experienced increases in emergent bilingual student populations of more than 40% from 2009 to 2015 (NCELA 2017). Student populations are becoming more diverse amid a growing cultural gap between predominantly white, female teachers and culturally and linguistically diverse families (Sleeter 2001). Furthermore, many U.S. schools are English-dominant contexts, where English is privileged as the language of instruction, and students and families learn that English is the language of power at school (Murillo 2012). Moreover, demographics are changing as part of a globalized, connected, and digitized world. As people and information cross geographic and political boundaries, they construct new practices for communicating in multimodal, multilingual, and digital ways (Fraiberg 2010). As a result, educators are increasingly tasked with teaching more diverse classrooms of students, partnering with families and communities with whom they might not share a linguistic and cultural background, and preparing students to participate as literate members of a digitized and globalized community. In this chapter, we provide an example of the ways we have attempted to meet these demands by using touchscreen tablets and digital cameras – tools that are becoming increasingly affordable and available for classroom use. We argue that digital tools can provide new opportunities for children, families, and communities to be represented and valued in school literacy activities. In this chapter, we detail the theoretical underpinnings of our work, review recent research on young children’s digital composing, and describe our work in a second grade, multilingual classroom. We conclude by discussing ways to create instructional contexts that support translanguaging and intercultural sharing through e-book composition.

Theoretical perspectives: developing translanguaging pedagogies with the support of digital tools We draw on translanguaging theory to describe how people select from a repertoire of language practices, not separate language systems, and mix their linguistic resources to fit the social 325

Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe

purpose and audience (Velasco and García 2014). Moreover, Canagarajah (2013) outlines a translingual orientation to literacy and emphasizes how communication transcends individual languages and involves a synergy of languages, sign systems, and modalities. Translingual connotes how languages are always in contact and mutually influencing each other. A translingual orientation is built on the premise that, “Language is only one among many semiotic resources that go into text construction and literate interaction”, and speakers bring diverse semiotic resources to interactions (Canagarajah 2015: 418). As such, translingual communication involves native speakers, monolinguals, bilinguals, multilinguals – all speakers (Canagarajah 2013). Although speakers might have different proficiencies in different languages, Canagarajah (2015) argues that all speakers have a basic competence for translingual communication, as they purposefully mix codes, languages, voices, and modes in communities where diversity is the norm. Hornberger and Link (2012) propose that translanguaging is also an instructional practice, and translanguaging theory signals a shift in pedagogy away from English-only instruction and some dual language program policies. English-only instruction and dual language programs that require strict language separation position bilinguals as two monolinguals in one person (Cummins 2007), and often the goal of English proficiency is situated above heritage language development (García 2014). Furthermore, students in these programs might miss out on opportunities for cross-linguistic transfer because of the emphasis on language separation to avoid confusion (Naqvi, Schmidt, and Krickhan 2014). In contrast, the goal of translanguaging pedagogies is that students use their languages together to make meaning and develop literacy in both languages (García and Kleifgen 2010). Translingual instructional activities are responsive to emergent bilingual students’ actual language practices (García and Sylvan 2011). Teachers build on students’ myriad, multimodal, and multilingual discursive practices – practices that are a normal part of being and knowing in diverse communities (García, Woodley, Flores, and Chu 2012). Teachers can do this by constructing translanguaging spaces in the classroom where students and teachers translanguage to build background knowledge, develop metalinguistic awareness and critical thinking skills, engage students, and disrupt linguistic hierarchies (García and Wei 2014). Moreover, teachers and students co-construct translingual practices during classroom literacy activities (Canagarajah 2013). Translanguaging pedagogies have the potential to rupture the hegemony of English-only in many U.S. schools. By translanguaging, students and teachers validate students’ translingual practices and integrate those practices with school language practices (García et al. 2012). Furthermore, translingual instructional contexts provide students with more equitable opportunities to participate in classroom activities because they can use all of their linguistic resources, instead of just English. In such contexts, students are positioned as competent language users and valuable members of the academic and social community of the classroom (Palmer, Martínez, Mateus, and Henderson 2014). Finally, students have opportunities to leverage translingualism to support them to meet dominant literacy standards (Canagarajah 2015). In the remainder of this chapter, we explore how digital tools can be used to support emergent bilinguals’ translanguaging. Specifically, we describe how we have built on these insights in our attempts to design literacy instruction for U.S. school children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. In the urban school district near us, 139 different heritage languages were represented in the most recent school year. With increasing globalization and changing immigration patterns, it is not unusual for local teachers to serve students speaking as many as six to ten different heritage languages in one classroom. Given this student population, we have been exploring how teachers, who do not speak all the languages of their students, can leverage the affordances of digital tools to design literacy activities that support the language and literacy learning of all students in their multilingual classrooms. 326

Young children’s e-books

When students’ heritage languages are used as tools for learning in the classroom, the value of their bilingualism and cultures is affirmed, creating a space for intercultural exchange (Cummins 2012). Following Paris (2012), we argue that what is needed is culturally sustaining pedagogy that “seeks to perpetuate and foster – to sustain – linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (p. 93). Our study explores ways to develop translanguaging and cultural sustaining pedagogies by including and valuing children’s languages and cultural practices in family e-books.

Literature review: digital composing in early childhood Researchers have been increasingly interested in the ways that digital tools open up possibilities for supporting young children’s development as writers, composers, and meaning-makers. As context for our exploration of the affordances of digital tools for young multilingual composers, in this section we provide an overview of research published after 2010 relating to children’s screen-based composing. We first discuss research describing children’s digital composing practices at home and school. We then review research related to children’s and teachers’ interactions with key features of digital devices that set them apart from the page: (1) keyboards, (2) speech recognition and sound recordings, and (3) digital images. Finally, we review research examining the affordances of digital tools for interaction and collaboration.

Learning to compose using digital tools Given the changing types and capabilities of digital devices and their increasing presence in the lives of young children, there is a continual need for updated understandings of young children’s digital literacy practices and the ways they compose on screens, at school and at home. Marsh’s (2016) survey of parents of children from birth to age 5 found that, at home, children navigated apps independently through swiping, touching, tapping, and scrolling. The majority of children also produced digital texts through drawing, taking photos, and composing videos. She found that children developed digital literacy practices through a process of trial and error, and exploration of the tools’ and apps’ various features. Parents even reported that children resisted direct instruction. Researchers working with preschool children in schools have also found that children are eager to explore the affordances of digital devices independent of adult support (Beschorner and Hutchison 2013; Rowe, Miller, and Pacheco 2014). As children experiment with composing on screen, they extend the kinds of mark-making and meaning-making possible with traditional materials, while also practicing digital composing skills. For example, Price, Jewitt, and Crescenzi (2015) found that as 2- and 3-year-olds composed with drawing apps on iPads, they made more continuous marks at a faster rate. However, children could not use multiple fingers at once to draw on the screen, which the authors note as a limitation of using tablets with young children. Despite some limitations, recent research suggests that touchscreen interfaces are particularly supportive of young children’s digital interactions. Researchers report the ease with which children use devices with touchscreen interfaces to produce multimodal compositions (Beschorner and Hutchison 2013; Falloon and Khoo 2014; Kucirkova, Messer, Sheehy, and Panedero 2014; Lynch and Redpath 2014; Marsh 2016; Miller 2017). While many apps designed for children are relatively closed-ended, allowing little opportunity for children to create their own content, recent studies have shown that children are more engaged when they are positioned as active composers and when they have access to open-ended apps (Kucirkova et al. 2014; Lynch and Redpath 2014). For example, Kucirkova et al. (2014) found that 5-year-olds engaged in 327

Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe

more exploratory talk as they composed e-books using the open-ended, Our Story app than when using bounded apps where users could only engage in pre-defined content pathways. Researchers (Baker 2017; Genlott and Grönlund 2013; Lynch and Redpath, 2014) studying children’s use of open-ended composing apps also reported that children were proud of their compositions and excited to share. Open-ended apps promoted problem solving and encouraged children to take up identities as writers. To sum up, recent research confirms that young children have considerable access to digital composing tools outside of school. Through playful exploration of digital devices, they learn navigation and composing skills needed to create multimodal texts that combine digital drawing, photos, videos, and sound recordings. Digital tools can also provide new opportunities for learning print skills central to school success. The design of digital devices and apps can present both opportunities and challenges. While touchscreen interfaces appear quite easy for children to use, applications can also contain trouble spots that are less transparent for young users. Furthermore, children are particularly engaged by open-ended apps that allow them to compose their own content.

Composing with keyboards As composing moves from page to screen, written text is often produced with keyboards of various kinds. Research on children’s use of keyboards as the entry devices for digital writing (Beschorner and Hutchison 2013) has shown that children practiced letter identification and spelling in ways that would not be possible when forming letters with pencil and paper. Keyboards made it possible for 7-year-olds to compose texts that were easier to read and publish than traditional paper texts (Genlott and Grönlund 2013). As with other features of digital tools, emergent writers playfully explore the affordances of keyboards as data entry devices. Bigelow (2013) found that preschool children used the pop-up keyboard on iPads in a variety of different ways to compose emails to their families. Children engaged in one-handed, hunt-and-peck typing when they sounded out and spelled known words. They also rapidly typed long strings of letters with two hands, mimicking the posture and movements of adults typing at a computer keyboard. Children approached typing playfully, enjoying the sounds and motions of tapping the screen, as well as the visual patterns they composed.

Composing with speech recognition software and sound recordings A number of studies have described how speech recognition software and speech synthesizers can support the transcription of children’s ideas and awareness of sound–symbol correspondence (Genlott and Grönlund 2013; Åberg, Lantz-Andersson, and Pramling 2014; Baker 2017). For example, Baker (2017) examined how first and second grade students used speech recognition software to support their emergent writing and composing on screens. Since children’s oral language was translated into written words by the software, children were able to write longer stories with more complex vocabulary. While speech recognition software can also present challenges such as inappropriate and inaccurate transcriptions, Baker (2017) found that, overall, children were able to use speech recognition applications to support their emergent writing. The capacity to digitally record speech and other sounds opens new kinds of possibilities for connecting writing, reading, speaking, and listening (Beschorner and Hutchison 2013; Lynch and Redpath 2014; Baker 2017). As children orally record their messages and stories, they practice their reading skills, translate their invented spellings for their audience, and develop their 328

Young children’s e-books

identities as writers (Rowe et al. 2014; Baker 2017). Moreover, researchers have explored how digital sound recordings can be used to support emergent bilinguals’ composing in both English and their heritage languages. Rowe and Miller (2016) found that emergent bilingual preschoolers could use the sound recording features of digital tablets to include their heritage languages in child-composed e-books. The mobility of digital tablets and ease of creating digital recordings also made it possible for teachers to enlist family and community members in creating multilingual e-books that included all of the children’s heritage languages. Digital tablets provided teachers with opportunities to include and publicly value children’s heritage languages, even when they did not speak all of the languages themselves. Overall, recent research suggests that digital devices with sound recording tools can support young children’s composing. When equipped with speech recognition apps, digital devices can lessen transcription challenges faced by emergent writers and provide individualized demonstrations connecting the child’s speech with its representation in written text. When equipped with multimodal composing apps that support the addition of sound recordings, digital devices can support composing that is both multilingual and multimodal. Digital devices with sound recognition software leverage children’s relatively well-developed oral language skills to support composing in print. Sound recording capabilities can leverage children’s heritage oral language skills to support composing in print and in new languages they are learning at school.

Composing with digital images Researchers have identified digital images as central to children’s screen-based composing. Use of digital images can provide opportunities for reflection and discussion that enhance children’s writing. For example, Åberg and colleagues (2015) report that when 6-year-olds used the Storybird app to select stock images representing the theme of their written stories, they also reflected on how their stories were related to images, producing more complex written narratives. In our own work (Rowe and Miller 2016), digital images served as anchors for preschoolers’ writing and talk. Children almost always started composing with digital drawing or by selecting a digital photo from the tablet’s photo library. Other recent studies (Martínez-Álvarez, Ghiso, and Martínez 2012; Dalton et al. 2015; Miller 2017) have shown that children combine images with writing in ways that are highly integrated, enrich their meanings, and reflect the multimodal, digital texts that surround them in the environment. Outside of the classroom, young children take digital photos and create slideshows to show their worlds (Marsh 2016). Researchers have used digital photography to include children’s home and community photos in the literacy curriculum (Martínez-Álvarez and Ghiso 2014; Rowe and Miller 2016; Miller 2017). For example, in a previous study, we (Rowe and Miller 2016) sent home digital cameras with preschool children, and then invited children to use home photos to compose e-books in the classroom. As children, researchers, and teachers gathered around the iPad screen to view photos children had taken in the community, they learned about peers’ interests, families, favorite restaurants, pets, holidays, and heritage languages. Talking about home and community photos often prompted children to describe photo features in their heritage languages, which became the basis of the heritage language messages that children composed in e-books (Miller and Rowe 2014). Overall, recent research shows that when young children have access to digital tablets and cameras, they actively explore how images can be incorporated into their texts. Digital composing of this kind involves transmediation (Siegel 1995) where children consider how to best link images and print to convey their meanings. When children have opportunities to produce their own drawings or photographs, digital images reflect children’s interests and cultural experiences. 329

Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe

Inviting children to bring home/community photos into the classroom appears to be a promising means of creating home to school connections.

Communicating and collaborating with digital devices Composing with digital tools makes sharing content easier and faster, and facilitates multidirectional sharing across home and school contexts. Studies have described how children share their school work with their families and community members through Google documents (Genlott and Grönlund 2013), email (Bigelow 2013), and various social media outlets (Lynch and Redpath 2014). Moreover, the small size and mobility of digital tools can be leveraged to make connections between home and school. By sending digital devices home with students, children can compose digital photos and sound recordings that reflect their personal interests and cultural experiences outside of school. When returned to school, home photos and recordings provided first grade students with rich opportunities for digital composing on culturally relevant topics (Martínez-Álvarez and Ghiso 2014). Researchers have also examined the affordances of using tablets to facilitate collaborative composing among children and adults as they interact around the screen. Falloon and Khoo (2014) describe how the material features of tablets enable them to be used as public work spaces, since tablets are portable, lie flat on the desk or tilt (with case), have a wide viewing angle, and provide a built-in keyboard. They argue that to facilitate a shift from private to public work space, children need instruction and practice with questioning, justifying ideas, and active listening. Overall, current research suggests that educators can use digital devices to open up the boundaries between home and school, inviting the two-way flow of information and experiences between classrooms and communities. Children and their families can be engaged in creating content for school literacy activities that is culturally relevant and personally engaging. New communication technologies also provide easy ways for young authors to connect with immediate and more distant audiences, providing an authentic purpose for composing. Children’s digital texts are easily shared as children and adults gather around the large screens of digital tablets or as they are projected for group viewing. Talk around child-composed texts can provide opportunities for intergenerational and intercultural sharing. In the remainder of the chapter, we describe how the affordances of digital tools were taken up and subsequently negotiated by a group of multilingual second graders.

Research methods The focus of this chapter is a recent study conducted by Mary Miller, the first author of this chapter. Miller’s work with second graders builds on our previous research with preschoolers (Miller and Rowe 2014; Rowe and Miller 2016) in which we offered children the opportunity to compose e-books on iPads during the child-selected learning activity period. Children also took home digital cameras, used their home photos in their e-books, and were encouraged to record messages in English and in their heritage languages. The second grade study extends our previous work in several ways. First, in the preschool study, we only sent home digital cameras. In the second grade study, Miller sent home digital cameras, tablets, and paper journals to write photo descriptions in children’s heritage languages. Second, in the second grade study, Miller collaborated with the classroom teacher, and we negotiated how to implement e-book activities in her classroom. In the preschool study, only researchers led e-book activities, and teachers were peripherally involved. Third, in our previous work with preschool students, our focus 330

Young children’s e-books

was on composing with children, and children had few opportunities to present their e-books to the whole class. In the second grade study, participants had the opportunity to share every e-book they composed with the whole class. In the findings section, we describe how these study extensions fostered additional opportunities for children’s heritage languages and cultural experiences to be included in the classroom. The second grade study was conducted at Webster Elementary School, an urban, public school in the southeastern United States where Miller worked with 18 second graders (7- and 8-year-olds) enrolled in Ms. Trenton’s class. All of the children spoke languages other than English at home. Seventeen children spoke Spanish at home, and one spoke Somali and Arabic at home. Miller and Ms. Trenton were the teacher participants. (Teacher and student names in this chapter are pseudonyms). Ms. Trenton was a monolingual English speaker, but she routinely invited students to teach her words in their languages and practiced speaking Spanish, Somali, and Arabic during classroom literacy instruction. Ms. Miller, an English/Spanish bilingual, often communicated with Spanish-speaking children in Spanish during classroom composing activities, and encouraged and supported the Somali and Arabic speakers to share in their heritage languages. Data collection took place over an eight-month period from October 2015 to May 2016, for a total of 41 researcher visits to the classroom. Data include field notes, digital photos, e-books, audio recordings, video recordings, teacher written reflections, and interviews with students and the teacher. Data collection and data analysis were simultaneous and ongoing during the study, in concordance with grounded theory methods (Charmaz 2000) and to allow for emergent design (Erlandson, Harris, Skipper, and Allen 1993). Before data were collected on children’s e-book composing activities, consent forms detailing the research activities and participants’ roles were signed by children’s parents. Forms were provided to parents in their heritage languages and English. Consent forms included a checklist of the kinds of data that could be collected and used for research, and parents checked off which sources could be used (e.g., video recordings, photos, e-books). Children signed assent forms that described the nature of their participation in e-book activities. Moreover, we purposefully sent home inexpensive, kid-friendly digital cameras and touchscreen tablets with consented children to address teachers’ concerns about children traveling with expensive digital tools to and from school. We also wanted adults to feel comfortable allowing children to use the tools independently, which is why there were shock-absorbing cases on the cameras and tablets. Furthermore, to address concerns about inappropriate digital content being shown at school, all home photos and e-books were reviewed by Miller when they were returned to school and before students accessed them during classroom e-book activities.

E-book composing activities Children and adults used kid-friendly digital cameras and touchscreen tablets to compose their own multimodal, multilingual e-books in the classroom and also at home. After an initial introduction to digital composing tools in the classroom, five digital cameras and two touchscreen tablets were sent home with consented students on a rotating weekly basis. Digital tablets were equipped with the Book Creator app (Red Jumper Studio 2015) that supported open-ended composing of multi-page digital books. On each page, students could compose with multiple voice recordings, written translations, and digital images. Students also took home a journal for families to write in their heritage languages about the photos taken at home with the digital cameras. When students returned tablets to the classroom, one of the adults read and discussed the home-composed e-books with the children. For students who took cameras home, photos 331

Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe

were uploaded onto touchscreen tablets at a classroom composing center, and one of the adults helped students compose e-books with the photos. Students were encouraged to use text from family journal entries to support heritage language writing in their home photo e-books. Twice a week, authors had opportunities to present and discuss their e-books with the whole class. To provide a demonstration of the multilingual e-book genre, Ms. Trenton composed her own e-book featuring personal photos and multilingual voice recordings in each heritage language spoken in the classroom. Students recorded the oral translations for Ms. Trenton’s e-book in Spanish, Somali, and Arabic. As in our previous research with preschoolers’ (Rowe and Miller 2016), e-book composing in Ms. Trenton’s second grade classroom typically began with conversation about the students’ photos or drawings. In practice, the steps seen in Figure 23.1 were flexibly adapted to follow the child’s lead: (a) invite children to take a photo in the classroom, browse photos taken at home, or draw a picture; (b) engage children in conversation about their images; (c) invite children to write a title for their book; (d) invite children to add images to book pages; (d) invite children to write book text in English and their heritage language; (e) invite children and peers to make multilingual oral recordings in English and other heritage languages; (f) reread and revise the book; and (g) share the e-book with others at the composing table, and later at large group.

Findings Composing with digital photos in Ms. Trenton’s room For children and teachers, one of the most striking differences between e-book composing and other classroom writing activities was the use of child-produced, digital photos. Almost all e-books included photos as the foundational content for each page. Written text and oral recordings typically provided background information relevant to a person or object featured in the photo, or told a story inspired by the image. For example, Delia took a photograph of her parents’ wedding photo, and wrote and orally recorded a description of the photo in Spanish and English (see Figure 23.2). During a conversation with her peers and teachers, Delia told the group that her parents were holding her older brother in the picture. The wedding photo prompted further conversation about wedding activities, including connections to Ms. Trenton’s demonstration e-book describing her trip to Atlanta to help a friend buy a wedding dress. A month after Delia composed and shared her

Figure 23.1  E-book activity framework. 332

Young children’s e-books

Figure 23.2 Delia’s e-book page about her parents’ wedding; in her oral messages Delia recorded: “Este es mi mamá y papá cuando se casaron” and “This is my mum and dad when they got married”.

e-book, Celia brought in photos of a wedding she attended. Celia talked about dancing and eating cake at the event. These newest wedding themed photos prompted conversations that compared Celia’s experiences to what others had done at weddings and provided opportunities for both adults and children to discuss similarities and differences in their cultural experiences. Because students often took digital photos in locations important to their lives, photos provided visual details that sparked discussion about these places. For example, the wedding featured in Celia’s e-book took place in a church, and during conversation about Celia’s home photos, Amelia talked about her experiences at her church. Amelia’s comment prompted a conversation about places of worship with several students who were working near the composing center. Bernardo, Alan, and Bella said they went to church with their families and prayed there. Two Muslim students commented that they went to the masjid, not church, prompting a more detailed conversation comparing students’ worship experiences. Two weeks after this conversation about students’ places of worship, Abdi brought in a photo he had taken of his television showing pilgrims at the Ka’ba in Mecca. In his e-book, he explained the importance of the religious site and the pilgrimage. During his e-book presentation, his peers eagerly asked him for more details. Students wanted both to share about their families’ experiences and learn about what their peers did differently. Such intercultural exchanges were facilitated by the digital images included in e-books.

The affordances of digital photos While it is not a new idea to invite students to use home photos as part of school lessons, digital cameras and touchscreen tablets with open-ended, multimodal composing apps have several features that are particularly important for designing culturally and linguistically sustaining instruction for emergent bilinguals. First, digital cameras and tablets are increasingly affordable, allowing us to put them in the hands of all students as tools for recording their experiences and interests. As with Delia’s pictures of her parents’ wedding photo, when children are in control of the camera, they produce visual content that foregrounds their own perspectives and cultural experiences. 333

Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe

Browsing children’s photographs and acting as the audience for their books provides both peers and teachers with important insights into the author’s life. Such conversations also promote intercultural sharing and exchange, as illustrated in the expanded web of discussion of wedding traditions and places of worship that followed the sharing of Delia’s book. From an instructional design perspective, asking children to take and compose e-books that feature their own photos creates an authentic purpose for authoring that is both culturally and personally relevant. Second, the small size and mobility of digital devices makes it easy for them to travel with students between school, home, and community locations. When home photos are returned to school, they provide an opportunity for students to bring their out-of-school experiences into the classroom as a valued part of the official literacy curriculum. From an instructional design standpoint, this is particularly important. Given the diversity of cultural and linguistic experiences of the rapidly globalizing student populations served in classes like Ms. Trenton’s, it is a continuing challenge for teachers to locate literature and instructional materials that reflect the cultural and linguistic experiences of all students. When children and families have access to digital cameras and tablets, they can partner with teachers to provide culturally relevant content for literacy instruction.

Composing with sound recordings in Ms. Trenton’s classroom While page-based composing has traditionally offered children opportunities to combine writing with drawings, digital composing further expands opportunities to create multimodal texts with sound. The sound recording tools available on digital tablets have been particularly important, given our interest in finding ways to support emergent bilinguals’ use of their heritage languages in school contexts where most instruction is in English. In Ms. Trenton’s classroom, students used the tablet’s sound recording feature to create oral narrations for e-book pages. As seen in Delia’s wedding photo page (Figure 23.2), they often included written and oral messages in more than one language, and strategically placed samelanguage text and oral recording icons next to each other. Although students did not always know how to write in their heritage language, sound recordings allowed them to use their more-developed heritage language speaking skills to present their messages and to link them to text written in English. E-book audiences could then listen to written messages in languages that they did not speak, understand the message when it was also recorded in English, and learn words and phrases in a new language. When students collaborated with others who spoke the same heritage language, they moved back and forth between their languages as they considered the best translations for their messages. Same-language peers provided an immediate audience with whom they could communicate in their heritage language and be understood. Moreover, same-language peers formed a language community within the classroom, and this normalized using and hearing their heritage language at school. In Ms. Trenton’s classroom, students were also encouraged to work with peers from different linguistic backgrounds to add translations in their peers’ languages. Cross-linguistic collaborations provided opportunities for language learning and language coaching as students taught their peers new words in exchange for learning others’ languages. For example, José (a Spanish-English bilingual), worked with Abdi (a Somali-Arabic-English multilingual), to compose Spanish and Somali oral messages for an e-book page about José’s pet bird (see Figure 23.3). Abdi first read José’s written message in Spanish, and José coached him on the pronunciation. Then, Ms. Miller encouraged Abdi to teach them the Somali word for bird. Finally, Abdi orally recorded both the Somali and Spanish translations in José’s book. 334

Young children’s e-books

Figure 23.3 José’s pet bird e-book page; Abdi records: [Spanish] “Este es mi pajarito”; Abdi records: “This is José’s bird”; Abdi records: [Somali] “Shumber”.

In the process of creating multilingual oral recordings, Abdi, José, and Ms. Miller were all positioned as language learners, and Abdi and José took on the roles of language coaches. When students took on these roles, they realized what kinds of supports they needed to provide to others to teach them new words, and they understood what kinds of behaviors they needed to engage in to support their language learning processes. They learned that their approximations were a valuable part of that process, and that all learners, even adults, make approximations as they learn new words. Last, these exchanges provided a purpose for all students, even those who were the only speaker of a particular language, to compose in their heritage languages. Later, when Abdi presented his first e-book with Somali oral recordings, his peers were impressed. Angel commented that he had not known that Abdi spoke Somali, and he thought that “was cool”. Ms. Trenton and Ms. Miller responded that they hoped Abdi would teach them Somali. After this presentation, Abdi started including Somali in his e-books and teaching his peers Somali with increasing enthusiasm. The sound recording feature and combination of written and oral messages made it possible for students to communicate with linguistically diverse audiences in their e-books. Additionally, Abdi and his peers developed another foundational piece of the language learning process – motivation to learn a new language and a positive attitude toward the language and its speakers (Cummins 2000). Teachers also found translation events while composing sound recordings to be generative opportunities for metalinguistic conversations focused on cross-language comparisons of phonics, grammar, and vocabulary. For example, as Ms. Trenton composed with students, Daniela orally recorded the message, Estos son mis pájaros [These are my birds]. On a subsequent page, Daniela wrote the message, Este es mi tio [This is my uncle]. When Ms. Trenton noticed that Daniela wrote mi in the second message, she asked Daniela and Bella about it: “What is the difference when you write mi and mis with S?” Ms. Trenton’s question prompted Daniela to consider the meanings of the words mi and mis in Spanish and their relation to the English word my (i.e. Mi and mis both mean my, but mis is used to modify a plural noun). Though Daniela did not provide a fully developed answer, she began the valuable learning process of metalinguistic reflection on connections between Spanish and English. 335

Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe

The affordances of composing with digital sound recordings Overall, the addition of sound recordings to children’s digital texts afforded new opportunities for multimodal meaning-making and language learning. First, sound recordings provided opportunities for children to use their more-developed heritage language speaking skills to participate in meaningful school tasks – even when teachers did not themselves speak those languages. The combination of oral recordings and writing made it possible for students to represent their heritage languages, communicate with an audience of peers and classroom adults who did and did not speak their heritage languages, and teach their audience about their languages. Second, the task of creating bilingual or multilingual texts also encouraged metalinguistic insights about connections between languages and provided important teaching opportunities. Third, in the process of creating and sharing students’ multilingual texts, teachers like Ms. Miller and Ms. Trenton had opportunities to actively and publicly value students’ emerging bilingual skills. Finally, by encouraging children to take up roles as teachers of their heritage languages and by encouraging others to adopt the role of language learners, teachers positioned emergent bilingual students as experts – a role typically less available to them in English-dominant classrooms. Overall, digital tablets with sound recording tools provided the technical capacity to use speech as a mode for creating multilingual digital texts. In turn, multilingual e-book composing activities provided opportunities for teachers to showcase children’s bilingual skills in positive ways and to promote a supportive context for translanguaging and sharing in the classroom.

Public sharing of e-books in Ms. Trenton’s classroom The final feature of digital tools that we will discuss in this chapter is the capacity of digital tools to facilitate public sharing of children’s e-books. During composing, children and adults in Ms. Trenton’s classroom often gathered around the large screens of digital tablets to browse, discuss, and collaboratively compose with children’s photos. These informal sharing sessions impacted children’s learning and future composing as seen in the earlier example where Celia shared a wedding photo she planned to write about in her e-book. Discussion around Celia’s photo launched a web of conversation, composing, and intercultural sharing related to places of worship that eventually culminated in Abdi’s book on the topic of pilgrimages to Mecca. Twice a week, children also had opportunities to project their e-books on the big screen as seen in Figure 23.4. Teachers used whole-group e-book sharing sessions as important occasions for building positive norms around multilingual sharing and to celebrate students’

Figure 23.4  Celia presenting an e-book page featuring her mother. 336

Young children’s e-books

heritage language skills. This was illustrated earlier in the account of Abdi’s presentation of his book with Somali-English oral recordings. Opportunities to share e-books with the class helped to build peer interest in the author’s topics and to publicly value the student’s interests and expertise.

The affordances of digital tools for promoting author–audience sharing The importance of opportunities for students to share their texts with peers and other audiences has long been recognized by process approaches to writing instruction (e.g. Calkins 1994; Short, Harste, and Burke 1996). Author–audience interaction creates motivation and an authentic purpose for writing. This is also true for authors of digital texts. In Ms. Trenton’s classroom, digital tools afforded easy ways to make e-books visible for group sharing. Audience interactions were central to the design of culturally sustaining literacy pedagogy in several ways. First, presenting finished e-books on the big screen gave students a forum for making their work public, so that more people could learn about, connect with, and place value on their heritage languages, cultural experiences, and families. Second, for emergent bilinguals, e-book presentations provided students with a meaningful purpose and audience for translanguaging in their English-dominant classroom. The purpose shifted away from writing in English for a monolingual teacher to writing across languages and modes for peers and adults with diverse language backgrounds. In this authentic context, students strategically composed with different languages, sound recordings, and photos, with their audience and purposes in mind. Third, when students made their e-books public for peers and teachers, published e-books became models of culturally and linguistically relevant texts for the classroom. Starting with Ms. Trenton’s multilingual demonstration e-book, all students had models of their heritage languages in classroom literacy materials. Using digital tools and tapping students’ heritage language abilities, Ms. Trenton and her students could easily produce multilingual texts featuring the specific languages spoken by members of the class. Fourth, when e-books were shared with the group, family members’ contributions to e-books through heritage language journal entries, voice recordings, and home photos invited inquiry into home and community linguistic and cultural practices. Students and teachers were curious about others’ languages and experiences and open to differences in the classroom. During e-book presentations, students and teachers had opportunities to question, to discuss word meanings, to make connections, and to build a place for their languages and experiences in the curriculum. Interacting with authors around their texts encouraged respectful intercultural inquiry. Foregrounding students’ e-books as part of whole-group instruction communicated to students that their languages and experiences were welcome, valuable, and useful in the classroom.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have explored how the affordances of digital tools can be leveraged to support translingual instruction and intercultural sharing in multilingual classrooms. Researchers and educators (e.g. García and Kleifgen 2010) working from translingual perspectives have argued that, for emergent bilinguals, linguistically sustaining environments must support and value students’ continued use of their heritage languages as tools for communication and learning. In multilingual classrooms in the United States, this often means that teachers need to support students from many different cultural backgrounds, speaking a variety of languages they themselves do not speak, in an environment where English is the dominant language. 337

Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe

Faced with this instructional challenge, we have argued that digital devices have several affordances that can be used to good advantage when the goal is to make students’ cultures and languages the center of the curriculum. First, using the sound recording capabilities of touchscreen tablets, students can create multilingual materials that include all of the languages spoken in the classroom. Our findings align with other studies that have shown how composing with sound recordings and speech recognition software supports young children as they learn to represent their ideas in writing (Genlott and Grönlund 2013; Rowe et al. 2014; Åberg et al. 2015; Baker 2017). Moreover, sound recordings are an avenue for children to include their heritage languages in e-books, even when they do not know how to write in their heritage languages (Rowe and Miller 2016). In the present study, children coordinated the layout of the page and placement of text and oral recording icons to represent and teach others their heritage languages. Sound recordings afford opportunities for students to use their more-developed heritage language speaking abilities to express their meanings, and to act as language teachers for their peers and teachers. Furthermore, invitations to create multilingual digital texts promote metalinguistic reflection and cross-linguistic collaborations. Sound recordings open up possibilities for children’s and families’ heritage languages to be represented and valued in the classroom. When children teach others to speak in their languages for sound recordings, they have a powerful purpose for translanguaging and use their heritage languages as tools for learning in the classroom. Second, the mobility of digital cameras and tablets allows children to transport them to home and community spaces. As reported in previous research, the mobility of home and community photos traveling from home to school provides opportunities for families to become virtually part of the literacy content of the classroom (Martínez-Álvarez and Ghiso 2014; Rowe and Miller 2016). Students return to school with images, sound recordings, and print that reflects their personal interests and the cultural and language practices of their families and communities. When children use these materials in their e-books, they create instructional materials that are culturally and personally relevant, and children are recognized as cultural and topical experts. Third, the conversation and collaboration that surround digital content from home afford opportunities for respectful intercultural exchange. Other researchers have shown how composing with tablets provides opportunities for collaboration (Beschorner and Hutchison 2013; Falloon and Khoo 2014). We have found that collaborative composing with home photos among participants who shared and did not share cultural and linguistic backgrounds promoted a supportive context for sharing and translanguaging. As children and teachers had open-ended opportunities to discuss home photos and use them to compose, they learned about and connected with others’ social worlds. Digital home content sparks cross-cultural discussions that affirm and sustain cultural pluralism in the classroom. Fourth, digital tools can facilitate connections between child authors and interested audiences. Children’s digital texts can be shared on the tablet’s screen, but also projected in larger formats, or digitally shared with family members via the internet. Digital sharing provides a multilingual audience and an authentic purpose for multilingual composing. When children present their e-books to the whole class, it signals that translanguaging and sharing are central to whole-group curricular activities, and students realize their cultural and linguistic resources have a valuable place in the curriculum. Finally, though we believe that digital tools can play an important role in creating culturally and linguistically sustaining instruction, we also caution that a simple view that equates the affordances of digital tools with their physical properties is incomplete. As Hammond (2010: 206) suggests: “The essence of an affordance is that it ‘points both ways’ to the object and to 338

Young children’s e-books

the organism. An affordance is an emergent property of an object”. The affordances of digital tools are necessarily shaped by the ideologies guiding the design of the instructional activities in which they are used (Wertsch 1991; Greeno 1994; Carr 2000). We were powerfully reminded of how ideologies shape instruction and tools’ affordances during Angel’s end-ofthe-year interview. Angel said he could share about “my culture, languages, family, what we do, things at our house” in Ms. Trenton’s literacy class. However, when asked about using his language (Spanish) in other classes in school, Angel responded that he did not like to use Spanish in a different teacher’s class because he would get in trouble. Two classrooms in the same school can sometimes afford very different opportunities for children’s participation in instruction. Any attempt to use digital tools to support translanguaging and sharing in the classroom must be coupled with the development of a translingual orientation to literacy. Future research needs to focus on how to use digital tools to develop translanguaging and culturally sustaining ideologies and pedagogies at the school and even the district level so that students’ and families’ linguistic and cultural resources are valuable and useful across classrooms, grades, and schools.

References Åberg, E. S., Lantz-Andersson, A., and Pramling, N. (2014). “Once upon a time there was a mouse”: children’s technology-mediated storytelling in preschool class. Early Child Development and Care, 184(11): 1583–1598. Åberg, E. S., Lantz-Andersson, A., and Pramling, N. (2015). “I think it should be a little kind of exciting”: a technology-mediated story-making activity in early childhood education. In: S. Garvis and N. Lemon (eds.), Understanding Digital Technologies and Young Children (pp. 74–91). London: Routledge. Baker, E. A. (2017). Apps, iPads, and literacy: examining the feasibility of speech recognition in a firstgrade classroom. Reading Research Quarterly, 52(3): 291–310. doi: 10.1002/rrq.170 Beschorner, B., and Hutchison, A. (2013). iPads as a literacy teaching tool in early childhood. International Journal of Education in Mathematics, Science, and Technology, 1(1): 16–24. Bigelow, E. (2013). iWrite: Digital Message Making Practices of Young Children. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University. Calkins, L. M. (1994). The Art of Teaching Writing. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Canagarajah, A. S. (2013). Negotiating translingual literacy: an enactment. Research in the Teaching of English, 48(1): 40–67. Canagarajah, S. (2015). Clarifying the relationship between translingual practice and L2 writing: Addressing learner identities. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(4): 415–440. Carr, M. (2000). Technological affordance, social practice, and learning narratives in an early childhood setting. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 10(1): 61–79. Charmaz, K. (2000). Grounded theory: objectivist and constructivist methods. In: N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research. 2nd ed. (pp. 509–535). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Cummins, J. (2000). Language, Power, and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children Caught in the Crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Ltd. Cummins, J. (2007). Rethinking monolingual instructional strategies in multilingual classrooms. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 10: 221–240. Cummins, J. (2012). The intersection of cognitive and sociocultural factors in the development of reading comprehension among immigrant students. Reading & Writing, 25: 1973–1990. Dalton, B., Robinson, K., Lavvorn, J., Smith, B. E., Alvey, T., Mo, E., and Proctor, P. (2015). Fifthgrade students’ multimodal compositions: modal use and design intentionality. Elementary School Journal, 115(4): 548–569. Erlandson, D. A., Harris, E. L., Skipper, B. L., and Allen, S. D. (1993). Doing Naturalistic Research: A Guide to Methods. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Falloon, G., and Khoo, E. (2014). Exploring young students’ talk in iPad-supported collaborative learning environments. Computers & Education, 77: 13–28. Fraiberg, S. (2010). Composition 2.0: toward a multilingual and multimodal framework. College Composition and Communication, 62(1): 100–126. 339

Mary E. Miller and Deborah Wells Rowe

García, O. (2014). U.S. Spanish and education: global and local intersections. Review of Research in Education, 38(1): 58–80. García, O., and Kleifgen, J. A. (2010). Educating Emergent Bilinguals: Policies, Programs, and Practices for English Language Learners. New York: Teachers College Press. García, O., and Sylvan, C. E. (2011). Pedagogies and practices in multilingual classrooms: singularities in pluralities. The Modern Language Journal, 95(3): 385–400. García, O., and Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. García, O., Woodley, H. H., Flores, N., and Chu, H. (2012). Latino emergent bilingual youth in high schools: transcaring strategies for academic success. Urban Education, 48(6): 798–827. Genlott, A. A., and Grönlund, Å. (2013). Improving literacy skills through learning reading by writing: the iWTR method presented and tested. Computers & Education, 67: 98–104. Greeno, J. (1994). Gibson’s affordances. Psychological Review, 101(2): 336–342. Hammond, M. (2010). What is an affordance and can it help us understand the use of ICT in education? Education Information Technology, 15: 205–217. Hornberger, N. H., and Link, H. (2012). Translanguaging in today’s classrooms: a biliteracy lens. Theory into Practice, 51: 239–247. Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K., and Panedero, C. G. (2014). Children’s engagement with educational iPad apps: insights from a Spanish classroom. Computers & Education, 71: 175–184. Lynch, J., and Redpath, T. (2014). “Smart” technologies in early years literacy education: a meta-narrative of paradigmatic tensions in iPad use in an Australian preparatory classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 14(2): 147–174. Marsh, J. (2016). The digital literacy skills and competencies of children of pre-school age. Media Education, 7(2): 178–195. Martínez-Álvarez, P., and Ghiso, M. P. (2014). Multilingual, multimodal compositions in technologymediated hybrid spaces. In: R. S. Anderson and C. Mims (eds.), Handbook of Research on Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings (pp. 193–218). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference. Martínez-Álvarez, P., Ghiso, M. P., and Martínez, I. (2012). Creative literacies and learning with Latino emergent bilinguals. LEARNing Landscapes, 6(1): 273–298. Miller, M. E. (2017). Translingual Home to School Connections: Including Students’ Heritage Languages and Cultural Experiences in the Curriculum through Family eBooks. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University. Miller, M. E., and Rowe, D. W. (2014). “Two voces”: pre-kindergarteners’ translanguaging practices in dual language eBook composing events. In: P. J. Dunston, S. K. Fullerton, M. W. Cole, D. Herro, J. A. Malloy, P. M. Wilder, and K. N. Headley (eds.), 63rd Yearbook of the Literacy Research Association (pp. 243–258). Altamonte Springs, FL: Literacy Research Association. Murillo, L. A. (2012). Learning from bilingual family literacies. Language Arts, 90(1): 18–29. Naqvi, R., Schmidt, E., and Krickhan, M. (2014). Evolving 50–50% bilingual pedagogy in Alberta: what does the research say? Frontiers in Psychology, 5(413): 1–8. National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA) (2017). Fast facts: EL profiles. Retrieved from https://ncela.ed.gov/files/fast_facts/05-19-2017/ProfilesOfELs_FastFacts.pdf Palmer, D. K., Martínez, R. A., Mateus, S. G., and Henderson, K. (2014). Reframing the debate on language separation: toward a vision for translanguaging pedagogies in the dual language classroom. Modern Language Journal, 98(3): 757–772. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: a needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3): 93–97. doi: 0.3102/0013189X12441244 Price, S., Jewitt, C., and Crescenzi, L. (2015). The role of iPads in pre-school children’s mark making development. Computers & Education, (87): 131–141. Red Jumper Studio. (2015). Book Creator for Android (Version 4.0). Retrieved from www.playstoresales. com/app/book-creator/ Rowe, D. W., and Miller, M. E. (2016). Designing for diverse classrooms: using iPads and digital cameras to compose eBooks with emergent bilingual/biliterate four year olds. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 16(4): 425–472. doi: 10.1177/1468798415593622 Rowe, D. W., Miller, M. E., and Pacheco, M. B. (2014). Preschoolers as digital designers: composing dual language eBooks using touchscreen computer tablets. In: R. S. Anderson and C. Mims (eds.), Handbook of Research on Digital Tools for Writing Instruction in K-12 Settings (pp. 279–306). Hershey, PA: Information Science Reference.

340

Young children’s e-books

Short, K. G., Harste, J. C., and Burke, C. L. (1996). Creating Classroom for Authors and Inquirers. 2nd ed. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Siegel, M. (1995). More than words: the generative power of transmediation for learning. Canadian Journal of Education, 20(4): 455–475. Sleeter, C. E. (2001). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools: research and the overwhelming presence of whiteness. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(2): 94–106. Velasco, P., and García, O. (2014). Translanguaging and the writing of bilingual learners. Bilingual Research Journal, 37: 6–23. Wertsch, J. V. (1991). Voices of the Mind: A Sociocultural Approach to Mediated Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

341

24 Virtual play Developing a baroque sensibility Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant

Introduction The relatively short history of scholarship on virtual worlds and videogames is multi-disciplinary, drawing on a diversity of research traditions, paradigms and explanatory frameworks in ways that seem quite appropriate to such a new and developing phenomenon. Interests inevitably vary, ranging from concerns with possible links between aggression and videogames (e.g. Bensley and Van Eenwyk 2001), the potential of videogames for learning (e.g. Mitchell and Savill-Smith 2004) and the use of virtual worlds in education settings (e.g. Kim, Lee and Thomas 2012). Despite their obvious popularity and attraction, both virtual worlds and videogames have continued to provoke negative reactions from mainstream media (Gillen and Merchant 2013). On the one hand their immersive quality has generated the fear that large numbers of children and young people are spending endless hours online, squandering money on upgrades and accessories, and on the other that they are becoming morally degenerate through over-exposure to sex and violence. There is little evidence to support these claims, but they do build on isolated highprofile cases, and play into a more generalized moral panic in which narratives about the internet and new technology as a ‘corrosive’ force in society predominate. Popular perceptions of gaming and virtual world play as solitary activity have now been called into question by empirical research. For example, Tuukkanen, Iqbal and Kankaanranta (2010) observed how young people are socially active in virtual worlds, and Schott and Kambouri (2003) in an ethnography of gamers, argue for a focus on the “social envelope” of gaming, showing how even playerto-game interactions often take place in front of a real-time audience of peers. The increasing popularity of virtual worlds and games has led some to think of them as “new play spaces” (Kafai 2010: 4) or part of a wider multiverse or “playscape” (Abrams, Rowsell and Merchant 2017). The majority of published studies in this field are based on research with teenagers or young adults who are active gamers. There has been less research that focuses on young children’s engagement with screen-based games, although interest in redefining play for a digital age is increasing. For instance, in an empirical study of 3- and 4-year-olds using iPad games, Verenikina and Kervin (2011) described the activity that they observed as these young children engaged with tablets as “digital play”. Building on this and other studies, Marsh et al. (2016) used their observations of children in the early years to locate “digital play” within existing 342

Virtual play

categories of playful activity, thus working against the tendency to see play and technology as being in some way distinct (Marsh 2010). Given the rapid development of tablet and smartphone apps designed for young children and the interest this has sparked among educators (Flewitt, Messer and Kucirkova 2015; Burnett et al. 2017), new avenues for research are opening with an increased attention on how young children accommodate screen-based interactions within ongoing imaginative and exploratory play (e.g. Fleer 2014; Wohlwend 2015). The emphasis of this research departs from the body of work on virtual worlds and videogames in interesting ways. Not only is the focus on a younger age range distinctive and much needed, but the development of apps with a lower entry threshold designed for devices that are portable enough to be brought into different contexts raises new possibilities and generates new questions. Importantly, moreover, it recognizes that play is always more than what happens on-screen in “gameplay” (Dovey and Kennedy 2006: 7). With this in mind, we use the term “virtual play” (Burnett and Merchant 2017; Bailey, Burnett and Merchant 2018) to refer specifically to digital practices that involve participating in virtual or gaming environments, while accommodating both what happens on- and off-screen (Burnett and Merchant 2017). In our own work with primary school children, for example, we have explored the social, material and semiotic congeries that emerge as children interact on- and off-line in classroom-and-virtual spaces. Although some of young children’s virtual play may be observable on screens, it is always emplaced and embodied and frequently involves being together with others, working alongside them, collaboratively or in close proximity to them (Burnett and Bailey 2014; Burnett and Merchant 2014). Consequently, investigating on-/ off-screen meaning making becomes a complex endeavour that includes the multiple and kaleidoscopic ways in which such activities are often folded into one another. Getting a naturalistic view of young children’s digital play in some early years settings is further confounded by the free-flowing context of “continuous provision” (Bryce-Clegg 2013) in which children may take up or discard activities with the ebb and flow of their interest. We argue, therefore, that there is a need for research methodologies and conceptual frameworks that engage expansively with virtual play, recognizing its complexity, fluidity and the multiple ways in which material and immaterial dimensions entangle together (Burnett et al. 2014). In this chapter, we contribute to these developments by exploring what can be gained by bringing a baroque sensibility to our thinking with and about virtual play. In developing a theme from a previous study (Burnett and Merchant 2016), we show how this baroque sensibility, by recognizing and interrogating multiplicity, allows us to illuminate and explore how different interests and engagements intersect during virtual play. We illustrate this perspective using an episode from a collaborative study with Michelle Neumann1 in which we observed children’s uses of iPads in an early years setting. The next section expands on our reading of baroque sensibility.

Turning toward the baroque Arguing that all research methodologies help construct the realities they seek to investigate, Law has noted how research often works to distil or codify experience and, in doing so, smooths out the complexity of lived reality, privileging certain ways of knowing and being (Law 2004; Law and Ruppert 2016: 19). It is in unsettling such acts of distillation and codification that Law expands on what might be gained by turning to the baroque. Most often associated with art, music and architecture that countered the rationality of the Reformation, the baroque manifests in rich, ebullient, luxurious creations that make their impact through a “sensuous materiality” (Kwa 2002: 6) rather than reasoned argument. For Law its attraction is 343

Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant

that it does not set out to generate a coherent standalone explanation, but to disrupt and unsettle, to bring the unknown into play by evoking absences and gaps. It can, therefore, provoke generative ways of engaging with the complexities of everyday realities, bringing into play dimensions that often prove elusive in academic research: feeling, embodiment, materiality and excess; specificity (rather than generalization); an acceptance of formlessness (rather than structures), and a recognition that research itself is performative (and hence helps generate realities). In developing a sensibility to such baroque ways of knowing, Law highlights six inter-related techniques which he suggests typify this orientation (developed in Law 2016 from Law 2011). We paraphrase these as: ••

•• •• •• •• ••

Theatricality: it works like live performance, having its effect through being together with what is presented in the moment. At the same time, it does not hide the work done to create the illusion; just as the theatre does, it foregrounds affect, while wearing its artifice on its sleeve. Boundlessness: it undoes boundaries between inside and outside, blurring boundaries between observer and observed. Researchers, by implication, are always part of the picture and can never stay completely outside. Heterogeneity: it works through combining different materials and media, juxtaposing these to explore different ways of knowing. Folding – both one and two: Law uses the metaphor of the Mobius strip to explore how different ways of knowing produce a multiplicity in which each perspective is folded into the other. Distribution, movement, self-consciousness: different ways of knowing are always possible – our perspective creates particular viewpoints. Mediation: baroque technique can mediate our engagement with excess, with the things that escape from rational accounts.

Together these techniques tackle the illusive dimensions of everyday life head on. They stay with the mess, embrace multiplicities and contradictions, and hold together different ontologies. In many ways the baroque – with its lavishness and excess – seems a world apart from virtual play in the early years. For us though, it offers a way of examining the multiplicities of virtual play, while also keeping the mechanics of research in full view; a way of showing our working, if you like, while simultaneously holding on to our fascination with the emplaced, embodied, ephemeral and often ebullient qualities of young children’s play in and around virtual environments. In our work, we have been intrigued, like Law, by the significance of feeling, bodies, materiality and excess, and have been uncomfortable with accounts of experience that identify structures or patterns. Like Law too, we are interested in how research itself enters into the world it seeks to describe, a process which for us means we need to think carefully not just about what and how we research, but about the liveliness of that research once it leaves our hands. We propose that, in doing all of this, the baroque provides a powerful counterpoint to the ordered accounts of literacy that dominate public debate on literacy in education (or at least in England where we work). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore the potential and politics of the baroque in great depth (for further discussion see Kwa 2002; MacLure 2006; Law 2011; Law and Ruppert 2016). Moreover, in this chapter we do not range as far as we could in seeing (or feeling) where the baroque might take us in examining virtual play – this is something we return to later. However, we do suggest that developing a baroque sensibility – through evoking the techniques listed above – can offer methodological and conceptual directions for researching virtual play. 344

Virtual play

In illustrating these directions, we expand on an episode of virtual play below. We present this episode through a series of what we call ‘stacking stories’, juxtaposing different representations in order to destabilize the notion of a singular, reliable telling (Burnett and Merchant 2014).

Puppet Pals: an episode of virtual play The following episode unfolds within the free flow of activity in an early years setting. Here, most of what occurs is child-initiated, set in a context in which various opportunities for play and learning are provided by the design of the room (consisting of various areas for construction, role play, book browsing and so on) and its material resources (including bricks, books and various toys). Adults in this environment encourage participation, either by inviting children into planned activity (such as baking or printing) or by following their interest. The intention is to include iPads as another kind of ‘invitation’ and Guy is close at hand as a guide. The stacking stories below offer different versions of a single episode of virtual play using Puppet Pals. The Puppet Pals app, designed by Polished Play, provides the opportunity for children to create on-screen puppet shows, importing backdrops and characters on to a virtual stage. Characters, including a fairy, a dragon and a chipmunk, are provided and can be moved around on the stage. Puppet shows can be easily created, recording movement and accompanying dialogue to be played back later on. Specifically, we stack together: (1) Guy’s story of participation in the virtual play; (2) screenshots from a Puppet Pals performance produced through such play; and (3) Cathy’s account of playing back a video she recorded of this episode. All are partial stories, stories that attempt to fold together the experience of being with, and looking back at virtual play and which, placed together, open up as many gaps as they close. Following the stories, we expand on our use of the baroque in two ways: first in considering what the stacking stories offer as a baroque take on virtual play; and second in using baroque techniques to think with happens during children’s play.

Story One: Playing The first is Guy’s story written from fieldnotes and memory. In it, Guy is sitting on the floor, in the book corner, 3- and 4-year-olds are moving around the room, engaging with activities that attract their interest. Momentarily Guy is on his own, and then play begins: −−

Are you down here on your own? I’ll come and join you then,

says Nicola and she draws up the long bench next to me. Nicola has a go at making cakes for Peppa’s birthday. −−

Look I’m making buns,

she says. Jenny joins us with her sunny smile. Erin comes over with a surprise drink. It’s the vet in a metal teapot! There’s some giggling. −−

Don’t scream!

warns Erin when Jen opens the teapot lid. Some of the children are being invited to join a sticking activity. Jack comes back and sits with me. I try Puppet Pals. He likes this. He likes making the characters large 345

Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant

and small – but he won’t offer any commentary. After a few minutes he’s off, the iPad is abandoned face down on the carpet. Nicola returns and she’s straight into Puppet Pals. We improvise a quick try-out with the fairy helping the chipmunk to fly and then she’s got it. She wants the full works! Dragon, raven, fairy, chipmunk . . . and the Prince! And then she’s off at breakneck speed into the narrative. It’s no good being a passive observer. It just won’t do! I’m quickly recruited to play the Prince (against my better judgement). I’m not allowed to the fireworks party – it’s for girls only, apparently. I protest, but she won’t have any of it. Marriage, however, is on the cards. But even if I do get married I still can’t go to the fireworks party. I try to explain that I’d actually prefer the fireworks to marriage . . . but unfortunately that’s not acceptable. I’m given time out for insolence. *** This account has a distinctive point of view beginning with the ebb and flow of children’s interest in what is on the iPads, and what this unfamiliar adult might be doing in the room, or both. The Puppet Pals episode emerges out of ongoing activity and is perhaps only evident in the artifice of Guy’s account which foregrounds the virtual play. Can the episode be said to begin with Nicola’s opening approach, or her return, or at the point at which the play narrative begins? The boundaries here are uncertain, to say the least. Folded into the account is the vet-in-a-teapot – Erin has used a figure from table-top play and a toy teapot for a surprise drink. Is this an equally important episode? For Erin, it just could be. The point of view also has a reflexive quality, we might also note the self-consciousness evident in the comment about passive observation and the concerns about being recruited to play a stereotypical role.

Story Two: The play In this story we combine a series of six screenshots we have selected from Nicola’s Puppet Pals play with extracts from her voice commentary as captured on the iPad (see Figure 24.1). This material is sourced from Nicola’s Puppet Pals play which was saved on the iPad and it offers another, partial view of the episode we have chosen to focus on. It tames the theatricality of the situation by dwelling on what was archived in the app, mediating our sense of what occurred. Although the images are taken from the episode, their rather jerky movement and hesitant coordination with the dialogue is smoothed out. In the transcription of the dialogue, we have focused on what could be seen as relevant to the performance, ignoring the background conversations, adult voices and sounds from other devices that were also recorded. It focuses on the Puppet Pals play as a specific production, its narrative texture woven somewhere between the adult–child dyad and the screen, highlighting some of the resources that Nicola is drawing on – her knowledge of traditional tales, popular culture, of princes, princesses . . . and firework parties.

Story Three: Watching the play Our final story was written by Cathy based on video footage she took of ongoing play which captured part of the Puppet Pals episode. It begins as she moved across the classroom to film

346

Figure 24.1  Screenshots from Nicola’s Puppet Pals.

Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant

what was happening in this particular corner when she realized that Nicola, sitting next to Guy with an iPad, seemed to be talking to him in role. The episode took place at Halloween. *** The book box, abandoned card matching games, books, dolls lying with legs in the air, brightly coloured posters with greetings in different languages, the door-handle placed up high out of the reach of small hands, a list I can’t quite make out, of rules I think for staff as it’s in small adult print – all the things the video-camera has filmed as I’ve moved to position myself so I can capture what’s happening on the carpet. As I focus on the carpet area, the camera catches traces of other stuff going on. As the corner moves into frame, Guy is sitting between two girls: Nicola with cat’s ears and a spider drawn on her cheek. Jen, a witch, and Fred, his vampire T-shirt now obscured by his jumper, is stepping up and down on the bench next to them, watching them. Guy is sitting with legs out in front, Nicola leaning slightly against them, Jen with her legs out front like Guy. Both Jen and Nicola are holding iPads. Jen, Nicola and Guy make a cosy grouping, book-sharing-esque, and Fred soon wanders off. Jack has the Peppa Pig app open. Guy is watching Nicola though who has Puppet Pals. My interest must have been caught by Puppet Pal play so the camera zooms in, and Fred, Jen and the rest are out of the frame. The screen displays a scene of castle gardens. Various figures have been brought into play: princesses I presume, a prince. I can’t quite see as I was filming from behind, and Nicola’s head’s in the way. The scene is framed by lavish curtains drawn apart and the edges of a stage of wooden floorboards, reminiscent I guess of the kind of Victorian theatre I haven’t been in for years. I wonder if the children have. The reference I guess is really to help adults make sense of what is intended: the cartoon figures plus theatre signifiers mean Puppet Play. Nicola, still leaning against Guy, props her iPad on her lap. Her eyes are fixed on it, and she’s talking. It’s hard to make out what she says on the recording. Carefully she drags a figure across the scene. In my memory this episode is an explosion of creativity, an unstoppable storyline which swept Guy along with it, and which ended with a flourish, the playing of the scene. Maybe because I found it all so enchanting. Watching the video back though, everything happens much more slowly than I’d remembered it. ‘I’ll be very good’, says Guy as prince, high voiced, timid but keen to please. His face is blank, though, and body still as he voices the character that Nicola drags across the palace with her finger. His eyes are fixed on the screen too. ‘OK’, says Nicola as princess, her fingers on the other character now, ‘but you need to stay there.’ At the top of the frame, I see Fred’s feet, still stepping on and off the wooden bench in the background. Nicola keeps the characters moving around the scene, carefully dragging them around the screen, in line I think with whichever one is talking but I’m not sure. ‘I think I’ve finished having timeout now,’ says Guy. There is clearly a whole backstory here that I’ve missed. ‘No’, says Nicola, ‘you need to stay here’, and drags the prince off the scene to the edge of the screen (to the wings?). ‘You can’t really see. You need to stay here’, she says next, dragging the prince back into the centre of the screen/the front of the palace, and moving the iPad onto Guy’s lap as she does so. She looks up at him as he replies: ‘Oh, it’s dark in here’ I’m not really sure what the ‘here’ is as I can’t see the screen now. Is it a location that Nicola is pointing out on the screen, or is it an imaginary ‘here’ that the pair

348

Virtual play

(maybe mainly Nicola?) have made up before I came up with my camera? The parameters of this play were set before I got here. *** In this story, the video works to frame what happened but, even as it does so, it yields more than Cathy as cameraperson had intended. While she had moved over to film Guy and Nicola, much of that episode escapes (it is hard to hear, hard to place without knowing what preceded it), while other goings on invade the frame (Jen with Peppa, Fred’s feet, abandoned toys, and traces of officialdom – in the form of the notice). Cathy’s remembered feelings do not quite map onto observed events. How far then can we bound episodes in time and space: how far were other goings on relevant to the Nicola-Guy-iPad play, and indeed to what was filmed? Where did virtual play end and other kinds of play begin?

A baroque take The above episode refers to some rather ordinary practices that might well feel familiar to most of us who have spent time with young children, whether in early years settings or in the home. It would be easy to read across the stories in terms of developmental stages, noting what they tell us about the children’s levels of engagement, social interaction, oral language and physical development, for example. Or we might apply a socio-cultural frame, focusing perhaps on Nicola’s familiarity with fairy-tale characters or the ease with which she settles into role play and story-sharing-like practices. In many ways, the familiarity of this episode makes it difficult to think with, simply because it feels so familiar (Daniels 2018). It is this familiarity that we attempt to disrupt with a baroque sensibility. In approaching these stacking stories with a baroque sensibility, we draw on the six techniques outlined above in two ways: first, to map how the stories work to generate a baroque sensibility; and second to describe the complexity of virtual play. While we address each of these in turn, we must emphasize here that these two moves (epistemological and methodological) are inextricably linked. Like other methods, these stories also help construct the realities they seek to describe; they do not just describe the world but enter into it (Law 2004). In what follows we begin by drawing out some ways in which the techniques play through our stories, and then go on to explore what they suggest about virtual play. As we piece together these snatches of data (we hope) the sense of coherence is quickly undone. We evoke theatricality in attempting to provide lively depictions of what happens, inviting the reader to imagine ‘being there’ while at the same time pulling back through referencing our own role in generating the stories and the embodied placed realities of this process of representation. The boundaries between experience and representation are muddy – and this is intentional. They are folded into each other, as the threads of each story weave their way through the others, sometimes thickening their texture, sometimes fraying to nothing. Our use of different kinds of stories offers different perspectives that are designed to trouble the idea that this research was about generating objective insights. Through these different representations, we also try to hint at what was missing, at other stories that could have been told. We hope, however, that the three stories generate affects that exceed rational analysis, and – in their incompleteness – suggest other ways of knowing not accounted for here. Table 24.1 summarizes some of the methodological moves made by these stories, mapped against Law’s six techniques. Of course, there is an irony in setting out these six techniques, an irony that, like Law (2011), we fully acknowledge. That is, in enumerating, applying and exemplifying these techniques,

349

Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant Table 24.1  Approaching the baroque through stacking stories

Theatricality

Boundlessness

Heterogeneity

Folding

Distribution

Mediation

Technique of the baroque

Methodological moves

Works like live performance, having its effect through being together with what is presented in the moment. It does not hide the work done to create the illusion; just as the theatre does, it foregrounds affect, while wearing its artifice on its sleeve. Undoes boundaries between inside and outside, blurring boundaries between observer and observed. Researchers, by implication, are always part of the picture and can never stay completely outside. Works through combining different materials and media, juxtaposing these to explore different ways of knowing.

Each story conveys a sense of virtual play as it unfolds moment-bymoment, but at the same time the stories work together to draw attention to the ways in which they are constructed and highlight different affects. The ways in which the virtual play is described make its boundaries with ongoing activity uncertain and show how the researchers are active at different levels in enacting these boundaries. The ways in which the stories are composed are made explicit, and the ways in which they cross over draw attention to complexity, multiplicity and ways of knowing. There is movement across and between the three stories as they tangle and jostle together, selfconsciously aware of each other. The stories of virtual play stack together to provide multiple perspectives, the researchers are alternately subjects and objects of each others’ accounts. The stories are three possible perspectives on virtual play; they do not offer alternative truths or triangulated accounts but suggest that there is always more than we can account for.

Ways of knowing are folded together – producing a multiplicity in which each perspective is folded into the other. Different ways of knowing are always possible – our perspective creates particular viewpoints.

Baroque technique can mediate our engagement with excess, with the things that escape from rational accounts.

we do that very thing the baroque promises to disrupt; we find a pathway through complexity. Nonetheless, this approach perhaps helps to explore aspects of virtual play that escape ordered tellings, and helps us to articulate how our stacking stories both cultivate – and can be read with – a baroque sensibility. In the next section we explore what this baroque sensibility offers us in thinking about virtual play.

Virtual play as baroque Thinking across these stories with a baroque sensibility brings different dimensions of virtual play to the fore. First, it foregrounds how affect arises in such play, how the feeling generated as people and things come together drives on and extends what happens from moment to moment, and how this, in turn, generates further affect. The developing interaction between Guy and Nicola was never planned, but emerged through the co-presence of humans and 350

Virtual play

non-humans in that particular setting. In the first story, there is a sense of movement, of one thing leading to another, as Nicola manipulated the on-screen character and as Guy took up what she offered him in terms of possible ways of being the prince. We might reflect on all the previous doings and sayings that were recruited in this play, previous ways of doing and being story characters, playing with other children, of being teachers, of thinking about stereotypes and so on. Importantly though, when placed together, the stories trouble the idea of emergence as a singular process. Read alone, Story One might generate a sense of virtual play as a linear chain of minor events. This might be valuable in showing how one thing can lead to another in a process of emergence, rather than fitting in with a grand or pre-ordered scheme. However, it would miss other things, such as the other people, places and things present (children and adults, the setting, toys, the time of year, the prospect of Halloween and firework parties), all of which may have played a part in what happened. In this way, the baroque helps to foreground affect – it allows us to be taken up and swept away by a fascination in the moment, but it also confronts us with complexities generated by all those things that come together. As explored earlier, various studies have highlighted how virtual play spans on- and off-screen activity. The baroque – with its focus on boundlessness – draws our attention to the messiness of all this. Each story, in different ways, confounds the possibility of drawing boundaries around virtual play – whether this relates to the beginnings and endings of episodes (Stories One and Two), or to what is counted into virtual play and what is left outside (Stories Two and Three). Indeed, as a reader you might well have drawn very different threads through our stories, as our accounts of this incident met up with your own prior experiences of classrooms, young children and on-/off-screen play. Other ways of being – whether this is being in this setting, being with iPads, or being a researcher or teacher – are folded into what happens moment to moment. This perspective can provide fresh direction for thinking with some well-established ideas. ‘Screen-ness’ for example is a defining feature of virtual play, notwithstanding the work that we and others have done to trouble the on-/off-screen binary. And yet when we read across the stories, ‘screen-ness’ appears as a rather slippery notion. Take the references to iPads, for example. In the three stories, iPad screens sometimes come into view, but often recede into the background or disappear completely. Much of the first story tells of what happens on-screen, but the narrative is told from within the play and screens never actually get a mention. An iPad itself is only referred to specifically when abandoned by Jack; once it lands on the floor, lifeless, it becomes a thing. Before this, it had been a holder of apps, an interactive interface or mediator of other worlds. Story Two foregrounds some of what appeared on-screen, but in its selectivity (showing only snatches of the performance, smoothing out the audio), does so in a way that extracts the storying from its lived reality and elides the materiality of the screen. In the third story, as Cathy seeks to capture what she sees, thingness comes to the fore (with iPads on laps, moved from one to the other, and screens that are swiped and tapped), but the realization of the Puppet Pals performance is rather underplayed, and not fully ‘seen’. Across these stories, the iPads have what might be called a “fluid materiality” (Burnett 2017), variously entering the stories as holders of apps, screens, archives, or as situated in arrangements of arms and legs and other stuff. This example illustrates how participants in virtual play – whether human or non-human – morph as they come into relation with others. Through this work we see virtual play as an expansive concept that includes more than what can be traced on screen – it is play that is also emplaced and embodied and weaves together social, material and semiotic modalities, as the three stories show. A baroque sensitivity helps us to illuminate this multiplicity by highlighting affect, excess and its emergent and ephemeral qualities. But more than this, the baroque also draws attention to the work we do to craft and enact reality. A relational ontology that recognizes the complex entanglements of everyday life cannot avoid the ways in which observers and researchers are always part of what they describe. 351

Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant

Where next with research on virtual play? Of course, the baroque offers just one way of thinking with virtual play. Others have used different approaches. These include: mediated discourse analysis (Wohlwend 2015), constant comparison (Maine 2017) and rhizomic analyses (Bailey 2016). Each of these offers an alternative way of engaging with complexity. In inviting us to think expansively and to be moved not just by reason but by affect, we suggest that the baroque has much to offer. And as we have seen, affect propels activity in unforeseen ways, producing complexity and fluidity – virtual play that is always more than what happens on screen. To work with the baroque is to evoke the kaleidoscopic on-/off-screen experience of virtual play, while also acknowledging the liveliness of research, turning to advantage the way in which representations of reality meet up with thought and practice as they enter the world. In doing so a baroque sensibility works to unsettle or disrupt established ways of knowing or seeing things, and to keep asking – what else is going on? For example, there are many other ways in which reading across these stories would further intensify our sense of the complexity of virtual play, all of which might prove fruitful for future research. In stacking together stories of this early years setting, moreover, we could have gone much further. We could have added other stories: from the perspectives of children, the iPads and other adults, of course, but also other stories of local and more global reach that would pay homage to the environmental, economic, political and cultural moves that play through what happened moment to moment in this early years setting (Burnett and Merchant 2017). We might also focus on the chains of translations that happen at the level of game design. What we do suggest, however, is that we need to hold together these bigger moves with our exploration of children’s ongoing, emergent activity, rather than bounding our research in ways that hold these apart.

Coda The recorded voices attract some attention. Annie comes over with a tray of tarts and Guy takes one and puts it to his mouth. Jack comes over and squats next to Nicola’s iPad, watching, maybe listening. He touches the screen and it slips to the floor. Nicola picks it up, and re-angles it, so it’s just for her and Guy, ‘Look’, she says to him. The tarts are thrust into the frame again and this time Jack takes one, consolation maybe for being excluded from the Puppet Pals showing. Guy still has his tart and looks at the camera/me, a brief acknowledgement of the absurdity and loveliness of it all? Jack tries again, from behind the iPad this time, peering over the top at the scene, tart in hand. Nicola re-angles again so he can’t see and he gets the message and moves off.

Note 1 iPad Use in an Early Years Setting, 2017, Researchers: Cathy Burnett and Guy Merchant, Sheffield Hallam University, Michelle Neumann, Griffith University.

References Abrams, S., Rowsell, J., and Merchant, G. (2017). Virtual convergence: exploring culture and meaning in playscapes. Teachers College Record, 119(12): n. p. Bailey, C. (2016). Free the Sheep: improvised song and performance in and around a Minecraft community. Literacy, 50(2): 62–71. Bailey, C., Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2018). Assembling literacies in virtual play. In: K. Mills, A. Stornaiuolo, A. Smith and J. Pandy (eds.), Handbook of Writing, Literacies and Education in Digital Cultures (pp. 187–197). London: Routledge. 352

Virtual play

Bensley, L., and Van Eenwyk, J. (2001). Video games and real-life aggression: review of the literature. Journal of Adolescent Health, 29(4): 244–257. Bryce-Clegg, A. (2013). Continuous Provision in the Early Years. London: Bloomsbury. Burnett, C., and Bailey, C. (2014). Conceptualising collaboration in hybrid sites: playing Minecraft together and apart in a primary classroom. In: C. Burnett, J. Davies, G. Merchant and J. Rowsell (eds.), New Literacies around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy (pp. 50–71). Abingdon: Routledge. Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2014). Points of view: reconceptualising literacies through an exploration of adult and child interactions in a virtual world. Journal of Research in Reading, 37(1): 36–50. Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2016). Boxes of poison: baroque technique as antidote to simple views of literacy. Journal of Literacy Research, 48(3): 258–279. Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2017). Assembling virtual play in the classroom. In: B. Parry, C. Burnett and G. Merchant (eds.), Literacy, Media, Technology: Past, Present and Future (pp. 219–230). London: Bloomsbury. Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2014). The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(1): 90–103. Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Simpson, A., and Walsh, M. (eds.) (2017). The Case of the iPad: Mobile Literacies in Education. Singapore: Springer. Daniels, K. (2018). Movement, meaning and affect: the stuff childhood literacies are made of. Doctoral thesis, Sheffield Hallam University. Retrieved 6 May 2019 from: http://shura.shu.ac.uk/21513/ Dovey, J., and Kennedy, H. (2006). Game Cultures: Computer Games as New Media. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Fleer, M. (2014). The demands and motives afforded through digital play in early childhood activity settings. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, 3(3): 202–209. Flewitt, R., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2015). New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. Gillen, J., and Merchant, G. (2013). From virtual histories to virtual literacies. In: G. Merchant, J. Gillen, J. Marsh and J. Davies (eds.), Virtual Literacies: Interactive Spaces for Children and Young People (pp. 9–26). Abingdon: Routledge. Kafai, Y. (2010). World of Whyville: an introduction to tween virtual life. Games and Culture, 5(1): 3–22. Kim, S., Lee, J., and Thomas, M. (2012). Between purpose and method: a review of educational research. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 5(1): 1–8. Kwa, C. (2002). Romantic and baroque conceptions of complex wholes in sciences. In: J. J. Law and A. Mol (eds.), Complexities: Social Studies of Knowledge Practices (pp. 23–52). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Law, J. (2004). After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. London: Routledge. Law, J. (2011). ‘Assembling the Baroque.’ CRESC Working Paper: 109. Retrieved 1 May 2019 from www.cresc.ac.uk Law, J. (2016). Modes of knowing: resources from the baroque. In J. Law and E. Ruppert (eds.), Modes of Knowing Baroque (pp. 17–56). Manchester: Mattering Press. Law, J., and Ruppert, E. (eds.) (2016). Modes of Knowing: Resources from the Baroque. Manchester: Mattering Press. MacLure, M. (2006). The bone in the throat: some uncertain thoughts on baroque method. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19(6): 729–745. Maine, F. (2017). Collaborative and dialogic meaning-making: how children immerse in the storyworld of a mobile game. In: C. Burnett, G. Merchant, A. Simpson and M. Walsh (eds.), The Case of the iPad: Mobile Literacies in Education (pp. 211–225). Singapore: Springer. Marsh, J. (2010). Young children’s play in online virtual worlds. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 8(1): 23–39. Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J., and Scott, F. (2016). Digital play: a new classification. Early Years, 36(3): 242–253. Mitchell, A., and Savill-Smith, C. (2004). The Use of Computer and Video Games for Learning: A Review of the Literature. London: Learning and Skills Development Agency. Schott, G., and Kambouri, M. (2003). Moving between the spectral and the material plane. Convergence, 9(3): 41–55. Tuukkanen, T., Iqbal, A., and Kankaanranta, M. (2010). A framework for children’s participation in virtual worlds. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, 3(2): 4–26. Verenikina, I., and Kervin, L. (2011). iPads, digital play and pre-schoolers. He Kupu, 2(5): 4–19. Wohlwend, K. E. (2015). One screen, many fingers: young children’s collaborative literacy play with digital puppetry apps and touchscreen technologies. Theory into Practice, 54(2): 154–162. 353

25 The quantified child Discourses and practices of dataveillance in different life stages Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway

Introduction From gestation through to primary school, children’s lives are now the focus of extensive forms of digital surveillance, or dataveillance (van Dijck 2014) initiated by a variety of (corporate, institutional and family) actors. Dataveillance operates through digital technologies such as apps, wearables and other Internet of Things (IoT) devices that allow parents, schools and companies to track, quantify and analyse children’s practices, behaviour, health and moods. Dataveillance, then, leads to datafication, that is, the “transformation of social action into online quantified data, thus allowing for real-time tracking and predictive analysis” (van Dijck 2014: 198). Underpinning the datafication of children’s, as well as adults’ lives, is the socially accepted assumption that real-time recording and predictive analytics can improve people’s lives and help them manage their health, diet, education, sport activities and work. There are clear benefits of collecting and analysing data both at the individual and the communal level, namely a sense of empowerment and participation, such as in the Quantified Self movement (Lupton 2016) and the Open Data movement (Baack 2015). However, the devices and software generally used in the monitoring of children are proprietary and commercial. The datafication of childhood is fundamentally and substantially an industry-driven process, through which personal data on mundane aspects of everyday life are calculated and monetized (van Dijck 2014; Zuboff 2015). Zuboff (2015, 2016) calls this new kind of capitalism, one that monetizes data obtained through surveillance, Surveillance Capitalism. Zuboff notes that Surveillance Capitalism was first established and consolidated at Google. The financial model was later adopted by Facebook, and other commercial entities, which now use “illegible mechanisms of extraction, commodification, and control of behavior to produce new markets of behavioral prediction and modification” (Zuboff 2015: 75). The online world, therefore, is now the place where a new model of capitalism is emerging. This new model uses data extraction instead of the production of new goods and creates a concentration of economic power over this extraction process (Zuboff 2015). Children are clearly embedded actors within Surveillance Capitalism. They are both objects of economic activity and subjects of market relations (Andrejevic 2014; Zuboff 2015). The advent 354

The quantified child

of internet-connected toys and other things for children, such as baby wearables, along with screen-based apps and games for children, has provided a significant opportunity for the appropriation of children’s data for commercial profit within a surveillance economy. Parent sharing of their children’s data, as well as school analytics, adds further data points about individual children that can be surveilled, analysed and shared. Concerns have been raised about how the commercial and institutional appropriation of children’s online information compromises the privacy and data security of children; often extracted from children who are too young to consent to or understand the implications of this practice. There are also concerns about changes in parent–child and teacher–child relationships; the consequences of neoliberal self-tracking; and, the new politics of the body for children’s development and self-identity. Intimate surveillance involves parental online monitoring (e.g. baby wearables) and mediation (e.g. sharenting) of their children. Both practices are believed to normalize parental surveillance “to the extent that surveillance is situated as a necessary culture of care” (Leaver 2017). Sharenting involves parents sharing images, videos and other narratives of and about their children to socially networked and distributed online displays (Holloway and Green 2017). The shared digital photograph preserves the commemorative function of the photo album and contributes to building and communicating family memories (Holloway and Green 2017). On the other hand, though, it is also an artefact for communication (e.g., to bind dispersed families together) and for online “identity construction, rather than [just] one for recollection or reflections” (van Dijck 2008: 64). There is concern, nonetheless, about how sharenting practices contribute to the datafication of children’s everyday lives – through both commercial and institutional entities. With Facebook’s new facial recognition software, untagged and unlabelled photographs can now be recovered and linked to individuals (Constine 2017) and with other (thus far unannounced or undiscovered) recognition software such as databases of individual voice patterns (Hincks 2017), the implications for all Facebook users is indeterminate yet disquieting. The implications of this in terms of children’s healthy development and sense of self, and their future ability to find, reclaim or delete material posted by others is, therefore, doubtful. In response to these concerns, parents are more inclined to spend time considering what is appropriate to share (Ammari, Kumar, Lampe and Schoenebeck 2015; Blum-Ross and Livingstone 2017; Holloway and Green 2017). Nonetheless, due to the tensions between the sharing and archiving of digital family memories and the possible implications of a potentially embarrassing and unauthorized creation of a digital footprint for children, parents need to navigate between carrying out this kin-keeping activity and thoughtfully stewarding their children’s online presence. This ‘disclosure management’ work (Ammari et al. 2015) adds another familial duty to an already heavy parental workload. The practice of intimate surveillance also involves the tracking of children through baby wearables and other devices such as smart watches and fitbits for children. While empowering parents by providing information around the baby’s health, baby wearables can actually heighten parental anxieties and represent children’s first initiation into a culture of quantification and self-tracking. Although bodily measurement and monitoring has a long (analogue) history, the data relationship implicated in contemporary digital self-tracking practices is new and potentially transformative (Crawford, Lingel and Karppi 2015). Individuals are positioned as both consumers of a service and the product of this very service, as their personal data are attributed economic value. In the case of baby wearables, parents are further positioned as responsible for “the self-for-others; being intimate for others” (Johnson 2014: 332). Moreover, the cultural meaning of self-tracking has shifted and has become normative. Lupton (2016) notes that quantified-self practices can be better understood as: “a practice of selfhood that conforms to 355

Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway

cultural expectations concerning self-awareness, reflection and taking responsibility for managing, governing oneself and improving of one’s life chances. Self-tracking therefore represents apotheosis of the neoliberal entrepreneurial citizen ideal” (p. 69). Based on the assumption that Big Data constitutes a better, more reliable form of knowledge, the data provided by self-tracking apps and devices are “different data creating a different self” (Bunz and Meikle 2018: 94). We are increasingly relying on external data that represent, and therefore construct, us, instead of relying on our own, imperfect, experiences, feelings and observations. Growing up in a quantified environment, children learn to adjust themselves to the supposedly objective knowledge provided by self-tracking technologies, and to compare their performances and bodies with those of others. They become “calculable persons” (Lupton and Williamson 2017: 8). Children are also being initiated as independent actors within a surveillance economy at very young ages. The introduction of touchscreen devices such as tablets and smartphones allows children as young as two to connect to the internet independently (Holloway et  al. 2013). Thus, corporations now have the opportunity to gather data about the online choices these very young children make. YouTube, in particular, is known for monetizing the personal information of children under 13 by using information about their video preferences for use in targeted advertising (Maheshwari 2018). Thus, children as young as two years of age – who can now choose their favourite video clips online thanks to swipe and touch technologies – are economic actors in a Surveillance Capitalism economy where data are often extracted from the same population that will eventually be its targets (Holloway 2019). There are also indisputable benefits for children arising from the collection and analysis of data, including the protection of children’s rights. These benefits include the provision of childfriendly platforms through which children’s ‘right to information’ is facilitated and enhanced (Article 17 of the Convention on the rights of the Child), and the provision of digital technologies and infrastructure that allow children ‘freedom of expression’ in our digital era (Article 13) (Livingstone, Carr and Byrne 2015). In addition to this, the collection and analysis of online data has both indirect and direct benefits for children. In the field of education, data collection and analytics provide information that can personalize children’s learning and provide supportive interventions to enhance educational opportunity. Health care provision (both preventative and responsive care) is also enhanced through Big Data analysis. Aggregated and disaggregated data can be used to identify groups or locales in need of certain prevention or mitigation services – such as the tracking of communicable diseases and the provision of vaccination services. The identification of young children in crisis-mapping operations facilitates the provision of food and shelter to those children who are particularly susceptible to malnourishment and death (Moestue and Muggah 2014). The detection of crimes such as child abuse is enhanced through the use of data analysis. Abusers and distributers of child abuse materials are currently being tagged while online or in cloud-based storage – and more readily identified and located by crime enforcement bodies (Berman and Albright 2017). This chapter examines the datafication of early childhood across differing life stages – the unborn, the baby, the toddler, the pre-schooler and the primary school child. Based on emergent research in the field, it also identifies key themes for a future research agenda. The argument is also made that the monitoring of children by means of wearables, IoT devices and apps is potentially transformative. Parents and schools have always engaged in monitoring children’s behaviour in order to mould outcomes. The digitalization of such practices renders this monitoring more systematic and pervasive. Digital tracking of children’s bodies and behaviour is now entangled with the new ‘logic of accumulation’ (Zuboff 2015) of Surveillance Capitalism. As they engage in their everyday caring and educating practices, parents and teachers now produce 356

The quantified child

data that are monetized by industry players. What results from a surveillance economy deeply embedded into everyday life is ultimately a profound commodification of caring, education and childhood itself.

Gestation to birth: the online foetus Many unborn children now have an online presence. Imaging technologies such as ultrasounds have changed general perceptions and imaginaries of the human foetus, from a relatively unknown entity enmeshed within the maternal body to a discrete human entity with an identity now, to some extent, decoupled from the pregnant body (Casper 1998). Technology has changed the manner in which parents (women in particular) subsequently construct the identity of their foetus (Nash 2012), assigning their foetus an early identity, and a sense of personhood and presence in the world outside the womb. The further sharing of these images online means that the foetus has also “developed its own digital social identity and status before it is even born” (Johnson 2014: 338). Expectant parents often announce their pregnancy by posting an ultrasound image of their foetus on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc. (Leaver 2015; Brosch 2016). This sharing practice is now being expanded and elaborated on with new rituals and postings, such as videos of ultrasound clinic visits, gender reveal parties, infertility journey videos, and memorials for stillborn children. These postings usually include ultrasound images and other more detailed information about the unborn child. A good proportion of these images include personally identifiable information including the metadata attached to the ultrasound image. The “typical details include the mother’s date of birth, the medical facility where the scan is taking place, the estimated due date, the date of the scan, and sometimes the doctor who referred the person being scanned” (Leaver 2015: 156). Originating in North America, gender reveal parties are now celebrated and shared online in many countries. Ultrasound imaging is used to determine the gender of the foetus. If the expectant couple do not want to know the gender of their foetus before the reveal party, the radiographer places information about the foetus’s gender in a sealed envelope. This envelope is then usually sent to appropriate retailers or professionals to create bundles of pink or blue balloons, a gender reveal cake and/or gender-specific baby outfits. See Ash (2015) and Pelligrò (2015) for Australian and Italian gender reveal parties, respectively. Another emerging trend is the posting of couples’ infertility journeys online, typically their in-vitro fertilization journeys. These slideshows, often backgrounded with inspirational music, reveal the specific steps a couple goes through to achieve a successful pregnancy. Videos and photographs of blood tests, medication schedules, and batches of medication, fertility injections, egg retrieval day, embryo transfer day – along with ultrasound pictures of the implanted embryo, the positive pregnancy test stick, and further ultrasound images are normally included in the video. In addition to this, many pregnancy apps collect detailed, intimate data about both the pregnant mother and the foetus. These data include due dates, stage of foetal development and ultrasound images, as well as foetal heart rates and movements. These data, not only medicalize pregnancy and the growing foetus, but also initiate the unborn child into the digital data economy, where data are often collected and utilized for marketing purposes (Thomas and Lupton 2015). The online sharing of images and other information about the foetus is usually carried out to share expectant parents’ joy and excitement, as well as to memorialize and archive memories of the unborn child. It could be argued, therefore, that Facebook and other social 357

Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway

networking sites have become a modern day baby book (Kumar and Schoenebeck 2015) or family photograph album (Holloway and Green 2017). One difference, however, is that foetuses are now being given personhood and presence in the virtual family photograph album – compared to the physical family photograph album. While situated in a familial culture of caring and sharing, these practices allow commercial entities the opportunity to capture “their users [expectant parents] in intensive and extensive networks of enjoyment, production, and surveillance” (Dean 2010: 3–4). Moreover, data about the foetus are also captured. In this sense, the foetus has now become a part of dataveillance and datafication processes that capture the online social activity of expectant parents and their unborn child. Before the use of sonograms and other imaging technologies, parents’ first glimpse of their baby was at the moment of birth. Nowadays, these first glimpses are taking place as early as the embryo stage – in the case of IVF couples. Imaging technologies and pregnancy apps have brought about changes in the way we view the foetus, bestowing on it a sense of personhood and an individual identity. However, the sharing of these data is also subject to “storage, analysis and mining, usually for the banal purposes of selling advertising” (Leaver 2015: 157). In this sense, many parents initiate their children into the online world of social sharing, and data exploitation before birth. So, while expectant parents are creating, curating, sharing and archiving memories of their foetuses online, they are also inducting their unborn into a surveillance economy whose main aim is to datafy and monetize this information.

The datafied baby After birth the medicalization and datafication of the baby’s body often continues and is performed through a variety of wearable devices and parenting apps that allow parents to record and monitor sleep and feed patterns, as well as biometric and other environmental data. Popular wearable technologies on the market include sensors-equipped socks (e.g. the Owlet), onesies (e.g. the Mimo) or bands (e.g. the Sproutling anklet) which can measure heart rate, oxygen levels, respiration, body position and send real-time notifications to the parent’s smartphone. Moreover, smart patches (e.g., Fever Smart) and smart dummies (e.g., i-Pacify) have been designed and marketed, that allow for remote monitoring of the baby’s body temperature. IoT devices and related smartphone apps which monitor the baby’s health and vital parameters include toys and teddy bears, such as the UK-based ID Guardian’s “first smart toy line with embedded biosensors” (http://teddytheguardian.com/). The family includes Teddy the Guardian, which monitors body and ambient temperature; the Brave Lion, which is able to measure heartbeat and blood oxygen saturation; and the Tall Giraffe, which tracks body posture and activity levels, so as to encourage healthy, active lifestyles from a very young age. Earlyeducation wearables such as the Starlings clip counts the words a baby hears on a given day, in order to encourage parents to verbally engage with their babies more. While research into the actual domestication practices of such technologies is in its early stages (see, for example, Dangerfield, Ward, Davidson and Adamian 2017), research on the commercial representations of baby wearables and other IoT devices using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) emphasized the ongoing medicalization and datafication of childhood, on the one hand, as well as wearables’ contribution to the normalization of intimate surveillance practices on the other (Leaver 2017; Holloway, Mascheroni and Inglis forthcoming). Baby-tracking technologies and apps exploit parental anxieties around the newborn’s health, and promise to offer parents ‘peace of mind’ by providing access to up-to-date medical technologies of digital surveillance in the privacy of their homes. These technologies are typically constructed as ‘empowering’ tools, for the biometric data stored, analysed and visualized through apps hold the 358

The quantified child

promise of turning parents, and especially mothers, into experts. Consistent with socio-technical imaginaries around Big Data, which uncritically assume data and algorithms as producing objective and reliable knowledge (boyd and Crawford 2012), baby wearables and monitoring apps are commercialized as providing reliable expert knowledge that replaces mothers’ potentially deceptive and inaccurate subjective knowledge. The ideology underpinning the discursive construction of mothers as technologically mediated ‘experts’ is clearly a neoliberal ideology of individual responsibilization (Holloway et al. forthcoming) where the self-management of health is praised as a good citizenship practice (Horton 2007). For parents, this individual accountability extends to their babies’ health and development (Johnson 2014). Starling’s slogan (When parents don’t talk enough, their children can fall behind) is emblematic of such discourses of risks and responsibilization through which babies’ digital monitoring is constructed as a responsible practice of care-giving. As a consequence, parental anxieties are seemingly heightened by wearable and tracking devices, rather than being alleviated. As Lupton (2013: 46) notes: The infant’s body becomes the focus of the intense, anxious parental gaze in the context of a culture in which parents – and particularly mothers – are held accountable for any harm that may befall their infants or any failure to conform to accepted measure of health, growth and development. Therefore, the analysis of baby wearables advertising reveals a discursive regulation of parenthood, in which “intimate surveillance” (Leaver 2015, 2017) is not only desirable but also a normative consumption practice. “As a consequence, as first time parenting is reified into a distinct set of consumable objects, so children too are constructed as a consumable” (Holloway et al. forthcoming). Intimate surveillance feeds into commercial surveillance, with typical baby wearable devices involving two commodities: “first, the app, monitor, wearable, or device which is sold initially to individual customers, and, second, insights and analytics produced from the aggregated and analyzed data generated by the customers using these devices” (Leaver 2017: 3). The provision of the baby’s personal data in exchange for free analytics and ‘expert’ medical knowledge, as we have seen, is not without consequences. Ultimately, the datafication of babies’ lives presents parent with challenging issues, such as children’s rights to privacy and the ownership of the data.

Toddlers and pre-schoolers As with younger children, children in this age range (2–5) are still subject to dataveillance practices initiated by their parents (sharenting, tracking). However, the roll out of touchscreen technologies such as smartphones and tablets into the domestic market has allowed children in this age range the opportunity to independently use the internet themselves. Previously, very young children needed assistance to use a mouse or keyboard on laptops and PCs. These mobile devices now have a large ecosystem of child-friendly apps and games apps to go with them that help create straightforward access for infants and pre-schoolers and allow even the youngest child to go online. Thus, over the last 10 years, there have been manifest increases in children’s use of internetconnected devices. However, while increased usage is noticeable in all age groups, it is very young children (0–5) who are now showing significantly increased patterns of internet use (due primarily to the introduction of touchscreens). Smaller children (0–5), especially those with access to touchscreen technologies, enjoy using their touchscreens mostly to play games and watch videos or movies. 359

Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway

Toddler and pre-schoolers’ take up of touchscreens has seen their immersion in commercially orientated sites which makes possible a developing relationship between commercial organizations and children themselves. Hence, while children enjoy hours of online entertainment and social interaction within communities of interest, a primary purpose of these sites is to function as opportunities for branding and market research – where children’s personal information, preferences and opinions are collected and stored (Kapur 1999; Montgomery 2001; Steeves 2006). YouTube Kids, the most popular app for pre-schoolers, has been positioned as a safe space for children to view video content. At the same time, however, YouTube Kids corrals children into a marketing space where they can receive targeted advertisements (Burroughs 2017). YouTube Kids claims that it does not collect children’s personal information such as their names, addresses or contact information. Nonetheless, parents need to sign in through their Google account and give parental consent to download and use the app. Parents are then encouraged to set up individual profiles for their children. Google itself shares “personal information with companies, organisations or individuals outside Google” (Google, n.d). Google’s children’s profiles, which initially include the child’s name and birthdate, can then be used to personalize content for the individual child (Paul 2017). In this way, Google is accumulating consumer profiles of individual children – to be fed into individually targeted advertising – either for in-house use or for on-selling to other advertisers. If you are signed in and have limited profiles for your children associated with your Google account, we will use the information tied to each restricted profile to offer each child personalised content by recommending videos likely to be of interest to them. (Google, n.d.) Keeping in mind that Google has changed its privacy policy 28 times since 1999 (Google, n.d.) it is likely that children’s consumer profiles will become more detailed and extensive. Indeed, recent research from AdTech, a London-based digital marketing firm, shows that by the time a child turns 3 or 4, five million data points have been collected by “adult adtech delivering ads into kids and family digital content” (Harris 2017). This increases to 72 million data points before a child reaches the age of 13. This use of data collection technology built to capture adult users’ data now collects information about a child’s location, app used, website visited and device identifier, as well as more specific personalized data. Media and toy companies are regularly sanctioned for violating children’s privacy regulations (such as COPPA regulations or the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation). For example, Disney is accused of sharing children’s personal data with other entities such as advertising companies without parental consent or knowledge. It is alleged that Disney and three associated software companies (Unity, Upsight and Kochava) are creating “mobile apps aimed at children that contained embedded software to track, collect, and then export their personal information along with information about their online behaviour” (Deahl 2017). Despite these regularly reported privacy breaches (for example, Vtech, Mattel and Cloud Pets), the amount of data illegally collected and shared is far outweighed by data legally collected. Parents effectively consent to these data collection practices when they agree to ‘terms and services’ and ‘privacy policies’ within an app or website. They are essentially given an ‘optin-opt-out’ choice where the choice of opting out either excludes their child from playing the game or severely limits how far their child can progress inside the game. The application of IT technologies to monitor individual children’s online activities is already occurring at a corporate level and is now being directed at very young children. These children are being recruited as active contributors to a surveillance economy in which long-term 360

The quantified child

contractual agreements transfer legal responsibility for the collection, analysis and distribution of children’s data on to their parents. Legal, parental consent to these practices is easily attained through the use of ‘I agree to’ checkboxes which effectively give commercial entities authority to continue and conceivably expand upon data collecting and sharing procedures.

Datafied learning Once children enter the education system, the tracking of their learning activities and achievements, classroom behaviour, sport activities and health parameters at school complements the intimate surveillance practices enacted by parents (Leaver 2015, 2017) and the surveillance practices children themselves engage in – whether voluntarily or not, consciously or unconsciously – through their use of apps, IoT devices such as IoToys, wearable devices and digital assistants such as Amazon Echo and Google home. The real-time monitoring and predictive analysis of children’s data in the classroom have become routine. Learning analytics enable teachers and school to define personalized learning plans for each child. According to critiques, this marks a profound shift in pedagogical models that Williamson (2017a) describes as “dataveillance schools” and van Dijck and Poell (2018) as the “platformization of education” – namely, the massive employment of educational technologies and learning analytics triggered by the incorporation of algorithmic (Williamson 2016) and Big Data (boyd and Crawford 2012) imaginaries into every stage of education, from pre-school to university. In learning analytics, learning processes – increasingly including socio-emotional learning (Williamson 2017b) – are tracked, datafied, compared to standardized performance (van Dijck and Poell 2018) and analysed so as to predict future performances. Projects such as AltSchool and platforms like ClassDojo are prototypical of how datafication is shaping and reshaping primary education. Founded in 2013 by the former Google executive Max Ventilla and financially supported also by Mark Zuckerberg, this non-profit foundation is a chain of start-up schools in San Francisco and New York, which embodies the Silicon Valley idea of ‘makerschools’ – that is, of makerspaces and hacking as bottom-up learning spaces (Williamson 2016). Its software platform – which has now been also introduced in schools beyond those in the ‘lab schools’ chain – consists of a data analytics tool, Progress, which constantly monitors, analyses and visualizes children’s academic and socio-emotional learning; and an algorithmic content management system, Playlist, that allows teachers to create a weekly to do list of individual and group activities tailored toward the individual child’s capabilities (Williamson 2016). By turning classrooms into an ‘experimental lab’ where students’ and teachers’ practices are constantly surveilled and datafied, AltSchool prioritizes technology, data and predictive analytics over teachers, students and the notion of curriculum; and it replaces classroom instruction with online individualized learning schemes (van Dijck and Poell 2018). Launched as a mobile behaviour tracking app for teachers in 2011, ClassDojo has now turned into a social media platform for schools, which is currently being used by two-thirds of US schools and in over 180 countries (www.classdojo.com/it-it/about/). This allows teachers to track children’s behaviour and participation in class in real time on a smartphone, and to award points for individual children’s positive behaviour – where the definition of ‘positive’ behaviour is informed by socio-emotional learning theories such as Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” (Williamson 2017c), and includes categories such as ‘perseverance’, ‘grit’, ‘team work’, ‘leadership’, ‘helping others’, ‘hard work’, and ‘being kind’. Based on such behavioural scores and the data visualizations provided by ClassDojo, teachers are able to set individual and class behavioural targets, aimed at nudging students into persistent ‘positive’ behavioural routines. 361

Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway

Moreover, the app also works as a social media platform that connects teachers, pupils and their parents in order to “build amazing classroom communities”, as one of the slogans on the website claims. ClassDojo normalizes the adoption of forms of ‘psychological surveillance’ in schools, aimed at measuring, quantifying and eventually moulding behaviour and non-cognitive skills in the classroom (Williamson 2017c). Beyond character tracking through apps like ClassDojo, the computational psychology approach to education (Nemorin 2017; Williamson 2017c) also involves the design and deployment of technologies such as facial recognition software and wearable technologies to scrape emotional data from students, and then mould their emotions and character on the basis of such data. Face-reading technologies that monitor unconscious biological signals have received great impetus once they have been attached to social media platforms, such as in the recent machine vision projects by Facebook (DeepFace) and Google (TensorFlow) (Williamson 2017c). Technologies of “affective-capture” (Nemorin 2017) also include the embedding of biometric sensors in wearable technologies such as smartwatches, bands and gloves, whose potential benefits have already been praised in data-based computational psychologies approaches to socioemotional learning. Finally, physical education is also embracing the use of health-tracking wearables and physical activity monitoring apps to encourage healthy lifestyles and physical activity (Williamson 2017d). Nonetheless, their efficacy has proved controversial. Recent research in two UK schools, for example, has documented how 13–14-year-olds resisted the use of Fitbit and selftracking practices as part of their physical education in schools, for failing to record physical activity accurately as part of young people’s daily lives and introducing a narrow understanding of health (Goodyear, Kerner and Quennerstedt 2017). These various educational technologies of dataveillance are reconfiguring the experience of both learning and teaching. Data driven personalized learning schemes have the potential to improve the overall individual’s learning experiences and outcomes by providing “enhanced motivation, additional support, informed learning choices, and enhanced meta-cognition” (Eynon 2015: 410; see also van Dijck and Poell 2018). However, scholars have emphasized significant challenges of applying datafication and dataveillance to learning. Indeed, the construction of personalized learning schemes based on recommendation algorithms and reputation mechanisms – such as described above – extends the techno-commercial logic of the social media platform into education, and thus subordinates education to such ‘social media logic’ (Williamson 2016; van Dijck and Poell 2018). Educational technology and learning analytics are constructed as the needy technological fix to the problems of education, while corporate high-tech actors are positioning themselves as government and institutional actors with the power to radically reform and disrupt education (Williamson 2016; van Dijck and Poell 2018). Detractors of datafication have also pointed out how the prioritization of learning outcomes over students, teachers and the learning process as a whole, advances a reductionist pedagogical model (Selwyn 2015; Eynon 2015; van Dijck and Poell 2018). Moreover, there are a number of unresolved privacy and ethical issues, especially concerning the ownership and accessibility of the data, but also so-called predictive privacy harms (Crawford and Schultz 2014) that shape children’s future opportunities and create new inequalities. Learning analytics and technologies of dataveillance normalize a self-tracking culture and a surveillance culture whose long-term consequences on children’s self-development are hard to predict. For example, Eynon (2015) questions what happens when the learning experiences as represented and visualized by data analytics diverge from those very experiences as held by children in their memories: will children “ignore their intuition – and prioritize the technically ‘correct’ version of themselves over their own messier (and perhaps more positive) perceptions?” (p. 409). 362

The quantified child

Conclusion This chapter demonstrates that there is already ongoing and persuasive surveillance of children at a digital level. This surveillance entails ‘intimate surveillance’ which involves parental monitoring (tracking) and mediation (postings) of their children online. It also involves commercial and institutional data collection. Children are subject to a variety of data practices at different life stages. The unborn child is now assigned personhood and a digital identity through the posting of ultrasound images online. Babies are tracked and cared for through the use of wearables, other tracking devices and parenting apps. Due to the emergence of touchscreen technologies, and the IoToys, toddlers and pre-schoolers are now playing online and generating a continuous flow of personal data that can feed into the surveillance economy. ‘Dataveillance schools’ make use of corporate platforms and tracking devices to monitor and mould students’ performances, behaviours, emotions and physical activities (Williamson 2017a). The collection, analysis and sharing of children’s data form part of a new economic model, that of Surveillance Capitalism (Zuboff 2015), where data extraction, as opposed to the production of goods, is the main economic driver. The emergence of IoToys, baby wearables and screen-based apps and games for even very young children generates further data which makes children objects of this economic activity. Marketing to children and their parents (via knowledge extracted from children’s data) also makes these children subjects of market relations. Clear research agendas have emerged from this analysis of children’s data collection at different life stages, emphasizing the need for ethnographic research that investigates how children of different ages and their parents make sense of these data practices and the surveillance culture in which they are now immersed. Further research is also called for which investigates the design and market culture in which apps, wearables and toys for children are embedded (often unnecessarily) with internet connectivity that enables the widespread dataveillance and datafication of children.

References Ammari, T., Kumar, P., Lampe, C., and Schoenebeck, S. (2015). Managing children’s online identities: how parents decide what to disclose about their children online. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, ACM. Andrejevic, M. (2014). Big data, big questions: the big data divide. International Journal of Communication, 8: 1673–1689. Ash, R. (2015). Exciting gender reveal!! Aussie Family Vloggers, 3 October. Available from: www.youtube. com/watch?v=Fkvo7YWReEk&ab_channel=RowNAsh (accessed 12 January 2018). Baack, S. (2015). Datafication and empowerment: how the open data movement re-articulates notions of democracy, participation, and journalism. Big Data & Society, 2(2): 1–11. Berman, G., and Albright, K. (2017). Children and the DataCycle: Rights and Ethics in a Big Data World. InnocentiWorking Paper 2017–05, UNICEF Office of Research, Florence. Available from: www. unicef-irc.org/publications/907-children-and-the-data-cyclerights-and-ethics-in-a-big-data-world. html (accessed 7 May 2019). Blum-Ross, A., and Livingstone, S. (2017). “Sharenting,” parent blogging, and the boundaries of the digital self. Popular Communication, 15(2): 110–125. boyd, d., and Crawford, K. (2012). Critical questions for Big Data. Information, Communication & Society, 15(5): 662–679. Brosch, A. (2016). When the Child Is Born into the Internet: Sharenting as a Growing Trend among Parents on Facebook. The New Educational Review, 43(1): 225–236. Bunz, M., and Meikle, G. (2018). The Internet of Things. Cambridge: Polity Press. Burroughs, B. (2017). YouTube kids: the app economy and mobile parenting. Social Media + Society, 3(2). Available from http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2056305117707189 (accessed 12 January 2018). 363

Giovanna Mascheroni and Donell Holloway

Casper, M. J. (1998). The Making of the Unborn Patient: A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Constine, J. (2017). Facebook’s facial recognition now finds photos you’re untagged in. Tech Crunch, 19 December, Available from: https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/19/facebook-facial-recognition-photos/ (accessed 16 February 2018). Crawford, K., and Schultz, J. (2014). Big data and due process: toward a framework to redress predictive privacy harms. Boston College Law Review, 55(1): 93–128. Crawford, K., Lingel, J., and Karppi, T. (2015). Our metrics, ourselves: a hundred years of self-tracking from the weight scale to the wrist wearable device. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 18(4–5): 479–496. Cross, T. (2017). Ad Tech collects 72 million data points on the average American child by age 13. Video Ad News, 14 December. Available from: https://videoadnews.com/2017/12/14/ad-tech-collects72-million-data-points-on-the-average-american-child-by-age-13 (accessed 12 January 2018). Dangerfield, M. I., Ward, K., Davidson, L., and Adamian, M. (2017). Initial experience and usage patterns with the Owlet Smart Sock monitor in 47,495 newborns. Global Pediatric Health, 4. Deahl, D. (2017). Disney sued for allegedly spying on children through 42 gaming apps. The Verge, 9 August. Available from: www.theverge.com/2017/8/9/16115352/disney-sued-spying-children-gaming-appsdisney-princess-palace-pets (accessed 12 January 2018). Dean, J. (2010). Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive. Cambridge: Polity. Eynon, R. (2015). The quantified self for learning: critical questions for education. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(4): 407–411. Goodyear, V. A., Kerner, C., and Quennerstedt, M. (2017). Young people’s uses of wearable healthy lifestyle technologies: surveillance, self-surveillance and resistance. Sport, Education and Society. Available from: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13573322.2017.1375907?journalCode=cses20 (accessed 12 January 2018). Harris, R. (2017). 72M data points collected on children in spite of COPPA. App Developer Magazine, 27 December. Available from: https://appdevelopermagazine.com/5769/2017/12/27/72m-data-pointscollected-on-children-in-spite-of-coppa/ (accessed 12 January 2018). Hincks, J. (2017). China is creating a database of its citizens’ voices to boost its surveillance capability: Report. Time. New York, Time Inc. Available from: http://time.com/4992849/china-voicedatabase-surveillance/ (accessed 15 January 2018). Holloway, D. (2019). Surveillance capitalism and children’s data: the Internet of toys and things for children. Media International Australia. https://doi.org/10.11/77/1329878X19828205 Holloway, D., and Green, L. (2017). Making memories: the virtual family photograph album. Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research, 42(3): 351–368. Holloway, D., Green, L., and Livingstone, S. (2013). Zero to Eight: Young Children and their Internet Use. LSE, London: EU Kids Online. Available from: eprints.lse.ac.uk/52630/1/Zero_to_eight.pdf (accessed 20 December 2017). Holloway, D., Mascheroni, G., and Inglis, S. (forthcoming). The quantified baby: discourses of consumption. In: L. Tstaliki and D. Chronaki (eds.), Neoliberal Notions of Governance and Media Discourses of Children: Anxiety over Childhood and Youth across Cultures. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Horton, E. S. (2007). Neoliberalism and the Australian healthcare system (factory). Proceedings 2007 Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia, Wellington, New Zealand. Available from: https://eprints.qut.edu.au/14444/ (accessed 12 January 2018). Johnson, S. A. (2014). ‘Maternal devices’, social media and the self-management of pregnancy, mothering and child health. Societies, 4(2): 330–350. Kapur, J. (1999). Out of control: television and the transformation of childhood in late capitalism. In: M. Kinder (ed.), Kids’ Media Culture (pp. 122–136). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kumar, P., and Schoenebeck, S. (2015). The modern day baby book: enacting good mothering and stewarding privacy on Facebook. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing. Leaver, T. (2015). Born digital? Presence, privacy, and intimate surveillance. In: J. Hartley and W. Qu (eds.), Re-Orientation: Translingual Transcultural Transmedia. Studies in Narrative, Language, Identity, and Knowledge (pp. 149–160). Shanghai: Fudan University Press. Leaver, T. (2017). Intimate surveillance: normalizing parental monitoring and mediation of infants online. Social Media + Society, 3(2). Available from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/ 10.1177/2056305117707192 (accessed 12 January 2018). 364

The quantified child

Livingstone, S., Carr, J., and Byrne, J. (2015). One in three: internet governance and children’s rights. Available from https://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/no22_2.pdf Lupton, D. (2013). Infant embodiment and interembodiment: a review of sociocultural perspectives. Childhood, 20(1): 37–50. Lupton, D. (2016). The Quantified Self. Cambridge: Polity Press. Lupton, D., and Williamson, B. (2017). The datafied child: the dataveillance of children and implications for their rights. New Media & Society. Available from: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/ 10.1177/1461444816686328 (accessed 13 January 2018). Maheshwari, S. (2018). YouTube is improperly collecting children’s data, consumer groups say. New York Times, April 9. Available from www.nytimes.com/2018/04/09/business/media/youtube-kidsftc-complaint.html (accessed 19 April 2018). Moestue, H., and Muggah, R. (2014). Digitally Enhanced Child Protection: How New Technology Can Prevent Violence against Children in the Global South. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Igarape Institute. Montgomery, K. C. (2001). Digital kids: the new on-line children’s consumer culture. In: D. Singer and J. Singer (eds.), Handbook of Children and the Media (pp. 635–650). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Nash, M. (2012). The perils of announcing a pregnancy in public. The Conversation, 4 December. Available from: https://theconversation.com/the-perils-of-announcing-a-pregnancy-in-public-11132 (accessed 12 January 2018). Nemorin, S. (2017). Affective capture in digital school spaces and the modulation of student subjectivities. Emotion, Space and Society, 24: 11–18. Paul, K. (2017). YouTube’s new profiles for children have privacy experts very concerned. MarketWatch. Available from: www.marketwatch.com/story/youtube-is-introducing-profiles-for-children-whyyou-should-pay-attention-2017-11-03 (accessed 7 May 2019). Pelligrò, M. R. (2015). Italian Gender Reveal Party. YouTube video, 11 October. Available from: www. youtube.com/watch?v=qV6lwy9xE-Q&ab_channel=MariaRitaPelligr%C3%B2 (accessed 12 January 2018). Selwyn, N. (2015). Data entry: towards the critical study of digital data and education. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(1): 64–82. Steeves, V. (2006). It’s not child’s play: the online invasion of children’s privacy. Law and Technology Journal, 3(1): 169–188. Thomas, G. M., and Lupton, D. (2015). Threats and thrills: pregnancy apps, risk and consumption. Health, Risk & Society, 17(7–8): 495–509. van Dijck, J. (2008). Digital photography: communication, identity, memory. Visual Communication, 17(1): 57–76. van Dijck, J. (2014). Datafication, dataism and dataveillance: Big Data between scientific paradigm and ideology. Surveillance and Society, 12(2): 197–208. van Dijck, J., and Poell, T. (2018). Social media platforms and education. In: J. Burgess, A. Marwick and T. Poell (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Social Media (pp. 579–591). Los Angeles, CA: Sage. Williamson, B. (2016). Silicon startup schools: technocracy, algorithmic imaginaries and venture philanthropy in corporate education reform and venture philanthropy in corporate education reform. Critical Studies in Education, 59(2): 218–236. Available from: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/175084 87.2016.1186710 (accessed 12 January 2018). Williamson, B. (2017a). Calculating children in the dataveillance school: personal and learning analytics. In: E. Taylor and T. Rooney (eds.), Surveillance Futures: Social and Ethical Implications of New Technologies for Children and Young People (pp. 50–66). London: Routledge. Williamson, B. (2017b). Decoding ClassDojo: psycho-policy, social-emotional learning and persuasive educational technologies. Learning, Media and Technology, 42(4): 440–453. Williamson, B. (2017c). Moulding student emotions through computational psychology: affective learning technologies and algorithmic governance. Educational Media International, 54(4): 267–288. Williamson, B. (2017d). The digitised future of physical education: activity trackers, biosensors and algorithmic biopedagogies. In: M. Thorburn (ed.), Transformative Learning and Teaching in Physical Education (pp. 176–192). London: Routledge. Zuboff, S. (2015). Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1): 75–89. Zuboff, S. (2016). Google as a fortune teller: the secrets of Surveillance Capitalism. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 5 March 2016.

365

26 Minecraft ‘worldness’ in family life Children’s digital play and socio-material literacy practices Michael Dezuanni

Introduction Minecraft is the world’s most popular digital game, having sold over 154 million copies (Gilbert 2018), and in digitally advantaged nations, it has become part of many children’s everyday lives. This chapter argues the Minecraft ecology is a unique and prescient digital experience that involves distinctive digital literacy practices in children’s lives. Unlike many commercial games, Minecraft presents very ‘open’ play that enables participants to achieve in a range of ways that may include, but also extend beyond, competition, combat or exceptional performance involving a range of literacy practices. The chapter suggests Minecraft can usefully be thought of as a media production platform that enables even young children to become media producers and as children develop loose and more structured narratives around their digital block construction in the game, they effectively author media experience as a form of material digital assemblage. Players experience a sense of agency and capability through creating simple structures to share with friends and family and children’s conversations and school playground activity with Minecraft draw attention to the game’s complex terminology and knowledge system. Minecraft has also entered popular culture through broader consumption of YouTube videos, physical toys and clothing. This chapter argues Minecraft involves distinctive socio-material literacy practices, across virtual and physical spaces in the family home. It suggests Minecraft is experienced through ‘worldness’ that traverses online and physical spaces in ways that are becoming common in children’s lives and this often includes complex negotiations of collaboration, and the blending of online communication with physically co-present instances of communication and interaction. The chapter shares the outcomes of an ethnographic approach in which I have observed my own family’s Minecraft play since 2012. Through sharing our story, I hope to draw attention to Minecraft’s specific digital media literacy practices.

Introducing Minecraft Although Minecraft is often thought of as a popular digital game for children, it is also much more than a game. For many children, Minecraft is central to their digital ecology (Ito et al. 2010: 29) and a popular cultural experience that extends beyond the game itself to include: viewing 366

Minecraft ‘worldness’ in family life

YouTube Let’s Play videos (Dezuanni 2017b); reading official and unofficial Minecraft ‘how to’ and fiction books; wearing Minecraft licensed clothing and costumes; talking about Minecraft in the school playground (Dezuanni, Beavis and O’Mara 2015); playing with Minecraft Lego; and play-acting Minecraft scenarios at home and school. Minecraft might be better described as a digital platform than a game because it facilitates and promotes complex literacy practices that cannot be ascribed to a single category of activity, such as gaming. It is at the centre of children’s social interaction, providing opportunities similar to other virtual play spaces such as Club Penguin and Star Dolls (Burke and Marsh 2013) and it provides a platform for content production and circulation (Dezuanni 2017a). It also represents an exemplary instance of Edwards’ (2013) conception of ‘converged play’, which occurs across online and offline spaces. Since its official release in 2011, Minecraft has rapidly entered the daily experience for many children living in digitally advantaged societies. For many young children, then, ‘playing Minecraft’ involves a complex range of online and offline practices and interactions. At its most straightforward, Minecraft is a ‘sandbox’ game in which a player ‘mines’ – collects different types of blocks by digging minerals, gathering items, cutting down trees and so on – and then ‘crafts’ by converting these blocks into new items such as tools, or combining the blocks to create structures such as buildings. There is a choice of ‘survival mode’ where participants fend off monsters at night, and produce food to avoid starvation; and ‘creative mode’ where all materials are provided and there is more emphasis on design and building. A key aspect of Minecraft play is the display of achievement, typically through making a new creation like an elaborate house. The more materials a player acquires, the more elaborate their builds can be. Some players place emphasis on creating whole ecosystems with tamed animals, food production and complex mechanisms using ‘redstone’ circuits, a form of Minecraft ‘electricity’. Others prefer to go on adventures to create settlements in new ‘biomes’. Players who enjoy a more challenging experience might choose to play in survival mode to defeat monsters and explore dark caves with the ever-present threat of being blown up by a ‘creeper’ or being attacked by a zombie. Beyond these straightforward ways to play Minecraft, many additional opportunities are available through mods and hacks, which enable even young players to customize their Minecraft experience (Dezuanni 2018). As noted, ‘playing’ Minecraft can also include offline play involving complex discursive, embodied and material practices, and one way to think about these complex dynamics is through a social-material literacy lens.

Socio-material literacies, virtuality and worldness Socio-material literacies include both the situated literacies of discursive interactions that rely on shared experiences of ‘linguistic’ or ‘inscribed’ meanings (Hayles 1999); and the simultaneously present materially incorporated or physically performative aspects of assemblage (Hayles 1999; Barad 2007). Minecraft can be considered discursive because it provides a system of meanings through the metalanguage of its terminology, its rules for designing, combining and building; and through its story-world representations and logics. It is material, because Minecraft activity is co-assembled (Hayles 2003, 2005) in a physical sense and it is device dependent. To play the game digitally, human participants interact with a computer keyboard and mouse, a console system controller or a touch screen device through haptic interaction. They learn to physically interact with the system and there is a tactile manipulation of the digital materials on the platform through the system interface. This online material interaction exists within the broader material reality of playing on a device in physical space, which includes its own opportunities, rules, restrictions and expectations. Many a family argument has erupted due to a game being 367

Michael Dezuanni

too noisy, or a child being told to sit up straight as they slump over a keyboard. More obviously, Minecraft involves material literacy when it includes offline physical play with toys, Lego building blocks, physical play-acting or dressing up. My contention is that Minecraft’s online and offline ‘worlds’ are both social-material and that the boundary between online and offline is open and continually traversed by young children. To illustrate an example of the porousness of the boundary between online and offline Minecraft play, is it useful to consider how many children share their Minecraft creations with others, either ‘in-world’, offline, or simultaneously in-world and offline. For instance, one way to play Minecraft is to share a Wi-Fi network across devices to enable a multiplayer experience. In this scenario, if two players are on different devices in the same physical space, it is common for them to ‘visit’ each other online, but also to physically look at each other’s screens, offline. Children will also often share their ‘builds’ with non-playing family members and friends by inviting them to view their screen, or if they have a portable device, they might take the device over to another person to show them what they are building or doing online. Experiencing the world is not just online or offline, it is often simultaneously both. Minecraft play, then, is often experienced simultaneously online and offline; and even young children easily move between these two scenarios. A useful framework to consider this further is Klastrup’s (2008) concept of ‘worldness’. According to Klastrup (2008) worldness is the feeling of presence in a world, immersion but also membership in a community and the ability to manipulate and navigate the world. Discussing the virtual environment Everquest, she argues it is important to consider social interaction and engagement with other instances of the world beyond the online world, saying: If I am to define the “worldness” of this particular game world, it includes both the experiences of being in-the-world (immersion and presence), but also the experience of the malfunctions of the world; and the shared experience of juggling both the reality and un-reality of the world, as well as the experience of the world as it is presented in all the many websites on and stories about the world. (para. 38) ‘Worldness’ provides a way to think about the open boundaries between online and offline presence of a particular media experience such as Minecraft. While Klastrup is specifically discussing virtual game environments, the implication of her approach is that all digital platforms, including social media services, provide opportunities for online/offline lived experience. A virtual environment can be experienced as both a ‘fiction’ and a lived reality of shared practice, including social-material online experiences that may be considered lived reality and a wide range of peripheral offline activities associated with this online participation, including talk, negotiation, sharing, and physical play. From this perspective, separating online and offline activities makes little sense as participants often experience activities across digital and non-digital boundaries. Klastrup (2008: para. 39) suggests: In computer-mediated universes like these with all the options of interaction presented to us, we can no longer distinguish between fiction and reality, and it is the constant challenge of this boundary that makes these worlds such fascinating places to live in and talk about. Children’s social-material literacy practices with Minecraft across the converged experience of online/offline boundaries should be considered as an extension of literacy practices in everyday life. Of course, not all children play Minecraft in the same way, and the extent to which 368

Minecraft ‘worldness’ in family life

the game is central to children’s converged digital and non-digital lives will greatly differ. As Papacharissi (2010: 53) suggests, audiences negotiate with converged media architectures that offer opportunities for employing, expanding or rejecting experiences for converged media practices. For those children who do take up Minecraft across converged experiences, it forms a central aspect of what Deuze (2012: 42) refers to as “media life”. Deuze suggests individuals are constantly constructing their online and offline lived experiences, and that separating online or media experience from ‘real life’ makes little sense: Media life, in this context, can be seen as a perspectival attempt to bridge the gap between the supposed nowhere of media and somewhere of life. The places we inhabit, both physical and virtual, are not just temporary assemblies of people and things in a specific place, nor should they be considered to be exclusively disembodied practices existing somewhere in cyberspace. (Deuze 2010: 42) Minecraft digital literacy lives, then, may be considered central to many children’s media lives. As children play the game, or watch YouTube Minecraft Let’s Play videos, play act scenarios from the game with their friends offline or listen to Minecraft music, they practise a host of social-material literacies as an aspect of media life. Minecraft’s ‘worldness’ is not just the online world, but the host of ways in which Minecraft is consumed, constructed and circulated within children’s daily life experiences. In the second half of the chapter, I aim to discuss some of these Minecraft-associated socio-material literacy practices, occurring online and offline, in my own home. While this will not be an exhaustive discussion of children’s Minecraft literacies, I hope to provide a sample of Minecraft’s implications for socio-material literacies online and offline.

Understanding Minecraft ‘worldness’ and digital media literacies In the sections that follow, I aim to provide a better understanding of the converged digital and non-digital socio-material literacy practices associated with Minecraft. To do this, I draw on Klastrup to provide a sense of Minecraft worldness and the ways in which Minecraft is an aspect of children’s media lives and digital literacy practices within family life. Klastrup uses a hybrid methodology to study the game Everquest in which she combines cultural ‘text’ analysis with cultural ethnography and game studies (Klastrup 2008). A key aspect of this approach are her observations of being a player in the world and analysis of options for interaction offered by the gameworld system. Ethnography in virtual worlds is becoming established through volumes like Boellstorff et al.’s (2012) Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method. They suggest ethnography can be usefully employed to understand virtual worlds because of “its development as a tool for the study of both local and distant cultures, its attention to everyday practice and meanings, and its conceptual disruption of Self and Other” (p. 28). My Minecraft experience has taken place in the context of family life. During the Australian Summer holiday break of 2011/2012, our family’s life became deeply entwined with Minecraft ‘worldness’, and participation in various aspects of Minecraft worldness has continued for the past six years. Throughout this time, I have worn my researcher hat as I have watched and experienced Minecraft as a parent. As I have written articles reporting on data about the use of Minecraft in classrooms, I have continually reflected upon my family’s Minecraft experiences. In 2013, I received ethical clearance to collect data in my family home for a period of 18 months from 2013 to 2015, including observations of children playing Minecraft alone and 369

Michael Dezuanni

together with friends, interviews with children, and reflections about my own and the children’s Minecraft play. Beyond this period, I have continued to engage with and critically reflect on Minecraft’s place in family life. In the rest of the chapter, I aim to provide a reflective narrative about my family’s experiences. This account is obviously contingent on the perspective I bring to the story and the limitations of reporting on one’s own media practices and the practices of other family members and friends. Researching among family members is not straightforward. It is difficult to separate one’s roles as parent and researcher, and there is a danger the work produces its own outcomes and social realities. As Sefton-Green (2004: 144) notes of his study of his son’s Pokemon Play, it is difficult to know if you are being over or under self-critical when studying your own children. The strength of the approach is that I was able to observe situated practice at all hours of the day and could consider our family’s play over an extended period of time. Sefton-Green (2004: 144) also found this a strength, stating that it is difficult for researchers relying on observation and discursive analysis to overcome distance from their subjects. Drawing on Geertz (1973), the limitations of the approach are mitigated by the ‘thickness’ of the story I am able to tell from a personal perspective.

Our Minecraft media lives Minecraft ‘worldness’ made its way into our family home in late 2011 following an introduction from an extended family member who was running a Minecraft server. My partner and I and our two children at the time (our daughter age 7 and son age 4) quickly became Minecraft players, with three of us typically playing on desktop and laptop computers. Our son generally played the ‘pocket edition’ of the game at first, although he often sat next to us as we played Minecraft on the computers and watched the screen, and within a few months, he also played on a computer. Minecraft became part of our daily family routine, providing long hours of entertainment during the summer school break. We often played together for an hour in the morning, and sometimes for a second hour in the afternoon. These sessions were regularly coordinated with extended family members who lived in other parts of our city – we would agree to join the server at the same time and sometimes several people might be on the server at one time, including our children and their cousins. My partner’s mother became a frequent player and often joined the server to interact with her children and grandchildren. During these early months, the children nearly always played with an adult, often my partner, who provided advice, undertook troubleshooting and resolved conflicts and issues. In addition to learning game play skills, both children relied on their mother to help them navigate monsters and mining, and to assist them to resolve issues and problems with their cousins. It was necessary to establish boundaries in the game around ownership of items, builds and game space (for instance, who could build where). In addition, there was an ongoing negotiation around screen time, as the children inevitably wanted to play for longer than we had agreed with them. Negotiations on the server between the children sometimes had to be mediated between the adults. When we got together as an extended family in real life, the topic of conversation often turned to the game, with discussions about ‘the server’, building projects and troubleshooting – we all became accustomed to server problems, and ‘lag’ (slow processing speed). We became familiar with Minecraft terminology which became a shared lexicon during Sunday get-togethers. The adults often talked about how to modify the game to make it more ‘child-friendly’. The server administrator (the extended family member) worked out how to download game plug-ins produced by the Minecraft fan community to alter the game’s functions to make it safer and easier to play. Alongside our continued game play, during 2012 and 2013, we began to acquire the Minecraft merchandise that made its way into stores. Initially, we purchased Minecraft T-shirts 370

Minecraft ‘worldness’ in family life

and figurines for the children. The T-shirts acted as a declaration of Minecraft fandom and the figurines became central to offline play, especially for our 4-year-old who enjoyed narrating play scenarios around the figures. Prior to the availability of official Minecraft Lego sets, he and I would spend significant amounts of offline play time in our Lego corner introducing Minecraft figurines into our Lego scenarios. In this sense, the figurines became toys for offline play-acting of the Minecraft world. In April 2014, Minecraft also entered our house and car sonically through an album of songs created by an independent musician, Mr Gee, called “Songs in the Key of Minecraft”, produced via a crowd funding campaign (Guiles 2014). Our recently arrived daughter, who was one, began to ‘sing’ along with the tunes. Importantly for my partner and me, we identified not just with the music, but with Mr Gee’s constructed back story – he represents himself as a father of an avid Minecraft player, and a middle school teacher whose students love Minecraft – he wrote the songs partially inspired by his students’ explanations of Minecraft gameplay (Guiles 2017). Lyrics include lines like: “Holdin’ the shift key down (It’s the only way . . . to walk up on a block . . . and not fall down)”; and “While I was diggin’ down deep, Past a hundred creepy creeps, Found some sparkly diamonds and some redstone . . .”. The songs reflected our family gameplay experiences in fun ways and the album went into high rotation on our disc players, alongside Michael Jackson, Taylor Swift, the Beatles, Vampire Weekend and the Madden Brothers. Minecraft books also became popular in our house, especially for our son, and included the official Minecraft annuals (Mojang 2014) and ‘how to’ books such as the Minecraft Construction Handbook (Needler and Southham 2015), along with children’s fiction based in Minecraft settings. We also often shared Minecraft YouTube videos across our extended family network, especially ones showing impressive builds or fun scenarios. In 2016, all three children but especially the younger two (now aged 9 and 3) started watching Stampy Let’s Play videos on YouTube Kids on a regular basis and often preferred to watch these videos rather than general television programming. With the assistance of my partner and me, our son recorded three of his own Stampy inspired Let’s Play videos and uploaded them to YouTube. Our children have grown up playing and experiencing Minecraft both as regular gameplay and as offline play and media consumption. Of course, Minecraft has not been our family’s sole popular culture obsession. Along the way, there has been focus on the Lego Ninjago construction sets (our son), the Harry Potter books and films (eldest daughter), the animated feature film Frozen (all three), Lego Friends and Lego Elves (youngest daughter), Dragons (son and youngest daughter), the Eurovision Song Contest (all three); and for us as adults, a host of Netflix television series, Facebook and various music. It is fair to say, though, that Minecraft has had a constant presence in our media lives.

Minecraft’s socio-material assemblages Initially, I found it quite difficult to play Minecraft, despite the fact that it has a low entry point for participation. I grew up in the 1970s playing arcade games like Space Invaders and Pacman, and in the 1980s playing the occasional hand-held console game like Donkey Kong, but I was never a regular gamer. The main challenge I faced was the material practice of interacting with the game interface via a laptop computer keyboard. I could not easily incorporate (Hayles 1999) the controls for them to become a ‘natural’ way to enter the game environment. When I initially encountered Minecraft on the laptop, I found it difficult to use the ‘mouselook/ keymove’ controls; this involves using the laptop trackpad to turn, aim and ‘see’ in the game, in combination with the use of keyboard letters: ‘w’ to walk forwards, ‘s’ to walk backwards, 371

Michael Dezuanni

‘a’ to strafe left, ‘d’ to strafe right, and the space bar to jump. It was a genuine challenge to get my fingers to move efficiently on the trackpad while tapping the keyboard letters at the right time. Consequently, I spent considerable time stuck in holes and wandering aimlessly and I found this incredibly frustrating and almost gave up several times. For me, Minecraft play was seriously restricted because of my initial inability to master the material aspects of the game – it was difficult for me to mine materials, let alone craft them into anything. It was impossible to engage with the game’s social/discursive elements until I had mastered the material aspects to an adequate level. After several hours of play and considerable tutoring from my partner (a more experienced gamer), I overcame the material aspects of my Minecraft illiteracy and the game slowly became part of my media life. Our children also had to learn the material aspects of Minecraft play on the laptops, although they seemed to master the process more quickly than I did. I am not suggesting that their incorporation of the game controls was in any way natural or inherent, but they seemed to be much less frustrated than me as they learnt to fluidly move their avatars around the screen. The social-discursive aspects of play presented their own challenges. I have argued elsewhere that digital media literacies associated with Minecraft play can be understood through four interconnected aspects or nodes: digital materials, production, conceptual resources, and analysis (Dezuanni 2017b). The model draws on a socio-material understanding of meaning production informed by Actor Network Theory and post-humanist theories such as Hayles’ alternative to “the text” – “work as assemblage” (Hayles 2003: 279), particularly her claim that the “materiality of an embodied text is the interaction of its physical characteristics with its signifying strategies” (p. 277, original emphasis); and Barad’s (2007) concept of ‘agential realism’ which suggests “the material and the discursive are mutually implicated in the dynamics of intra-activity” (p. 152, original emphasis). From these perspectives, it is impossible to divorce the discursive and social from the material aspects of literacy. Within Minecraft, ‘digital materials’ are the blocks players gather to assemble structures and ‘production’ is the process of interacting with the machine and software to ‘coauthor’ the gameplay experience. Conceptual resources include the socio-culturally produced ideas and knowledge deployed during gameplay – narrative, structure, symbolic systems, categories, formulas, audience, design features and representational choices. Analysis is the ongoing practice of assembling conceptual resources to produce reflection and dialogue. As noted above, our initial experience of Minecraft worldness online principally took place on an extended family member’s server. The centre of this world was a large and safe castle with a fortified wall that monsters could not breach, built by the moderator and one of his friends. The gameplay mode was survival, rather than creative mode, but the game world threats were mitigated as we were able to rely on the castle’s protection and food supplies. From there, we were able to leave the castle’s confines to venture into the less safe castle surrounds, to build our own dwellings and grow our own food. It is notable, though, that the adults mediated the initial threat to the children by constructing the castle safe zone with rules to protect the children in-world, in a manner not dissimilar to offline parenting. During the initial excursions into the wilderness the children were quite afraid to venture out, and at the first sign of night, hurried back to the castle. Over several months, we built up the areas surrounding the castle and the children (and less experienced adults) learnt to build their own dwellings and we spent a lot of time being each other’s audience – we visited and complimented each other’s builds. We learnt from each other and helped the others with their builds when this was requested. We also went off together on adventures into caves to acquire less common building materials. Occasionally we experienced problems on the server when the children did the ‘wrong thing’, breaking the server rules, which had been set down by the adults. The adults were aware of the restrictions this placed on the children’s play and regularly encouraged the children to go off onto their own 372

Minecraft ‘worldness’ in family life

worlds to experiment with aspects of game play like using TNT to blow things up, or to practise fighting monsters where the stakes were lower. The socio-cultural aspects of game play included the design processes of crafting items and building structures, once again extending Minecraft worldness in our family’s life. As mentioned earlier, the children were often inspired by available designs for building on the server, by each other’s creations, by YouTube clips and by official ‘how to’ books. There was an ongoing mediation with Minecraft as a platform because it is only possible to build with the materials available in the various biomes presented by the system and that have been earned through mining. In addition, every block in the game is a uniform sized cube, regardless of the material it represents and blocks can only be combined in particular ways. A central aspect of knowledge in the game is knowing how to combine materials on the crafting table to create new items. The system’s design logics, therefore, present very specific restrictions and ‘vocabularies’ for designing and building. Therefore, it made sense for the adults on our server to start out by building a castle not just because it provided protection in a traditional sense (it included a large outer wall that monsters could not breach); but because cobble stone is one of the most readily available building materials in the game and a suitable material to build a castle. As the children gained confidence on the platform, they built elaborately decorated treehouses, farm houses, large halls and shops. All the while, when we met as a family in person, there was often much discussion among both the adults and children about what to build next and how to build it. At one point, for instance, we all learnt about Fibonacci numbers which made the creation of buildings easier.

The Babylon server At a certain point in 2012, my partner decided she wanted to try out running a server herself. For her, Minecraft ‘worldness’ was not just about play and family arrangements, it was about learning new technical skills and, in Potter’s sense (2012), curating our children’s game experience. Minecraft’s customizability and openness means that if adults are active participants on the platform, they have a significant amount of control over their children’s digital play experience. From the outset, Minecraft worldness for our children was extensively curated and their platform experience was mediated by parental expectations, disciplinary control of particular kinds and surveillance. Despite these restrictions, these processes were intended to enhance our children’s play experience and were an extension of our offline parenting style; and our children had (and continue to have) enormous fun playing Minecraft. My partner created a server called Babylon for our children and their friends to be able to play together online. An extension of Minecraft worldness was that this led to school yard conversations about the game at school drop off and pick up times and a number of parents were keen for their children to join the server, which we referred to as a kind of digital back yard. Part of our motivation for starting the Babylon server was our desire to restrict our children from playing on open Minecraft servers. Like any social network or virtual environment, the platform presents risks to young players and, unlike some commercial children’s virtual worlds, most of the thousands of available Minecraft servers are unmoderated. There have certainly been a number of potentially harmful incidents on Minecraft servers, some of which have been reported in the popular press, ringing the bells of moral panic. For instance, Minecraft has been the centre of controversies about sexual predation (O’Brien 2016), sex mods (Rapson 2016), and cyberbullying (Roth 2017). We recognize the hyperbole surrounding this kind of reporting, but as parents of children living in digital times, we prefer to be proactive about helping our children avoid harm. In setting up a server, we wanted to help our children develop social media literacy 373

Michael Dezuanni

skills within a safe environment in which we could provide them with appropriate support and skills for ethical online participation. The children also learnt other things about Minecraft. By sitting alongside their mother as she manipulated Minecraft as the server administrator, they began to learn about what was possible beyond the base level gaming experience. This included how the game could be altered by downloading community built modifications to alter the user experience. If considered as an open media production platform (Dezuanni 2017b), Minecraft provides multiple levels of opportunity for participation. In Ito et al.’s framing (2010), it allows ‘hanging out’ and building in basic ways through simply playing the game, ‘messing around’ by getting involved in more complex aspects of the production process, and ‘geeking out’ by tinkering with the back end of the game to change the user experience at the platform level. Minecraft is what Banks (2013) refers to as a co-created game because there is a large Minecraft moding community that creates customized ‘skins’ for the game’s avatars, texture packs to change the look of the game and plug-ins to change the game’s affordances. Although the children have not advanced to ‘geeking out’, they have developed an understanding of the constructedness of digital platforms and the control over user experience that deeper technological knowledge and skill affords. This extension of their Minecraft literacy into knowledge of the back-end workings of the game is consistent with what Banks refers to as the development of “distributed expertise” (2013: 99), central to co-creating digital gaming experiences. From a digital literacy perspective, the ability to critique the underlying workings of the game presents the opportunity to gain greater insight into the relationship between the gaming platform and players’ experiences of it. At its core, Minecraft can be considered as a co-creative media production platform because participation involves the player in the manipulation and design of digital spaces for the self as a player, and for others to experience when playing in multiplayer mode, or even where content produced on the platform is shared on other digital platforms such as YouTube. Minecraft enables young children to become media producers and, as they develop loose and more structured narratives around their digital block construction in the game, children effectively author media experience through practices of material digital assemblage. When our children’s friends joined the Babylon server, they entered a designed world, created by our family. They were invited to join in this creation process by adding to the world and changing our overall experience of the space. This did not always go smoothly, as our own children sometimes tried to restrict or direct their friends’ designs; and sometimes children caused problems on the server by changing each other’s builds or by accidently or purposely destroying buildings. ‘Griefing’ is a common practice on some Minecraft servers that we as parents were particularly determined to ban from Babylon. Overall, though, Babylon became a fun place for the children to extend their offline play and friendships into the online world. We no longer have our original Babylon server, as our children have gone on to play Minecraft in new and different ways. We continue to run a Minecraft Realm that is regularly visited by various family members, and our children’s Minecraft building skills have become quite elaborate. Our youngest daughter, who is now five, is playing on a laptop computer, manipulating her avatar and the available blocks just as proficiently as I can.

Conclusion My discussion in this chapter represents the experiences of one extended family, which is likely untypical because of the technical and gaming expertise of some of the adults in the family. Certainly, none of our children’s friends’ parents have shared similar stories with us about the level of curation of their children’s game play experiences. We were able to provide our children with Minecraft experiences in supportive, safe and modified multiplayer environments in 374

Minecraft ‘worldness’ in family life

ways that has not been available to many parents. I do not make this observation to be smug, but rather to suggest that children’s digital experiences are likely to widely vary and that other parents are likely to control their children’s game play in a range of other ways. It is also notable that since the company that produces Minecraft (Mojang) was purchased by Microsoft in 2016, a number of the game’s extended functions have become easier to use. For instance, it is no longer necessary to run or join an independently created server to have a multiplayer experience – Minecrafters can now purchase access to a Minecraft Realm through Mojang/ Microsoft, to run their own server. The Minecraft Marketplace now offers an official site to purchase game modifications that are very easy to add to the gaming experience. As the platform continues to evolve, it might become easier to customize and could provide more parents the opportunity to participate in children’s digital cultures. My argument is that Minecraft represents a potentially prescient example of children’s and families’ future opportunities for digital participation. Minecraft is one of the most successful digital games in history, produced independently and completely supportive of the modding community. The game is a digital making platform that has modification at its heart and it enables individuals to produce each other’s experiences in the game. From a digital literacy perspective, this requires socio-material abilities for successful participation. This includes the material practices of using a computer or device to interact with the game, including the materiality of physically manipulating digital materials on the platform. It includes knowing the software interface and metaphors to be able to manipulate items within the game (crafting) and an understanding of the game’s affordances and limitations; and understanding how the game can be modified or hacked to change its affordances. It also includes drawing on available designs to create new designs within the game world – including structures and narrative designs. Beyond this, there is the literacy associated with social context – understanding the rules of acceptable, ethical and respectful ‘communication’, design and participation within the game’s community. For our family, Minecraft worldness has been a significance presence in our lives for several years and the boundaries between Minecraft the online game experience, and Minecraft as a presence in our ‘offline’ lives is negligible. For us, Minecraft play is just commonplace, and entails all the ups and downs of everyday living and learning in a busy family home.

References Banks, J. (2013). Co-creating Videogames. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Boellstorff, T. et al. (2012). Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Burke, A., and Marsh, J. (eds.) (2013). Children’s Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning and Participation. New York: Peter Lang. Deuze, M. (2012). Media Life. Cambridge: Polity Press. Dezuanni, M. L. (2017a). Material and discursive learning with Minecraft. In: C. Beavis, M. L. Dezuanni and J. O’Mara (eds.), Serious Play: Literacy, Learning, and Digital Games (pp. 150–164). New York: Routledge. Dezuanni, M. L. (2017b). Making homes in Minecraft: YouTube’s playful peer pedagogies. In: At Home with Digital Media Research Seminar. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology, Digital Media Research Centre, November 2–3. Dezuanni, M. L. (2018). Minecraft and children’s digital marking: implications for media literacy education. Learning, Media and Technology. doi: 10.1080/17439884.2018.1472607 Dezuanni, M. L., Beavis, C., and O’Mara, J. (2015). ‘Redstone is like electricity’: children’s performative representations in and around Minecraft. E-Learning and Digital Media, 12(2): 128–146. doi: 10.1177/2042753014568176 375

Michael Dezuanni

Dredge, S. (2015). The Diamond Minecart becomes most popular YouTube channel. The Guardian [online]. Available at: www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/aug/31/the-diamond-minecart-pewdiepieyoutube-minecraft (accessed 4 August 2018). Edwards, S. (2013). Post-industrial play: understanding the relationship between traditional and converged forms of play in the early years. In: A. Burke and J. Marsh (eds.), Children’s Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning and Participation (pp. 10–25). New York: Peter Lang. Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gilbert, B. (2018). Why there won’t be a ‘Minecraft2’ according to the people in charge of ‘Minecraft’. Business Insider. Available at:www.businessinsider.com.au/why-no-minecraft-2-explained-201810?r=UK (accessed 28 April 2019). Guiles, S. (2014). Songs in the key of Minecraft. Kickstarter [online]. Available at: www.kickstarter.com/ projects/swg/songs-in-the-key-of-minecraft (accessed 4 August 2018). Guiles, S. (2017). Songs in the key of Minecraft [website]. Available at: www.mrgeerocks.com/press.html (accessed 30 November 2017). Hayles, N. K. (1999). How We Became Posthuman. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Hayles, N. K. (2003). Translating media: why we should rethink textuality. The Yale Journal of Criticism, 16: 263–290. Hayles, N. K. (2005). My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literacy Texts. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Ito, M. et al. (2010). Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Klastrup, L. (2008). The Worldness of Everquest: exploring a 21st century fiction. The International Journal of Computer Game Research, 8(2). Available at: http://gamestudies.org/0802/articles/klastrup (accessed 4 August 2018). Mojang (2014). The Official Minecraft Annual, 2014. New York: Mojang, Egmont and Scholastic. Needler, M., and Southham, P. (2015). Minecraft: Construction Handbook (Updated Edition): An Official Mojang Book. New York: Mojang, Egmont and Scholastic. O’Brien, Z. (2016). Paedophiles ‘reaching into kids rooms’ as sick adults exploit THIS popular children’s game. Express [online]. Available at: www.express.co.uk/news/uk/658019/Minecraft-Paedophilesgrooming-childrens-game (accessed 30 November 2017). Papacharissi, Z. (2010). A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age. Cambridge: Polity. Potter, J. (2012). Digital Media and Learner Identity: The New Curatorship. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Rapson, J. (2016). Minecraft has a “sex mod” – here’s how to protect your kids. For Every Mom [online]. Available at: https://foreverymom.com/family-parenting/now-minecraft-has-a-sex-mod-heres-howto-protect-your-kids-jenny-rapson/ (accessed 30 November 2017). Roth, M. (2017). Faceless quality of online interactions increase potential cyber bullying. Sylvan Lake News [online]. Available at: www.sylvanlakenews.com/news/faceless-quality-of-online-interactionsincrease-potential-cyber-bullying (accessed 30 November 2017). Sefton-Green, J. (2004). Initiation rites: a small boy in a Poke-world. In J. Tobin (ed.), Pikachu’s Global Adventure (pp. 141–164). Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

376

27 Digital literacy practices in children’s everyday life Participating in on-screen and off-screen activities Pål Aarsand and Helen Melander Bowden

Introduction Digital literacy practices form an intrinsic part of most young children’s everyday life in the Western world today. The concept ‘digital literacy practices’ encompasses the use of a variety of digital media: from printed text on webpages to digital games and vlogs (video blogs). They can be located on-screen and off-screen, and are a part of formal education as well as family life and leisure time (Ito et al. 2010; Marsh 2011, 2014). They are activities that children take part in alone, or together with peers, siblings and parents (e.g. Björk-Willén and Aronsson 2014; Flewitt 2015; Davidson et al. 2016), extending into all domains of children’s daily lives (Gillen and Hall 2012). It is assumed that by participating in digital literacy practices children learn how they work and how to act in accordance with expected norms and values (Street 1984). Since they take place within and across different institutional and social settings, the questions of what children learn, together with whom, and where, become a challenge (Brandt and Clinton 2002). In particular, this concerns the distinction between formal and informal learning, where the former has been associated with formal education and the latter with homes and families (Furlong and Davies 2012). However, as formal learning has been shown to be a part of activities at home, and informal learning a part of school activities (e.g. Leander and Lovvorn 2006; Erstad and Sefton-Green 2013), a more interesting question concerns how different institutional frames influence the accomplishment of digital literacy activities. The present text discusses digital literacy practices using the theoretical and analytical framework of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis (EMCA) (e.g. Goodwin 2018). This means that we direct our attention to the organization of participation in children’s everyday life, considering how they use talk, body and material environment in (re)creating situated digital literacy activities (cf. Goodwin 2000; Mondada 2014). We see digital literacy as a pragmatic resource, “used as it is appropriate, meaningful and useful” (Gillen and Hall 2012: 14). Being a literate person thus involves being a member of a community where one is able to 377

Pål Aarsand and Helen Melander Bowden

read and produce relevant action in line with what is expected from the position one occupies. The social and material environment is intrinsic to local definitions of what it means to know something, and what is considered relevant knowledge can be seen as dynamic and changing (Aarsand and Melander 2016). In other words, what counts as a relevant and qualified way to act when playing Star Wars on platforms with peers differs from handling a Skype conversation with grandparents. When investigating digital literacy practices with EMCA, three analytical notions emerge as particularly relevant: situatedness, participation and multimodality. In the first part of our chapter, we use these notions to structure our review of research on digital literacy practices in young children’s everyday life. In the second part, we will explore the social organization of mundane activities involving different participant constellations, technologies and settings, to discuss theoretical challenges related to the idea that digital literacies are situated.

Topics in research on children’s digital literacy practices Early childhood digital literacy studies have focused on a range of different phenomena from how technologies can be used to improve children’s reading and writing skills (e.g. Burnett 2010) to how children accomplish understanding of video clips on the web (Davidson et al. 2014). A shared interest is the focus on social interaction through and around screens (e.g. Flewitt, Messer and Kucirkova 2015).

Digital literacy practices and situatedness Sociocultural perspectives have had a huge influence on the understanding of literacy practices as situated and diverse. According to Street (1984), literacy practices consist of a range of different activities that are situated in various places, such as playing digital games at home (Aarsand and Aronsson 2009), playing digital games in preschool (Bevemyr and Björk-Willén 2016), technology-mediated storytelling (Åberg, Lantz-Andersson and Pramling 2014) and viewing YouTube clips at preschool (Davidson et al. 2014). The prefix digital indicates a focus on the place of digital technology in the ecology of meaning making as a context for children’s learning (Burnett and Merchant 2013). We argue that in seeing practices as situated, one has to pay less attention to technology as such and more to how it is made part of the socio-technical organization of literacy activities, that is, a “non-media centric” approach (Morley 2008). This underlines the importance of seeing digital literacy practices as embodied activities where talk, bodies, gaze, digital technologies, etc. are parts (see Goodwin 2018). Moreover, children do not participate in literacy activities in a social and cultural vacuum, rather, they use the surrounding environment to guide their actions and to distribute positions among them (Aarsand and Melander 2016), which in turn has consequences with regard to what actions are considered valid by other participants, peers as well as adults. Recently, the idea of literacy practices as situated has received criticism (e.g. Burnett et al. 2014; Burnett and Merchant 2014; Storm-Mathisen 2016). Burnett et al. (2014) draw attention to the significance of space, mediation, materiality and embodiment to literacy. They underline that it could be problematic to define contexts in which literacy practices are situated, since such a definition might imply a certain boundedness, and therefore ignore that lived literacy practices evoke a variety of contexts that intersect in multiple ways (see also Burnett and Merchant 2014). To deal with the flows of literacy practices, Burnett and Merchant (2014: 92) direct their attention to the “articulations between different contexts” with a particular focus on the significance of materiality in order to see how the material and the immaterial act on each other. 378

Participating in digital literacy practices

Moreover, Burnett and Merchant (2014) argue that literacy practices are to be seen as multiply and flexibly situated, and introduce the notion “baroque complexity” to direct attention to “multiplicity in examining interaction through and around texts” (p. 36; see also Burnett et al. 2014). A similar view can be seen in Leander, Phillips and Taylor’s (2010) critique of learning as something that is studied as restricted to one place. They claim that much of the sociocultural research works with “[c]ontainer-like visions of social spaces of learning—perspectives emphasizing categories, stasis, structures, and located representations over the mobilities of practices” (p. 335) meaning that these same categories, structures, etc. are often recreated, despite attempts to disrupt them. However, we argue that this does not mean that the idea of situatedness is not central. Rather, it underlines that what is meant by situated needs to be discussed in relation to an understanding of practices as multi-layered, in which participants build action by drawing upon their own and others’ previous experiences as they engage with a material environment (e.g. digital technologies) that encompasses the knowledge of predecessors (Goodwin 2013).

Digital literacy practices and participation In the study of digital literacy practices, the notion of participation has been one of the key concepts, often related to digital divides and challenges with regard to access to technologies. However, recently the discussion of participation has changed focus from access, to how technologies are used. A focus on participation directs attention to questions such as how, together with whom, where and when children participate in digital literacy practices. Moreover, participation consists of concrete actions that are accomplished and observable in digital literacy activities by researchers as well as participants. Early childhood literacy practices have often been studied in educational settings and have focused on how children become competent users of digital media technologies. Within EMCA, the notion of participation is a key analytical concept (Goodwin and Goodwin 2004) for the understanding of how children (and adults) accomplish digital literacy activities. In such a vein, Bevemyr and Björk-Willén (2016) explored children’s use of computers in preschools, arguing that the social aspects of participating in such activities seem to be the driving force for participation. They also show how the children organized what they called “play apprenticeship” in which newcomers learn from old-timers what to laugh at, how to handle the mouse, etc. Björk-Willén and Aronsson (2014) investigated how children organized play in ways that transgressed online and virtual spaces through animation (i.e., talking to and on behalf of the game characters). The game activities were made public through singing actions, response cries and sound making (see also Aarsand and Aronsson 2009), thereby also showing how playing computer games in the preschool classroom is organized as a social activity that includes other children. In a study of unplanned emergences of preschool children’s talk and social interaction in the classroom using digital devices, Theobald et al. (2016: 15) demonstrate how “language use, participation and access to resources and the teacher are institutionally organized”. In particular, they show that how digital activities are accomplished is closely related to the number of children participating and on what knowledge one has to display to access the interaction. The notion of participation as an analytical concept encompasses how digital literacy practices are socio-technically organized. It shows how technologies are used and how this use is entangled with other activities, persons and places. The focus on participation sheds light on how digital literacy is made relevant in social interaction and what is considered as valid knowledge. Paying attention to children’s participation, means that we focus on what children do with texts and how they orient to actions as relevant or not within the given activities and practices. This is one way of taking a participants’ perspective. 379

Pål Aarsand and Helen Melander Bowden

Digital literacy practices and multimodality Digital literacy, media literacy, information literacy and visual literacy are all notions that point to the idea that consuming and producing media texts is closely related to the media that is used, since this has an impact on how the text appears (McLuhan 1964). The notion multimodality was introduced to study these aspects of literacy practices. From a socio-semiotic point of view, the notion has brought attention to how communication in and through digital media is designed using different resources such as written text, colours, sounds, still images and moving images (e.g. Jewitt 2008; Flewitt, Messer and Kucirkova 2015; Price, Jewitt and Crescenzi 2015). The production and consumption of media text and different modes of communication have been of particular interest (e.g. Kress and Jewitt 2003). There is an increased interest in the study of young children’s use of mobile media technologies such as smartphones and tablets. The introduction of touchscreens has changed the interface of digital technologies, offering a screen that the user to a high degree can handle without necessarily knowing how to read and write in a traditional linguistic sense, although some researchers argue that for example iPads are not quite as intuitive as is often assumed (Merchant 2015). Lately, this has brought attention to how children use touch. How to touch the screen correctly is closely related to what the participant wants to achieve in the consumption/production of the digital text, and is thereby of interest to literacy researchers (e.g. Bezemer and Kress 2014; Nacher et al. 2015). In a comparative study, Price et al. (2015) studied how children use touch when drawing on tablets versus when hand painting on paper, finding consistent differences in how they use their fingers. In a similar vein, Crescenzi, Jewitt and Price (2014) show that the properties of the environment have implications for the type of touch that children use, thereby demonstrating that the interface shapes children’s touch-based interaction. Focus has mainly been on what children are able to do at a certain stage in their motoric development (Nacher et al. 2015; Price et al. 2015), meaning that touch is approached as a question of individual and psychological development rather than as a social activity or mode of interaction. However, we argue that the study of touch draws attention to the embodied knowledge and skills that children develop through participating in literacy activities. While the socio-semiotic approach to a large degree focuses on multimodality in relation to representations and meaning making, the EMCA approach uses the concept to underline that social interaction involves talk, pointing, gaze, intonation and other embodied actions in the pragmatic sense of meaning making (e.g. Goodwin 2018; see also Davidson et  al. 2014; Aarsand and Melander 2016; Davidson, Danby and Thorpe 2017; Melander and Aarsand 2016). Multimodality is understood as resources that participants use in situ to organize social activities. In such a vein, Davidson et al. (2014) study how children and a preschool teacher make meaning of a video clip on YouTube together, showing how the participants use and interpret multimodal interactional resources in the production of shared understanding and meaning making. Already preschool children are required to understand and produce institutional ways of talking about digital texts, technologies and experiences. This is supported by Davidson, Danby and Thorpe (2017), who show how participating in digital literacy activities involves understanding, using and acting according to social norms concerning how to make meaning of video clips. Davidson et  al. (2014, 2016) show how digital literacy practices and meaning-making processes involve embodied interactional resources as well as online texts, thereby transgressing the online/offline dichotomy. The study of multimodality is closely related to understanding digital literacy activities as situated, in the sense that how participants understand and deal with signs, symbols, gestures, pointing, colours and images is closely related to what, where, when and together with whom these occur. 380

Participating in digital literacy practices

Approaching the interactional organization of children’s digital literacy activities In this second part of the chapter, we will use EMCA (Mondada 2014; Goodwin 2013) to explore young children’s participation in various mundane digital literacy activities. We will focus on the social interaction around different technologies, how the technologies are incorporated into the ongoing actions, and the various literacy competencies that are made relevant in this process. The data selected for analysis, consist of video recordings that are drawn from two larger projects that focus on everyday activities in different educational environments: Norwegian preschools and a Swedish afterschool. The Norwegian study documented the use of digital technologies in three technology-dense preschools (children aged 3–5 years), with the aim of exploring how digital media are integrated into children’s everyday life (approximately 70 hours of video recordings in total). The Swedish study focused on children’s (8–10 years) multimodal engagements with digital technologies in peer groups in two settings (school, afterschool and home), one of them technology-dense (approximately 180 hours of video recordings in total). We have selected three examples for analysis based on the following criteria: (1) a variation in terms of institutional settings (preschool and afterschool), (2) age of the children (from 3 to 8–9 years), (3) participant constellations (child– child and child–adult interaction) and (4) used technologies (iPad, Smartboard and laptops). In the analysis, focus is on the communicative and multimodal resources (talk, text, images, moving images, music, etc.) that children orient to, and how different places and everyday contexts become an integrated part of their literacy practices. Our analytical attention is on how the participants establish different participation frameworks (Goffman 1961; Goodwin and Goodwin 2004) by addressing the following questions: How is participation organized in young children’s digital literacy activities? What multimodal resources do the participants draw upon in building action? How can we think about these activities as simultaneously situated and as transcending the local? The excerpts have been transcribed following conventions developed within conversation analysis (Appendix A). Line drawings of video frames are used in order to highlight analytically relevant embodied actions and the participants’ orientations to the material environment. The participants are speaking Norwegian and Swedish and translations into English are included in the representations. Concerning ethical considerations, written consent was obtained from teachers and the children’s guardians in both projects. Doing research with young children requires ethical sensitivity and the children were continuously informed during fieldwork about the research projects and their rights to decide whether they wanted to participate or not. Both projects have been approved by ethic committees. Pseudonyms are used for all participants.

Shifting participation frameworks: merging on-screen and off-screen activities In Excerpt 27.1, a group of children who are 3 years old, gather around an iPad in a Norwegian preschool. The children take turns using the iPad by signing their names to a list. In this case, it is Oda’s turn. The children can choose freely which application they want to play with, and Oda has decided to play a pizza baking game with two other girls who are sitting on a sofa: Oda in the middle with the iPad on her lap, and Mia and Thea on one side each. Mia and Thea carefully attend to what Oda is doing, thus constituting a participation framework of shared attention and engagement. 381

Excerpt 27.1  Making a pizza on an iPad.

Participating in digital literacy practices

The girls occupy different positions within the participation framework. Oda controls the iPad and rolls pizza by touching the tablet with her index fingers. Thea engages in the game by moving one of her hands in the air, imitating a quick rolling movement as she says “roll ro::::ll”, whereas Mia attempts to control the activity by producing the closing imperative “↑there,”. That Oda has primary rights over the iPad and the progressivity of actions, is displayed as she does not align with Mia’s imperative but instead continues rolling (line 7). The girls thus form, in Goffman’s (1961) terms, an ‘ecological huddle’ with a shared focus of attention, containing a distribution of participant positions (Figure 27.1.1). This framework changes as three boys approach the girls. Upon arrival, one of them asks Oda what she is going to put on the pizza (line 12), thus requesting access to the ongoing activity. As Oda shifts her attention to the boys Mia, who has carefully watched each step that Oda has taken on the iPad, takes the opportunity of adding tomato sauce by touching the iPad (Figure 27.1.2). In response, Oda gently shoves away Mia’s hand thus guarding the iPad from intrusion (Figure 27.1.3). This action is not questioned by any of the participants, thus reinforcing Oda’s position. The material object, the iPad, has a limited shape and extension in space. When Oda points at the boys, saying that she will touch them (lines 14 & 16), she enacts an enlarged touch screen transforming the boys into items on the screen (Figure 27.1.2). This is reinforced as she claims “’coz it said Kri::s Tom and Adam” as if their names had been presented alongside other symbols on the game interface. The boys align with her framing of the activity, and engage in imagining how she will then have to cut them – in the shape of vegetables – into pieces (lines 17, 19, 22). The participation framework has shifted to encompass more participants where there is a transformation of the activity from being focused on the iPad to including the boys within a larger participation framework. The children’s previous knowledge is displayed by their familiarity with the game (e.g. Adam asking what Oda will put on, when Oda says that she will touch the boys they imagine themselves as vegetables that need to be sliced), and in the way that they handle the iPad. The local culture and rules of the preschool are visible in that the children are used to taking turns using the iPad (e.g. Mia immediately accepts that Oda shoves her fingers away from the iPad, Thea does not roll on the screen but in the air, Adam directs his question about what to put on the pizza to Oda). As the analysis shows, touch is an important resource in playing the game, but touch also forms an intrinsic part of the social organization of the activity as a whole. Touch is part of the interpretation of the game, where the participants’ actions blur the border between on-screen and off-screen activities. The interaction underlines the importance of analytically grasping the role of touch in order to understand the organization of literacy activities around mobile touchscreens and demonstrates how touch represents an embodied digital literacy competence.

Asymmetric participation frameworks: interacting with and around a smartboard Excerpt 27.2 involves a group of five children (5 years old), one preschool teacher and one assisting teacher who are engaged in a school preparing activity in a Norwegian preschool. In the activity, one boy is selected by the preschool teacher to answer questions about emotions that are posed through a smartboard. Pictures of children appear on the screen, and the boy is asked questions about what he feels when looking at the pictures. Two responses are possible; to click on a green bear for a positive feeling and on a red bear for a negative feeling. The question-answer sequence follows a distinct pattern: (1) The smartboard asks a question, (2) the child answers by touching one of the bears, (3) the teacher enters the answer into the computer by clicking, and (4) the smartboard repeats the answer. The sequence that we have chosen to 383

Pål Aarsand and Helen Melander Bowden

Excerpt 27.2  Identifying feelings using a smartboard.

analyse slightly deviates from this pattern, in that it contains an inserted sequence during which the preschool teacher questions the child’s candidate answer, and holds him accountable for developing his thoughts about the interpretation of an image. The sequence starts with a simple question-answer sequence (lines 1–2), where the smartboard is integrated into the participation framework as it asks a question and the boys answer by touching the green bear (Figure 27.2.1). The teacher treats the candidate answer as problematic and invites the boy to reflect upon his choice (line 4). This is made possible by the fact that she is the one in control of the computer. Although not explicitly saying that the answer is wrong, the framing of the activity as a preparatory school activity makes it possible to orient to the boy as someone who has misinterpreted the task. Being held accountable for an answer in public, prepares the children to a school norm of teaching and learning. The boy develops an answer

384

Participating in digital literacy practices

that orients to a red feeling, providing an account for why he thinks it is a red feeling (the boys on the picture look stern and sad, lines 9–10). When accounting for his answer, he stands back and points with his whole arm at the images (Figure 27.2.2). The teacher provides a weak evaluation of his response “↑yes, (.) maybe?” that in spite of its positive high pitched introduction is somewhat ambiguous, and when she asks the boy which bear he wants to take, the boy maintains his original suggestion: the green bear. As in line 2, he answers by touching the green bear, and thus uses his body to switch between interacting with the smartboard and the teacher. The teacher clicks on the green bear and the computer responds the non-evaluative “not angry?”. When producing an answer, the boy and the preschool teacher work as one unit distributed over two: the boy answers verbally and the teacher enters the answer. The distribution of labour is invoked by the preschool teacher as she asks the boy: “which one do you want us to push then?” (line 11, italics added), ascribing the boy primary rights to answering the question but formulating it as a collective action. The interaction in Excerpt 27.2, actualizes the interpretation of images and symbols in terms of emotions. Moreover, it concerns the interpretation of feelings as displayed by children on images, and the use of symbols to answer: a green bear with a happy face for a positive feeling and a red bear with an angry/sad face for a negative feeling. The design of the initial question in terms of what the child feels when watching the picture (line 1), requires the interpretation of an image and invokes emotions as embodied display. Moreover, the child is requested to feel something when seeing the picture and is held accountable for this feeling. The interface of the smartboard thus represents a complex semiotic field, containing text, images and symbols that together with the participants constitute a multi-layered participation framework.

Epistemic participation frameworks: collaborative problem-solving We will conclude by exploring how three boys (8–9 years) in a Swedish afterschool centre, work to create an account on a social network website. At the afterschool there is a set of laptops that the children take turns using. The children choose what they want to do, and it is common that they engage in one activity together, such as the social network site Momio. In Excerpt 27.3, two boys have succeeded in creating accounts, when they are requested to enter an email address. They turn to a third boy, Aziz, for help, thus establishing an epistemic participation framework in which the boys are positioned in relation to one another and what they hold each other accountable for knowing. The boys have access to one laptop each, but as Hashim and Majid create accounts they coordinate their actions and simultaneously enter the same virtual world. In order to register the account, the site asks for an email address, something that only some of the children have. Hashim announces his problem by first reading on the screen “write your email addre:ss” and then clarifying that “it’s there I don’t kno::w” (line 1), thus referring to his lack of knowledge. Upon hearing this, Aziz rises from his side of the table and walks toward Hashim and Majid, getting ready to engage in helping them. Hashim’s first problem-solving strategy is to suggest that Aziz write his email address. The children frequently borrow each other’s accounts, but Hashim displays that he recognizes that accounts are private, by promising not to look while Aziz is writing and demonstrably looking away (line 2). Aziz, however, does not respond and Hashim instead asks him how he has logged into Momio. Now standing behind Hashim and Majid (Figure 27.3.1), Aziz suggests a second problem-solving strategy, which is to borrow someone else address: “just do your mo:m’s” (line 8). By referring to a parent, a home context is mobilized in order to solve problems in the here-and-now, thus transcending boundaries

385

Pål Aarsand and Helen Melander Bowden

Excerpt 27.3  Creating an account on a laptop.

between afterschool and home. This is how several children have solved the problem of associating an email to their account, but in this case Hashim and Majid do not know their parents’ email addresses, although Majid claims to have known but forgotten (line 10). Aziz orients to a clarification of the problem and asks whether they have to write a name, and Hashim again refers to the image on the screen by pointing at it, repeating the requested information (line 13) and, slightly shaking his head, says that he does not know. Aziz attempts to act as a knowledgeable participant, and suggests a third problem-solving strategy “just do like that.” as he leans forward and starts writing nonsense letters on Hashim’s computer (Figure 27.3.2). Writing plays a central role, and is explicitly mentioned several times (lines 1–3, 12–13, 17). However, Aziz’s proposal is immediately rejected by Hashim, who refers to what Aziz is writing as “bla bla bla:”, a kind of mock writing, and states that (he knows) that it does not work then. There is a tension between individual and collective actions in the interaction in Excerpt 27.3. The boys orient to having separate accounts, and to the protection of these accounts. At the 386

Participating in digital literacy practices

same time, the activity is intrinsically collective, as the boys solve the problems they encounter in collaborative ways. Thus, they actualize the borrowing of accounts from each other, and help each other in finding solutions to shared problems. When solving problems in collaboration, an epistemic participation framework is constituted, in which some children are oriented to as knowledgeable and others as in need of help. There are frequent epistemic disclaimers (lines 1, 9–11, 15), positioning Hashim and Majid as not knowing and by asking Aziz questions and requesting help from him they orient to him as knowing more than themselves. Aziz attempts to act as a knowing participant, presenting different strategies to solve the problem and by intervening to write on Hashim’s laptop.

Discussion A critique directed at situated literacy perspectives, is, as was mentioned above, that the notion ‘situated’ implies a boundedness and tends to ignore that lived literacy practices evoke a variety of contexts (e.g. Burnett et al. 2014; Burnett and Merchant 2014). Moreover, it has been claimed that new divides are created, separating the local and the global, agency and structures, literacy and technology (Brandt and Clinton 2002), as well as online (on-screen) and offline (off-screen) activities (Leander and Lovvorn 2006). With this criticism in mind, we suggest that EMCA is a promising approach to the study of situated literacy practices with the capacity of contributing with a theoretical and analytical focus on the interactional organization of everyday literacy activities and on how participants, as they build action in concert with each other, draw upon past experiences and the material environment (e.g. digital technologies), in ways that surpass the local contingencies of the situation at hand (cf. Goodwin 2018). As has been shown, EMCA directs attention to how participants orient to and use a range of different communicative and material resources to deal with various types of text in situ (e.g. Åberg, Lantz-Andersson and Pramling 2014; Bevemyr and Björk-Willén 2016; Davidson, Danby and Thorpe 2017). Thereby, a dynamic notion of context that differs from what is usually seen within literacy studies focusing on situated practices is put into play (Duranti and Goodwin 1992). The EMCA interest in the social organization of literacy activities rests on the assumption that interaction is multimodal and that participants in interaction incorporate digital texts (in a wide sense) into the production of ongoing actions by drawing upon a number of embodied and material resources. The focus on the details of the social organization of digital literacy activities and the resources that participants use to create, sustain and develop them, makes it possible to see how humans and their actions intersect with technology and software. In such a vein, we have shown how children transgress boundaries between on-screen and off-screen activities (see also Marsh 2014; Davidson et al. 2016), and incorporate technologies into participation frameworks (see also Aarsand and Aronsson 2009; Björk-Willén and Aronsson 2014). The detailed analyses show how children act on texts and how these ways of acting are related to and rely upon the children’s previous experiences and knowledge of digital technologies. As the children display familiarity with, and knowledge of how to handle the technologies (hardware and software) within the particular activities, we have demonstrated how knowledge and experience transgress the local and situated activity (Aarsand and Melander 2016). The literacy activities can be understood as multi-layered, where the activities are intertwined with institutional norms and rules that, for example, attribute ‘ownership’ and the right to decide how to use an iPad for a restricted time to one child at a time, or hold a child accountable for answering a teacher’s question in public and being able to develop an explanation for an answer. The multi-layeredness can also be seen in how situated actions are related to social practices ‘outside’ the situation at hand. By paying analytic attention to what 387

Pål Aarsand and Helen Melander Bowden

the participants make relevant when solving a problem we are thus able to see how they relate to and use their social and material surroundings, such as mobilizing a parent’s email address in order to solve a problem at the afterschool centre. In short, it could be argued that the situated is multi-layered, which can be seen through the participants’ orientations to previous activities, other places and institutional norms and rules that influence the accomplishment of the digital literacy activity. Rethinking the notion of situatedness along these lines opens up the local and situated to a past, present, and future as participants orient to different aspects of the activity that they are engaged in to build action. The notion of participation is crucial, as it provides a conceptual ground for analysing how participants make relevant various literacy competencies as they participate in digital activities, thus also displaying to the researcher what counts as crucial norms, skills and competencies. In sum, the EMCA approach to social action is material as well as immaterial. It shows how children connect to previous experiences and their ideas about the future, to what happens in situ and how this is related to other activities in other settings. By theoretically and analytically approaching participation in literacy activities as multimodal and multi-layered, it is possible to empirically explore as well as to theorize the situated in a more nuanced way.

Future research To better understand how young children handle and learn to handle digital technologies as part of their everyday lives, research is needed on how young children participate in mobile digital literacy practices in and across institutional settings, and how technological interfaces such as virtual reality and IoToys (Internet of Toys) change these practices.

Appendix A Transcription conventions adapted from Jefferson (2004). [] = (0.8) (.) .,? :: word WOrd ↑ >< (( )) ()

Overlapping talk Equal signs indicate no break or gap between the lines. Numbers in parentheses indicate silence. A dot in parentheses indicates a micropause less than 5/10 of a second. The punctuation marks indicate intonation. The period indicates falling intonation, the comma continuing intonation and the question mark indicates a rising intonation. Colons are used to indicate prolongation or stretching of the immediately prior sound. A hyphen after a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption. Underlining indicates some form of stress or emphasis. The more the underlining the greater the emphasis. Especially loud talk is indicated by upper case. The up arrow marks a sharp rise in pitch. Right/left carets indicate that the talk between them is speeded up. Double parentheses are used to mark transcriber’s descriptions of events. Empty parentheses indicate that something is being said but no hearing can be achieved.

Acknowledgement We wish to thank our research funding bodies: Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg foundation (Project title: “Talking and texting on the move: Exploring children’s media literacy practices in peer groups”, MAW 2014:0057) and The Norwegian University of Science and Technology. 388

Participating in digital literacy practices

References Aarsand, P., and Aronsson, K. (2009). Response cries and other gaming moves: toward an intersubjectivity of gaming. Journal of Pragmatics, 41: 1557–1575. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2007.05.014 Aarsand, P., and Melander, H. (2016). Appropriation through guided participation: media literacy in children’s everyday lives. Discourse, Context & Media, 12: 20–31. doi: 10.1016/j.dcm.2016.03.002 Åberg, E. S., Lantz-Andersson, A., and Pramling, N. (2014). ‘Once upon a time there was a mouse’: children’s technology-mediated storytelling in preschool class. Early Child Development and Care, 184(11): 1583–1598. doi: 10.1080/03004430.2013.867342 Bevemyr, M., and Björk-Willén, P. (2016). Events of potential learning: how preschoolers produce curriculum at the computer during free play periods. Nordic Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 12(8): 1–16. doi: https://doi.org/10.7577/nbf.1696 Bezemer, J., and Kress, G. (2014). Touch: a resource for making meaning. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 37(2): 77–85. Björk-Willén, P., and Aronsson, K. (2014). Preschoolers’ ‘animation’ of computer games. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 21(4): 318–336. doi: 10.1080/10749039.2014.952314 Brandt, D., and Clinton, K. (2002). Limits of the local: expanding perspectives on literacy as a social practice. Journal of Literacy Research, 34(3): 337–356. doi: 10.1207/s15548430jlr3403_4 Burnett, C. (2010). Technology and literacy in early childhood educational settings: a review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(3): 247–270. doi: 10.1177/1468798410372154 Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2013). Learning, literacies and new technologies: the current context and future possibilities. In: J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 575–586). London: Sage. Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2014). Points of view: reconceptualising literacies through an exploration of adult and child interactions in a virtual world. Journal of Research in Reading, 37(1): 36–50. doi: 10.1111/jrir.12006 Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Pahl, K., et al. (2014). The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(1): 90–103. doi: 10.1080/01596306.2012.739469 Crescenzi, L., Jewitt, C., and Price, S. (2014). The role of touch in preschool children’s learning using iPad versus paper interaction Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 37(1): 86–95. doi: 10.1080/ 01596306.2012.739469 Davidson, C., Danby, S., Given, L. M., et  al. (2014). Talk about a YouTube video in preschool: the mutual production of shared understanding for learning with digital technology. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 39(3): 76–83. Davidson, C., Danby, S., Given, L. M., et al. (2016). Facilitating young children’s use of the web in preschool. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 30(4): 569–584. doi: 10.1080/02568543.2016.1214193 Davidson, C., Danby, S., and Thorpe, K. (2017). “Uh Oh”: multimodal meaning making during viewing of YouTube videos in preschool. In: M. J. Narey (ed.), Multimodal Perspectives of Language, Literacy, and Learning in Early Childhood. (pp. 233–255). Berlin: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-44297-6_12 Duranti, A., and Goodwin, C. (eds.) (1992). Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Erstad, O., and Sefton-Green, J. (eds.) (2013). Identity, Community, and Learning Lives in the Digital Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Flewitt, R., Kucirkova, N., and Messer, D. (2014). Touching the virtual, touching the real: iPads and enabling literacy for students experiencing disability. Australian Journal of Language & Literacy, 37(2): 107–116. Flewitt, R., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2015). New directions for early literacy in a digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. doi: 10.1177/1468798414533560 Furlong, J., and Davies, C. (2012). Young people, new technologies and learning at home: taking context seriously. Oxford Review of Education, 38(1): 45–62. doi: 10.1080/03054985.2011.577944 Gillen, J., and Hall, N. (2012). The emergence of early childhood literacy. In: J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), The Sage Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 3–17). London: Sage. Goffman, E. (1961). Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction. Indianapolis, IN: The BobbsMerrill Company. Goodwin, C. (2000). Action and embodiment within situated human interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 32(10): 1489–1522. doi: 10.1016/s0378-2166(99)00096-x 389

Pål Aarsand and Helen Melander Bowden

Goodwin, C. (2013). The co-operative, transformative organization of human action and knowledge. Journal of Pragmatics, 46(1): 8–23. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2012.09.003 Goodwin, C. (2018). Co-operative Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodwin, C., and Goodwin, M. H. (2004). Participation. In: A. Duranti (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 222–244). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Ito, M., Baumer, S., Bittanti, M., et al. (2010). Hanging Out, Messing Around, Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In: G. Lerner (ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation (pp. 13–31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jewitt, C. (2008). Multimodality and literacy in school classrooms. Review of Research in Education, 32(1): 241–267. doi: 10.3102/0091732X07310586 Kress, G. R., and Jewitt, C. (2003). Multimodal Literacy. New York: Peter Lang. Leander, K. M., and Lovvorn, J. F. (2006). Literacy networks: following the circulation of texts, bodies, and objects in the schooling and online gaming of one youth. Cognition and Instruction, 24(3): 291–340. doi: 0.1207/s1532690xci2403_1 Leander, K. M., Phillips, N. C., and Taylor, K. H. (2010). The changing social space of learning: mapping new mobilities. Review of Research in Education, 34: 329–394. doi: 10.3102/0091732X09358129 Marsh, J. (2011). Young children’s literacy practices in a virtual world: establishing an online interaction order. Reading Research Quarterly, 46(2): 101–118. doi: 10.1598/RRQ.46.2.1 Marsh, J. (2014). The relationship between online and offline play: friendship and exclusion. In: A. Burn and C. Richards (eds.), Children’s Games in the New Media Age: Childlore, Media and the Playground (pp. 109–131). Farnham: Ashgate. McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge. Melander, H., and Aarsand, P. (2016). Practices of remembering: organizing math activities in a first grade classroom. In: Å. Mäkitalo, P. Linell and R. Säljö (eds.), Memory Practices and Learning: Interactional, Institutional, and Sociocultural Perspectives (pp. 175–200). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Merchant, G. (2015). Keep taking the tablets: iPads, story apps and early literacy. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 38(1): 3–12. Mondada, L. (2014). The local constitution of multimodal resources for social interaction. Journal of Pragmatics, 65: 137–156. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2014.04.004 Morley, D. (2008). For a materialist, non—media-centric media studies. Television & New Media, 10(1): 114–116. doi: 10.1177/1527476408327173 Nacher, V., Jaen, J., Navarro, E., et  al. (2015). Multi-touch gestures for pre-kindergarten children. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 73: 37–51. doi: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2014.08.004 Price, S., Jewitt, C., and Crescenzi, L. (2015). The role of iPads in pre-school children’s mark making development. Computers & Education, 87: 131–141. doi: 10.1016/j.compedu.2015.04.003 Storm-Mathisen, A. (2016). Grasping children’s media practices: theoretical and methodological challenges. Journal of Children and Media, 10(1): 81–89. doi: 10.1080/17482798.2015.1121888 Street, B. V. (1984). Literacy in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge University Press. Theobald, M. A., Danby, S. J., Davidson, C., et al. (2016). How talk and interaction unfold in a digitally enabled preschool classroom. Australian Journal of Linguistics, 36(2): 189–204. doi: 10.1080/07268602.2015.1121530

390

28 P(l)aying online Toys, apps and young consumers on transmedia playgrounds Karen E. Wohlwend

When children play together, they often enact and retell stories from their favorite transmedia franchises for toys, popular films, video games, mobile apps, clothing, school supplies, snacks, and so on. Transmedia refers to multimedia with a line of toys and consumer goods that are decorated with popular media characters and storied through a film’s grounding narrative (Kinder 1991; Jenkins et al. 2006). Examples of highly popular children’s transmedia include Disney’s film-based Star Wars, Frozen, Disney Princess, and The Avengers; and Mattel’s doll-based Barbie and Monster High. The distribution networks for commercial media franchises carry characters and narratives across film screens, fast food promotions, toy manufacturer websites, brick-andmortar retail stores, video game consoles, and mobile phones in children’s homes, schools, and communities. In this way, a film or video game materializes a core storyline through a set of toys and consumer products that pervade daily life. At one level, children want to get their hands on appealing toys and games, to imagine themselves as beloved characters, to play favorite stories with friends, and to own the stuff that has the most cultural capital among their peers. At another level, children’s play with commonplace toys tangles with the commercial strategies and profit motives of multinational media conglomerates partnered with toy manufacturers and retailers and spreads across digital media, social media, and popular media on interwoven information systems and global distribution networks. Play is a productive literacy of possibilities (Wohlwend 2008) that creates complex mergers of children’s desires, imaginative resources, digital technologies, and corporate motives. In this chapter, children’s toys are examined as a site of convergence where play literacies bring together imagination, bodies, materials, actions, and spaces. A critical understanding of the assemblages of imaginative play that flow through contemporary childhoods requires more complicated explanations than binary structures that construct play as imaginary/real, material/ immaterial, and so on (Carrington 2013). Here, embracing play’s ambiguity (Sutton-Smith 1997) opens consideration of its improvisational capacity and transformational facility for cultural makings and remakings of popular media, digital media, and social media within immersive commercial play worlds. In this framing, a toy is more than a child’s plaything – it is a dense site of engagement that hosts a nexus of productive literacy practices, social relationships, digital technologies, and cultural participation. 391

Karen E. Wohlwend

Children engage toys as assemblages that flow in and out and across commercial spaces through everyday cultural practices: • •

Paying: viewing products and encountering ads on television, retail websites, within games and apps, and making – or asking parents to make – purchases of virtual and real goods, online and in the aisles of brick-and-mortar stores. Playing: enacting stories with toys or video games on electronic screens in collaboration with other players, a physical environment, or an app’s game mechanics. Playing involves collaborating and sharing with friends in games and apps, on social media, and in peer cultures (Pugh 2009; Burke and Marsh 2013; Wohlwend 2015).

Commercial, imaginative, and social practices tangle bodies, play, and toys, moving across the immediate spaces of children’s worlds and global multimedia sites and networks that distribute consumer goods over vast distances.

Transmedia, play literacies, and assemblage Educational approaches to play have often reflected a classed preference away from popular culture and mass-market toys, toward more expensive, natural, non-commercial materials. The well-intentioned strategy to keep Barbie, Star Wars, Pokémon, and Frozen toys out of classrooms to avoid the stereotypical texts of popular culture can deny our most vulnerable children access to familiar toys that are comforting reminders of home and to the storytelling resources they know by heart (Seiter 1992; Pompe 1996). Literacy research that recognizes mass-market media toys as literary resources has revealed children scripting, animating, and dramatizing with popular toys through a variety of literacy tools such as “branded fiction” in children’s books (Sekeres 2009) and apps (Marsh et al. 2015). Further, play researchers who expand the notion of text to include multimodal multiliteracies (New London Group 1996) have examined toys as identity texts that communicate through action rather than print (Carrington 2003; Carrington and Dowdall 2013; Wohlwend 2012, 2017; Thiel 2015; Black, Tomlinson, and Korobkova 2016; Wohlwend and Hall 2016). This body of research complicates the ways that children’s social purposes and popular media interests entangle with commercial designs and branding strategies of retailers, popular media producers, and toy manufacturers. Drawing on this work, I review transmedia toys as mobile and polycentric flows and play as a practice that engages assemblage as doings, undoings, and redoings. In the next section, the notion of toy is unpacked as an anchor that tethers expected portrayals of characters, narratives, and player roles but also as a convergence of multi-sited flows and trajectories that circulate from screens to markets to playrooms.

Transmedia and popular media The stuff of play matters. Toys are material anchors for storying, thick with meanings layered into their materials by designers, writers, advertisers, retailers, and so on through all phases of productions (Wohlwend 2012). Toys carry material meanings beyond their shiny surfaces, vinyl aroma, and bright packaging. Toys evoke expectations for particular kinds of players and toy uses. In the case of transmedia, additional identities are suggested by a toy’s connection to films, television series, or video games that provide semiotic grounding for a franchise’s licensed products. A child can live in-character through everyday practices with toys as well as household items, from toothbrushes to technology. Multi-category marketing and global distribution 392

P(l)aying online

networks amplify this personal immersion on a world-wide scale, engaging millions of children around the world. The mobility of transmedia across product categories has a bi-directional effect: affecting players’ access to more interactions with the toys but also assembling additional uses and tangled meanings for the products. As toys move across platforms, meanings shift from film to toy to clothing to food and so on. Transmedia’s core function is resemiotizing a set of consumer goods (by associating an ordinary product with a desired character, extending the product’s and brand’s appeal, and connecting purchases to fans’ expression of their media passions). Thus, a transmedia toy, game, or other product cannot be viewed in isolation but must be considered within the range of goods that children can encounter (Kinder 1991). A toy, even while encased in packaging on a store shelf, invites particular players and ways of playing (Brougère 2006). Toy materials’ sensory properties – the softness of plush fleece, the gleam of metallic paint, or the elasticity of squishy vinyl – convey cultural meanings and expectations for cuddling, zooming, or squeezing actions. Further meanings are attached to toys through their links to characters and narratives in films, television series, games, or other multimedia. Some transmedia franchises originated with toys, building on the financial success of an already popular doll or toy such as Strawberry Shortcake, Barbie, Transformers, or My Little Ponies, then spinning off animated films or television series. In other franchises, successful films inspired a line of toys, as in Disney Princesses. However, today, a growing trend integrates media with toys from the outset so that films are released simultaneously with a supporting line of toys and consumer products. Today, blockbuster animated films dominate the transmedia market as toy merchandising merges with multimedia: In most years, Disney makes more money from selling branded movie merchandise than from the actual movies. A typical year sees seven or eight movies with toy tie-ins. This year [2017], there are about 25—an unprecedented number for the $20 billion toy industry. Among them: three Marvel Comics titles, two Lego movies, two DC Comics films, Cars 3, another Pirates of the Caribbean, one more Transformers, a new Smurfs, and the liveaction reboot of Beauty and the Beast. (Bhasin and Mosendz, 2017: para. 3) Research on popular franchises in children’s media reveals far-reaching networks where players collaborate to imagine together in immersive multimedia play worlds that move across digital media and social media. Edwards (2014) tracked the mobility of transmedia, mapping connections of the animated episode “Muddy Puddles” in the franchise Peppa Pig across video productions, toys and consumer goods, and media platforms, arguing that such trajectories constitute new configurations of “contemporary play” that emerge in the “digital-consumerist context” (p. 220). Her research shows that the blurring of digital/material/social within the digitalconsumerist context enables actual participation for children as bona fide consumers in markets and adult cultures, rather than sociodramatic pretense that simulates adult daily living activities associated with toys such as dollhouses and play kitchens. In other words rather than pretending to be adults who shop, children participate directly by spending money and making purchases: children are understood as representing “three markets in one”, including as (1) a primary market, spending their own money; (2) a secondary market, influencing parental spending; and (3) a future market, representing potential adult consumers . . . When young children access and use consumer products, and move seamlessly in and out of digital media environments, they are beginning to engage in a form of “play” which is not necessarily about the realisation of mature play. Rather, they are directly participating in the digital-consumerist 393

Karen E. Wohlwend

context, such that their play is characterised by the possibilities enabled by the convergence between various products, digital media and digital technologies across a continuum of digital to non-digital experiences. (Edwards 2014: 224) Playing with transmedia in digital spaces juxtaposes paying and playing in ways that conflate who and what is being pretended, consumed, created, and moved across multiple products, contexts, roles, and bodies. When playing with a toy online, children enact a favorite character, navigate an avatar across webpages, and consume in-app purchases in transmedia websites where children participate through networks, markets, and media platforms. Given a toy’s global scope and intimate reach, more research is needed to understand play within the murky space of the digital-consumerist context.

Imaginative assemblage in play literacies The imaginative power of play assembles and reassembles identity texts in media toys: players imagine themselves into the tangles of bodies, props, toys, and technologies as they propose imaginary scenarios to both replay and reconfigure expected roles and stories. Play constructs imaginary and storied worlds that blur into here-and-now lived spaces. In this framing, transmedia toys are not simply texts to be read but stuff that can be built upon, made into contexts to imagine with others, and inhabited by merging pretense with practices of daily living. Transmedia materialize particular visions of childhood that circulate and converge in these concentrations of media. Children make use of the complexity of converging meanings of toys to remake commercial play worlds for their own purposes – in ways that both reproduce and rupture the expectations. For example, during play, children might respond to a toy’s character identities but also the child’s expected role as player and consumer. Contemporary play engages a range of expected identities, actions, and practices for engaging toys and producing meanings across personal and global spaces or digital media and social media platforms. The framing of toys as assemblage suggests that artifacts such as toys convey anticipated user actions, signaled in part by their previous and potential uses. Temporal and spatial trajectories of toys converge in a moment of play action as a semiotic aggregate (Scollon 2001). This notion resonates with Latour’s (2005) actor network theory premise that people and things are co-actants that move as an interacting assemblage across networks. In other words, toys play with children as much as children play with toys (Rautio and Winston 2013). The basis for this framing is sociocultural, but de-centered and made messier by Latour’s insistence that assemblages are constantly mobile and changing. (Despite the common focus on action, materials, and fluidity, this cultural/historical definition of assemblage differs significantly from Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) theorization of assemblage as conglomeration of disparate bodies, things, and meanings in ongoing fragmentation and active making, unmaking, and remaking.) Framing play as assemblage critically engages the convergences of toys, games, commerce, peer cultures, and social media networks through the notion of collective cultural imaginaries of childhood – story worlds and visions of who children should be and become – that circulate through transmedia (Medina and Wohlwend 2014). Cultural imaginaries circulate through media franchises as children play games and imagine future or fantasy worlds together, recruiting friends and followers in here-and-now play spaces and across social media platforms. Fueled by repetitions and interconnections across time and space, toys and games are reshaped and reimagined all day, every day in local and global ways, where each playing is also a remaking of a toy’s meaning. For example, I have argued that transmedia play is a key site where players can 394

P(l)aying online

engage, reproduce, and revise stereotypical expectations for doing “girl” or “boy” that circulate through imaginaries of childhood within popular media (Wohlwend 2012). Using imagination as a social practice, children can remake commercially produced media identities, change a given pretext, imagine a new context, and expand ways of belonging in their peer and school cultures. Play provides opportunities to access, negotiate, and combine multiple contexts and blend meaning potentials for (1) characters in literary and media narratives, (2) consumer expectations in brand identity marketing, (3) social trajectories in peer culture, and (4) shared expectations in children’s collaborative play. Play literacies produce complex worlds and social spaces where children collectively enact and remake cultural imaginaries (Medina and Wohlwend 2014) with reconstructive potential for meaning and belonging.

Methods for examining assemblage in children’s media play The tracking of convergence and trajectories in nexus analysis (Scollon and Scollon 2004) aligns with mapping of assemblage and mobility in actor network theory (Latour 2005). Actor network theory recognizes material as well as human actants in interactions within social/technological assemblages that link, repeat, and rupture as they continually move and morph across platforms and networks. Similarly, nexus analysis tracks the mergers of materials, bodies, social groupings, and discourses that make up the nexus of expected, almost automatic practices mobilized across space and time yet clustering in a particular site or phenomenon, in this case, a transmedia franchise’s official website. Nexus analysis critically examines the naturalized practices of a culture, whether peer cultures, consumer cultures, or digital cultures, that tend to normalize expected ways of “doing and being” (Gee 1999) that uphold dominant discourses. A nexus of practice signals a shared affiliation and elicits automatic, mutual cooperation (Scollon 2001) among a group of players, shoppers, or fans. Mapping actions and interactions of toys, players, and transmedia networks reveals repetitions and ruptures in both the content and player/computer interactions of commercially produced media such as toys, games, and apps on transmedia websites. In the next section, I track the actants, actions, and interactions with a mobile app in a popular doll transmedia website, Monster High, to identify the trajectories of expected user identities and actions and to see how play actions and identities entangled in the digital-consumerist context. (The following analysis was conducted on a 2015 version of the app; the app has been discontinued and is no longer available on the Monster High website or in app stores.)

P(l)aying and assembling toys across media Consuming apps in transmedia As children play games on transmedia websites, they may encounter marketing such as retail links to manufacturer’s products or product launch advertising in the form of announcements of new characters. Aligning with a larger trend, the virtual economies in these games reflect corporate priorities: games can be structured to prompt real money transactions through a range of strategies embedded in game mechanics and incentives to purchase deluxe virtual merchandise and in-game currency (Grimes 2015). In addition, transmedia websites offer retail shopping with wishlist and shopping cart options to order toys and merchandise, either directly from the manufacturer or from online retailers. A common feature of transmedia websites is access to free apps where children can play with toys and engage in digital play with characters through simple games such as matching puzzles or platform games where players move up levels along a path. Before playing web games or downloading apps, website safeguards might require users to register and log in; at one level this 395

Karen E. Wohlwend

appears to provide a safe site for the protection of children but at another, this enables website owners to collect customer data and enable in-app purchases of additional game features or actual merchandise. An End User License Agreement might explicitly state that the company does not collect personally identifiable information from children but that does not mean that it is not automatically collecting user data via cookies. For example, tracking of children’s browsing patterns on the website and quiz responses on likes and dislikes can provide the manufacturer with valuable data on consumer response to their products. Some transmedia websites and apps offer free usage but require players to log in with a proof of purchase code (e.g. Webkinz, McDonalds) while others subsidize free access with in-app purchases or advertising. Other sites offer a two-tiered (e.g., basic/deluxe) membership structure, a common strategy to generate revenue through subscriptions rather than advertising. For example, in Disney’s (now-discontinued) Club Penguin, users who bought a paid membership, rather than use the free membership, [could] transfer offline credit into virtual credit, as it [would allow] them to buy additional clothes for the avatar and furniture and artifacts for their igloos, which then converts into social capital, as members are invited to members only events, such as parties in igloos. Cultural capital is accrued through knowledge of the game itself, and the wider one’s experience in the game, the richer one’s cultural capital, which again indicates that those users who have paid membership can accrue a greater amount of social capital. (Marsh 2011: 109) Today, on many websites, children also learn expectations for consumer dispositions and practices while playing games: tokens or points buy privilege, shopping is continual, with countless purchases of goods for avatars such as clothing, makeup, hairstyles, accessories, or furniture to furnish their avatars’ rooms. Players can also send virtual merchandise as gifts to one another. The variety of options for sale on children’s apps (e.g., avatar costumes, food, furniture, certificates) is perhaps the archetype of what Daniel Cook (2007) identifies as intransitive choice for child consumers, that is, a selection of options offered to children that provides the appearance of choice and agency but that results in no lasting or meaningful change. However, it is important to remember that despite what appears to be limited choice, literacy research also shows that children inventively use play to work around restrictive features to accomplish their goals in virtual worlds (Grimes 2010; Marsh 2011; Burke and Marsh 2013). In some franchises, the link between real world currency and virtual benefits might be transparent and direct. Websites link players to app stores where IOS games can be downloaded as free apps to tablets or smartphones: These mobile apps extend a purchased toy, creating webtoy hybrids (Shuler 2007) that are an assemblage of physical toy, human actor, and digital avatar. A backgrounded component of this assemblage is essential to the paying/playing relationship: a caregiver/consumer, who provides technology and connectivity, purchases webtoys and loads apps, and disables or enables in-app purchases to an authorizing credit card. Because more affluent families can choose to purchase apps rather than use free versions, “children in the families with lower economic capital are the ones most likely to encounter [limits in basic] features, which often have a negative impact on the quality of game play” (Marsh et al. 2015: 42).

Playing dolls in digital media The free Ghouls and Jewels app that was available on the Monster High doll transmedia website is a match-three puzzle IOS game (e.g., Candy Crush), released in 2014 (now discontinued). 396

P(l)aying online

In this platform game, avatars travel across a fixed route as players solve 130 puzzle grids along the way. Players must earn 20 out of 30 stars to unlock the next, more difficult level. A content analysis of the MH narrative that provides a throughline for this game reveals a foregrounded narrative about a set of MH characters, problem-solving to retrieve lost jewels that are cursed to cause “dreamwalking” mistaken identity mix-ups that prompt misadventures among the MH characters. The narrative is carried by introductory two-character comic strip panels with speech bubble dialogue that precede each of the 13 puzzles. The characters’ dialogue offers a pretext for differentiating clothing and backdrops in each level that provides a gloss of diversity through stereotypical cultural markers: Slavic syntax, arctic snow and ice, pink and blue pastels for Abbey Bominable; Día de Muertos motifs, pinatas, desert cacti, and Spanish translanguaging, “Mi abuela is making tamales today” for Skelita Calaveras. Diversity here is decorative and superficial, a device to create product differentiation, or a difference that makes no difference (Orr 2009). The story is pre-set and has no impact on game play; rather the relevant content for play focuses on players’ acquisition of coins, pets, jewelry (e.g., “bloodstones”), and shopping to dress their avatars in more powerful and advantageous outfits. Paying blurs with paying from the first moments of obtaining the app. Downloading the free app requires an Apple ID linked to a credit card and, during subsequent play, players can purchase in-app merchandise such as avatar clothing, pets, pet food, or additional points, allowing them to gain an advantage in the game. For example, each pet brings a special ability (e.g., providing additional seconds of play, enabling extra moves, or targeting and removing obstacles in puzzles). Games can be replayed without penalty to enable players to repeat games and earn enough stars to unlock a level. Players also earn coins in the token economy within the app, which can be redeemed in a particular level for a new outfit. Playing a game with an avatar dressed in the level’s bonus outfit generates easier puzzles, making substantial bonus points possible. Players earn points, which can be spent at the “Maul” to purchase outfits and accessories for avatars or pet food. Screens that pop up just before time expires at the end of each puzzle invite players to buy more time so they can solve the puzzle. Additionally, in-app purchases enable players to buy avatar clothing or pet food, and owning these virtual goods provides additional advantages within the game: easier puzzles with more available matches for higher scores, extra turns or time to solve the puzzle, or unblocking puzzles with a pet who can destroy troublesome puzzle pieces. However, actant interaction in games can also be analyzed by game mechanics and the complexity of game operation (Grimes 2015; Jones 2015). The highly repetitive and “addictive” game develops a propensity in players for rapid scanning for matches and automatic swipes in response to the computer’s grid, which requires iterative cycles of hovering and swiping in every game. There is an expectation of automaticity and repetition of physical response labor that is in tension with the need for strategic planning for the best sequence of moves to produce matches of three, four, or five jewels that earn bonus points. Gee (2009) argues that the ability to move virtual game pieces involves more than a winning strategy; it offers a “micro-control” that provides players with satisfying and visceral “embodied power. . . . video games, in giving players micro-control over an element or elements in a virtual world, create an effect where the player feels that his or her body has extended into and is intimately involved with the virtual world” (p. 70). The interaction order operating here is player against/with computer, where the game mechanics are both a game structure and an actant in the game. The tensions that this produces in players’ expectations for fair play in the computer/player interaction through random shuffling by computer are apparent in reviewers’ complaints that the game “cheats” through such 397

Karen E. Wohlwend

disruptions and interruptions. Although the impartiality of shuffling and freeze-ups is visible and questioned on social media, the backgrounded two-tier play so common in commercial games goes unchallenged. Paying players are buying more micro-control and agency over the game design/opponent and experiencing more embodied power through purchases that give greater amounts of time for solving puzzles, power-up devices, do-overs, and other micro-controls. Players can buy their way up to the next level by real world purchases of virtual merchandise, repeatedly purchasing pets, jewels, or clothing, but with short-lasting benefits that do not accrue beyond the current level. While it is possible to earn enough stars to unlock each level in the game, a non-paying player progresses much more slowly.

Recruiting and following friends on social media Paying, playing, and friending intertwine through player options that earn benefits by linking and sharing on social media. The free app does not require a toy purchase; instead the app includes in-app advertisements to other games and products, in-app purchases of extra points and virtual merchandise. Player app endorsement through social media posts that recruit coplayers can unlock blocked features. For example, a locked level can also be unlocked by connecting to Facebook and recruiting friends to download the app and play. Beyond the app, the MH website prominently displays icons to social media sites sponsored by the franchise: YouTube channels, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and so on. The official websites on these social media networks serve as additional outlets for advertising messages that announce new products and build excitement around the brand. The centralized control of content intensifies the brand message through repetition and retains tight control over the brand’s image, by design. Websites also generate marketing data; the number of views and likes on social media sites can be tracked as indicators of the success of product launches and depth of customer engagement with various products. Fan response on the official MH site is limited to clicking likes (600–700 per post on FB) and adding comments to official posts, which are probably screened by the company, as comments seem limited to declaring love for the MH characters or pleading for re-release of discontinued products. Mattel posts and copyrights the images and text on these sites, occasionally re-posting fan posts or related content such as MH photos from Comic-Con or makeup tutorial channels on YouTube. Fan cultures are blurred in game play and social media sites where the age of participants is uncertain, but also in promotional events advertised through social media, such as costume play conventions where adults and children can dress up as favorite media characters (e.g., Comic-Con). The Ghouls and Jewels app featured tie-ins through special avatars that matched dolls Manny Taur and Iris Clops that were available for sale only at 2014 Comic-Con.

Decentering and re-assembling research for polycentric play In the previous sections, tracking the interactions in one transmedia app showed how toy meanings are configured by assemblages of players, body actions, character designs, profit motives, and game mechanics situated in a dense network of consumer goods and children’s desires. These assemblages travel on trajectories that thicken and thin, tangle and detangle as they travel across websites and playscapes where children enact characters, play games, create avatars, purchase products, watch videos, and affiliate with groups on social media. Online and offline, fueled by repetition, variation, and mobilized in trajectories across time and space, toys and games are reshaped and reimagined all day, every day in local and global ways – each child’s playing a remaking of the toy’s meaning. 398

P(l)aying online

Latour (2005) notes that because this kind of repetition, remaking, and change and movement is the continual state of actants in motion on networks; it takes effort to keep things in place. Instead of looking for transformations that are everywhere, actor network theory suggests it might be better to find methods that locate places where resources cluster to keep actants immobile. In this framing, marketing strategies to protect the brand, from product licensing to game mechanics to social media moderation, are stabilizing forces that attempt to limit and control possibilities for transformation. For example, the digital game mechanics of repetitive puzzles that allow little player input or creative alterations works with other strategies within “official” spaces to guarantee a manufacturer-approved “real” product to consumers but also to limit dilution of the brand. Additionally, game mechanisms that limit players’ micro-control drive more consumption of in-app purchases as players seek advantages and easier ways to progress. Children are underestimated when the productive potential for remaking is designed out of toys and products. When toymakers create a brand persona, they invite children to interact through emotional attachment with a character, not a product. These meanings are always in flux, even in commercial spaces, as the toy persona morphs across official spaces (e.g., licensed media and products) and unofficial spaces (e.g., third-party knockoffs, fanfiction, and fanvid). Manufacturers seek to protect the value of their brand persona from dilution from remaking and imitations that proliferate as toys become popular. To protect persona/products, toys and websites are designed to limit tinkering and remaking, although if a toy is an invitation to play, it is also inherently an invitation to improvise on the authorized meanings of objects, characters, and imaginaries. Carrington (2013) argues for a polycentric view of transmedia that recognizes that the overlaps of multiple products, actions, and purposes with toys produce slippages that open opportunities for remaking. This decentering lens on transmedia reveals spaces of rupture among multiple imaginaries where players can re-assemble, tinker, and improvise on commercial spaces. Assemblage converges cultural imaginaries as well as digital, popular and social media platforms, creating repetitions, resonances, and ruptures, making rich sites for children who, as knowledgeable cultural participants, can reproduce, resist, and improvise on such practices for their own purposes. For example, when children play in virtual worlds, they take up the valued ways of participating in peer play cultures that converge and conflict with the official rules and interaction orders established by the commercial website. Players’ collaboration can overcome restrictive rules and controls through improvisation, enabling unofficial possibilities unforeseen by adult designers, such as players spelling out transgressive messages by arranging their penguin avatars’ bodies on the screen in real time (Marsh 2011). Digital networks and social media converge peer cultures of fans who consume and produce the franchise, the gaming cultures of players who engage through games and apps, and consumer cultures who engage through purchases and reviews on the retail sites as well as the advertisements that precede the video or banner advertisements that run along the bottom. More research and new research methods are needed that recognize children’s play with digital media as critical engagement with commercial transmedia. Questions of equity around access and participation need to be unpacked to make visible the social, material, and ideological effects of media convergence in young children’s imaginative labor and cultural production: Who gets to play with the newest and most powerful toys and technologies? Whose play is limited to free apps on manufacturers’ websites? Who gets to collaborate, produce, and share their own media with peers? Assemblage theory supports analytic approaches that begin with an examination of a toy for its histories, identities, and composition that then spreads out across the franchise and its networked locations to map its circulations and locate its multiple interactions. Examples include 399

Karen E. Wohlwend

Edward’s (2014) analysis of Peppa Pig, nexus analysis of Lalaloopsy dolls (Wohlwend and Hall 2016) or object ethnography of a Lego Hazmat figure (Carrington and Dowdall 2013). A productive play-based early literacy curriculum that recognizes young children’s expertise with popular media is long overdue. Expanded approaches to literacy instruction are needed that integrate popular media and move beyond media literacy focused on critical readings or informed consumption in the digital-consumerist context. Children need opportunities to play together and produce their own media, guided by teachers who recognize that children at play are already purposive cultural participants who are capable of not only remaking the meanings of identity texts of dolls and toys but also wielding these texts to access and participate in social groups and peer cultures.

References Bhasin, K., and Mosendz, P. (2017). You can’t escape the movie toys this year. Bloomberg [Online]. Available at: www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-02/movies-make-the-20-billion-toy-industry-goround (accessed 29 May 2018). Black, R. W., Tomlinson, B., and Korobkova, K. (2016). Play and identity in gendered LEGO franchises. International Journal of Play, 5(1): 64–76. Brougère, G. (2006). Toy houses: a socio-anthropological approach to analysing objects. Visual Communication, 5: 5–24. Burke, A., and Marsh, J. (2013). Children’s Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning, and Participation. New York: Peter Lang. Carrington, V. (2003). “I’m in a bad mood. Let’s go shopping”: Interactive dolls, consumer culture and a “glocalised” model of literacy. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 3: 83–98. Carrington, V. (2013). An argument for assemblage theory: integrated spaces, mobility, and polycentricity. In: J. Marsh and A. Burke (eds.), Children’s Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning, and Participation (pp. 200–215). New York: Peter Lang. Carrington, V., and Dowdall, C. (2013). “This is a job for a hazmat guy!”: global media cultures and children’s everyday lives. In: K. Hall, T. Cremin, B. Comber, and L. C. Moll (eds.), International Handbook of Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning, and Culture (pp. 96–107). Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Cook, D. T. (2007). The disempowering empowerment of children’s consumer “choice”: cultural discourses of the child consumer in North America. Society and Business Review, 2: 37–52. Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Transl. B. Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota. Edwards, S. (2014). Towards contemporary play: sociocultural theory and the digital-consumerist context. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 12: 219–233. Gee, J. P. (1999). An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. London: Routledge. Gee, J. P. (2009). Deep learning properties of good video games: how far can they go? In: U. Ritterfield, M. Cody, and P. Vorderer (eds.), Serious Games: Mechanisms and Effects (pp. 67–82). New York: Routledge. Grimes, S. M. (2010). The digital child at play: how technological, political and commercial rule systems shape children’s play in virtual worlds. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia. Grimes, S. M. (2015). Playing by the market rules: promotional priorities and commercialization in children’s virtual worlds. Journal of Consumer Culture, 15: 110–134. Jenkins, H., Purushotma, R., Clinton, K., Robison, A. J., and Weigel, M. (2006). Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture: Media Education for the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Jones, R. H. (2015). Discourse, cybernetics, and the entextualization of the self. In: R. H. Jones, A. Chik, and C. A. Hafner (eds.), Discourse and Digital Practices: Doing Discourse Analysis in the Digital Age (pp. 28–46). London and New York: Routledge. Kinder, M. (1991). Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

400

P(l)aying online

Marsh, J. (2011). Young children’s literacy practices in a virtual world: establishing an online “interaction order”. Reading Research Quarterly, 46: 101–118. Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J. C., Lahmar, J., Scott, F., et al. (2015). Exploring play and creativity in pre-schoolers’ use of apps. Final Project Report. Medina, C. L., and Wohlwend, K. E. (2014). Literacy, Play, and Globalization: Converging Imaginaries in Children’s Critical and Cultural Performances. New York: Routledge. New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review, 66: 60–93. Orr, L. (2009). “Difference that is actually sameness mass-reproduced”: Barbie joins the princess convergence. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 1: 9–30. Pompe, C. (1996). “But they’re pink!” – “Who cares!”: popular culture in the primary years. In: M. Hilton (ed.), Potent Fictions: Children’s Literacy and the Challenge of Popular Culture (pp. 92–127). London: Routledge. Pugh, A. J. (2009). Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children, and Consumer Culture. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Rautio, P., and Winston, J. (2013). Things and children in play: improvisation with language and matter. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 36: 15–26. Scollon, R. (2001). Mediated Discourse: The Nexus of Practice. London: Routledge. Scollon, R., and Scollon, S. W. (2004). Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet. New York: Routledge. Seiter, E. (1992). Toys are us: marketing to children and parents. Cultural Studies, 6: 232–247. Sekeres, D. C. (2009). The market child and branded fiction: a synergism of children’s literature, consumer culture, and new literacies. Reading Research Quarterly, 44: 399–414. Shuler, C. (2007). D is for digital: an analysis of the children’s interactive media environment with a focus on mass marketed products that promote learning. Advancing Children’s Learning in a Digital Age. New York: Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Street Workshop. Sutton-Smith, B. (1997). The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Thiel, J. J. (2015). Bumblebee’s in trouble: embodied literacies during imaginative superhero play. Language Arts, 93: 38–49. Wohlwend, K. E. (2008). Play as a literacy of possibilities: expanding meanings in practices, materials, and spaces. Language Arts, 86: 127–136. Wohlwend, K. E. (2012). The boys who would be princesses: playing with gender identity intertexts in Disney Princess transmedia. Gender and Education, 24: 593–610. Wohlwend, K. E. (2015). One screen, many fingers: young children’s collaborative literacy play with digital puppetry apps and touchscreen technologies. Digital media and literacies special issue. Theory into Practice, 54(2): 154–162. Wohlwend, K. E. (2017). Monster High as a virtual dollhouse: tracking play practices across converging transmedia and social media. Teacher College Record, 119. Wohlwend, K. E., and Hall, D. T. (2016). Race and rag dolls: critically engaging the embodiment of diversity in Laloopsy transmedia. In: G. Enriquez, E. Johnson, S. Kontovourki, and C. Mallozzi (eds.), Literacies, Learning, and the Body: Putting Theory and Research into Pedagogical Practice (pp. 155–169). New York: Routledge.

401

29 Webs of relationships Young children’s engagement with Web searching Susan Danby and Christina Davidson

Introduction Digital texts in young children’s lives offer new possibilities for young readers to engage in literate childhoods. Becomingly increasingly available to young children, digital texts include communication and social network platforms, such as Skype, email and social media sites. Surprising to some, though, young children also are regularly using the Internet and associated Web to seek information and engage in Web searching (Beheshti et al. 2005; Bilal and Ellis 2011). A recent global report estimates that one third of all Internet users across the globe are children, with the percentage likely to be higher in lower income countries (Livingstone et al. 2015). Not only is the percentage of child users increasing, so too is the time that children spend online (Duarte Torres et al. 2014). While the Internet is commonly used to refer to both Internet and Web activities, they are different. The Internet is a network (e.g. networked electronic devices such as computers and mobile technologies), and the World Wide Web (the Web) is one way to access the Internet through software made visible through a computer browser (e.g. Google, Explorer). Seeking information through Web searching is an important activity for children. They use the Web for a range of purposes, including finding out information and following their own interests (Foss et al. 2012). Despite the rapid increase in children using the Internet at younger ages (Livingstone et al. 2015), children under the age of six often are excluded from studies of children’s Internet use, and so there is little known about how children in this age group use Web search engines and participate in Web searching. With so many young children accessing the Web, there is an imperative for policy and educational agendas to sufficiently consider these younger participants. This chapter addresses the under-researched area of young children’s experiences when Web searching, with a predominant focus on Web searching in home and school contexts. The conceptual underpinnings of the chapter draw on understandings that children are agentic in their interactions, and that they competently manage their social interactions with others, including with family members, teachers and peers (Prout and James 1997; Danby and Baker 2000). This theoretical construction is underpinned by evidence that shows that children, even young children, use Web technologies when made available (Davidson 2011; Danby et al. 2013; Davidson 402

Webs of relationships

et al. 2016). The chapter considers the digital and social resources that young children draw on to support their Web searching practices as they negotiate Internet and Web explorations, often in social contexts that include the participation of educators, peers and family members.

Young children searching the Web Searching and selecting information from the Web involves learning and practising numerous skills. For instance, Web searching can promote interest in reading digital texts, a necessary condition for seeking information on the Internet. At the same time, young children face challenges when reading online texts, as reading skills influence the time spent on Web pages (Enochsson 2005). An advantage for young children is that Web pages tend to be multimodal, with diverse semiotic systems at play. For instance, Web searches can produce information on the screen that includes text, visual images and sounds (Davidson 2011). The page layout might include various design features, such as combinations of split screens, photographs and videos. These multimodal resources convey meaning, so young children might not be so dependent on alphabetic text to make sense of what they are viewing. Children show positive attitudes to Web searching and confidence in their ability to use search terms (Byrne et al. 2016) particularly with popular search engines such as Google (Druin et al. 2009; Jochmann-Mannak et al. 2010; Foss et al. 2012; Bilal and Boehm 2013). At the same time, though, they might experience difficulties with some aspects of Web searching – from knowing and being able to key in useful search terms or queries, to selecting the most appropriate search results and understanding the information that results from searches (de Vries et al. 2008; Azpiazu et al. 2017). Children’s difficulties in finding information when Web searching can be exacerbated by a range of issues, including children’s spelling errors and keying skills, and frustration when not finding the information they seek. Key word searches can be difficult, as children’s searches tend to be either too broad or too narrow. Children prefer browsing to the use of key word searches, and their searches are usually not planned (Beheshti et al. 2005). They do not readily combine search terms, and experience difficulties selecting information from the search results (Bilal 2002). They tend to search quickly and make selections from the top of the search list and can experience frustration at not finding the relevant information within their searches (Druin et al. 2009). A large-scale quantitative study by Duarte Torres and colleagues (2014) that compared child and adult searching and browsing behaviour found that children experienced greater difficulty finding keywords for more complex information needs, they had shorter click rates indicating that they were likely to click on the prominent features of a Web page, and they tended to search a smaller range of topics. For example, children typically limited their search to the first page of the results and frequently to the first result on the list. These findings identified the importance of tailoring Web searching services specifically to the needs of child users, and made recommendations for developing Web sites for young users; for example, “query suggestions with information aspects (i.e. query senses) tailored with topics of interest for children would greatly help children to narrow down their searches, and it would improve their chances to find information that is on topic” (Duarte Torres et al. 2014). They concluded by highlighting the urgent need to address the knowledge needs of child users. Children prefer and tend to use search engines designed for the general public (e.g. Google, Yahoo), rather than ones designed specifically for children (Bilal and Ellis 2011; Bilal and Boehm 2013). Numerous interface studies examine the problems experienced by children’s use of search engines designed for the general public (or adult) users (Beheshti et al. 2005). For example, de Vries 403

Susan Danby and Christina Davidson

and colleagues (2008) examined the use of a Web portal, worksheet and collaboration by children in elementary classrooms, and found that the Web portal limited the search space for children. One response to the problems experienced by children is the design of search engines/portals for child users, with one study suggesting that it would be helpful to “age the interface” (Druin et al. 2009) for children; that is, to limit results to one page that requires no scrolling. Problems with Web searching, however, are not limited to children as Web users of all ages may experience problems with searching. Effective Web searching requires specific knowledge and skills, as found in a training program for upper elementary school students (Kroustallaki et al. 2015). In this intervention, Web searching strategies, reading and evaluation skills improved with training in how to formulate queries, select information and evaluate the credibility of sources. While the troubles and challenges experienced by children are well documented, we do not seek to contribute further to this body of work focused on the difficulties that children experience when Web searching, especially given the age of children encompassed within the early literacy span. Instead, we focus on children’s purposes for Web searching, how interactions enable their access to the Web, and how children draw upon Web content as resources in their interactions with others. Framed within ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, this approach recognizes that all interaction is socially structured, and investigates how talk and action are used to make sense of everyday worlds (Francis and Hester 2004), including how children organize their participation in Web searching practices. This observational perspective, grounded in video-recorded observations of complex everyday practices, makes possible detailed understandings of data theorized as social practice (Flewitt 2011). This theoretical perspective delivers a comprehensive understanding of the interactional competence of children rather than a deficit view of children, and values children’s participation and agency in managing their everyday interactions (Danby 2017a, b). The importance of these interactions is no less significant when examining young children’s use of digital technologies.

Young children and Web searching practices There are a limited number of studies that deliberately seek to examine and understand the Web searching practices unique to young children (Spink et al. 2010) rather than for the purposes of comparison with older children or with adults. While there are a number of studies of children’s Web searching in the elementary school, focusing on children aged 6–7 years of age who represent the early years of schooling (e.g., Enochsson 2005), children younger than six are usually not included in studies of children’s use of the Internet (Spink et al. 2010), thus there is little knowledge of their engagement with Web searching. One possible explanation may be found in the predominance of investigations in areas such as cognitive science, information retrieval and human–computer interaction where young children might not be considered to have the necessary reading and writing skills to engage in Web searching (Spink et al. 2010), although, within the field of literacy education, decades of research highlight the importance of young children’s experiences prior to formal schooling to the acquisition of language and literacy (e.g., Heath 1983; Freebody and Baker 1985; Wells 1991; Lankshear and Knobel 2003; Marsh 2010). Emergent literacy is an important concept in literacy education and one that has been taken up in relation to young children’s acquisition of digital literacies (e.g. Marsh et al. 2005; Plowman et al. 2010; Burnett et al. 2017). Young children begin to acquire knowledge, practices and skills through their use of digital technologies long before they enter school. The earliest studies of young children’s interactions during Web searching include Davidson’s detailed examination of one family’s Web searching (Davidson 2011, 2012). Initially, the father keyed in the word “lizards” to begin a Google search. The younger child (aged almost 3 years) 404

Webs of relationships

selected from the search results, using thumbnail clips. His existing familiarity with Wikipedia sites and YouTube clips about lizards was evident in his talk about them. The printed texts on the Wikipedia “pages” were not the focus for talk. Instead, the talk was about images of lizards, the identification of specific lizards and attributes to help with identification. The older child (aged 5 years) sought to identify the name of a specific lizard – “the one that runs on water”. His search included initial use of information from a book, where he successfully copied the name found in the book (“green basilisk lizard”) to conduct his Google search. He sought help occasionally by indicating what he did know (e.g. certain letters) while identifying information he needed (e.g. how to make spaces and remove errors). A pivotal ethnographic study of young children’s Web searching in classrooms (Spink et  al. 2010) involved video recordings of children working alone, with other children, and with a teacher and teacher assistant. Analysis focused on numerous features of the children’s Web searching practices, including their use of approximations in spelling and the importance of images in site selection. The study found that young children engaged in complex Web searches, including keyword searching and browsing, query formulation and reformulation, relevance judgements, successive searches, information multitasking and collaborative behaviours. Rather than noting an absence of competent skills, such as query formulation or incorrect spelling, the study provides detailed description (and examples) of what children did. This study demonstrates the importance and worth of detailed observations for understanding what young children are able to do in concert with others. The importance of dialogue during collaborative Internet searching is increasingly being recognized (Knight and Mercer 2015). Interactions between adults and young children when Web searching provides a foundation for the kinds of independent talk that “explores misconceptions, discusses the utility of results and shares strategies for finding information” (Knight and Mercer 2015: 315) in the contexts of schooling. Most importantly, talk may be used to encourage young children to make and share connections between existing knowledge and previous experiences during Web searching or when considering Web searching results (Davidson 2009; Danby et al. 2016; Houen et al. 2017). Even elementary school students can experience challenges in Web searching because they “are not yet used to activating their prior knowledge frameworks while reading and interpreting new information” (de Vries et al. 2008: 663). Interactions with others have an essential role to play in engaging and enabling the production of the existing knowledge and experiences of young children and of adults during shared Web searching. Detailed descriptions and explications of numerous aspects of young children’s Web searching at home and at preschool foreground understandings of Web searching within the broader context of young children’s everyday activity with significant others (adults and other children). In this way, it is possible to understand the circumstances out of which Web searching arises, including children’s purposes for Web searching, and the ways in which adults and other children interact to produce Web searching in competent ways. Web searching might arise out of group time interactions and lead to Web searches by children or by the teacher (Davidson et al. 2016; Ekberg et al. 2016; Davidson et al. 2017). Teachers may use their talk to enable children to produce factual knowledge relevant to the search or search results, such as through their use of “I wonder . . .” requests of children (Houen et al. 2016a, b). There might be similarities and differences between the Web searching interactions a child experiences at home and at preschool, requiring that young children’s digital competence spans and encompasses differing Web searching practices (Davidson et al. 2018). Although teachers frequently participate in Web searching activity, there are times at preschool when young children engage in Web searching without their teachers’ involvement. Danby and her colleagues (2016) examined two children’s engagement with Google 405

Susan Danby and Christina Davidson

Earth™, to show how they shared knowledge and jointly accomplished a task that they had determined for themselves, that is, to find their preschool centre. In the process, the children moved beyond the limits of their individual knowledge and experience to accomplish their Web search collaboratively. Together, they were able to use the technology without teacher intervention. These findings confirm the importance of peer social interaction during young children’s Web searching. These studies of children’s moment-by-moment engagement illustrate a number of shared interactional features of Web searching for young children. First, young children’s Web searching mostly happens in a shared social context, such as in a family or classroom setting. The Web search is a collaborative effort where participants join in to initiate the search, make assessments about which results to select, and discuss those results. Research suggests that young children are not engaged in Web searching as a solitary experience. Second, there is an interest or an experience that initiates the Web search based on a real-life experience, which becomes the catalyst for initiating the search, and contributes to the discussion of the findings of the search. In other words, children calibrate their Web search results through a lens that relies on their everyday experiences. Third, the young children’s Web searches that involve co-locating real-life experiences with the topic of the Web search produce a hybrid relationship bringing together virtual and physical spaces. The connections between these spaces both blur and connect children’s experiences between physical and digital spaces (de Souza e Silva 2006). These three interactional features involving children’s Web searching are illustrated in the next section, which presents two examples of children engaged in Web searches.

Two episodes of young children’s Web searching In this section, we show Web searching in home and preschool settings, drawn from data collected in a three-year Australian longitudinal ethnographic study that investigated young children’s use of digital technologies within the flow of everyday life across home and school settings (Danby 2013, 2017b; Danby et al. 2018). In this longitudinal study, six families participated, involving six focus children and their siblings (aged 1–11 years) and other family members (e.g. parents, grandparents) in home contexts, as well as the focus children with their classroom peers in preschool and during their first two years of formal schooling (approximately 300 children). Families were purposely selected in terms of urban and regional contexts, and range of family income and educational backgrounds. The home video recordings were undertaken by family members (usually parents), in order to spontaneously capture family events, while the classroom video recordings were undertaken by a researcher (Danby 2013). The video recordings (approximately 200 hours) were the primary data source, with recorded observations of children’s situated activities. Below, two episodes involving Web searches are discussed, one at home and one in a preschool. All participant names in the transcripts are pseudonyms. [Please see Appendix for a description of the transcription notation.]

Episode 1: Web searching at home Everyday experiences become the catalyst to initiate search queries on the Web. Episode 1 involves a family mealtime with all six family members present at the dinner table. The family are discussing their forthcoming visit to the former Pentridge Prison in Melbourne. This episode of family Web searching debunks the view of the lone child searching for information with limited skills. Episode 1(a) below begins with the mother asking about jail escapees. The family involves the mother (M), father (F), and four siblings ranging in age from 4 to 12 years (S1–S4). 406

Webs of relationships

Episode 1(a) (ARCFF_Data descriptor_CC_A_300415_00017, 3.10): 1 M    Hey has anyone escaped from Pentridge Jail 2    Let’s see how other people did it in real life 3 S2 Is it spelt jay gee ay oh el 4 F actual[ly5 M       [oh why are you obsessed with= 6     [the spelling ] [((laughter))] 7 F  [it’s actually] [prison    ] not jail. 8 S3   oh 9 M    Pentridge are we Pentridge jail do we just= 10     =say jail 11 D   prison 12 M   Pentridge Prison 13 S1   ((leans over to serve himself more food)) 14 M    I want to know if anyone’s escaped in real life 15     (time   ) 16     search it up please= 17 S2 =(sixteen) people 18 M   oh who wants to [search it up       ] 19 D             [((presents mobile phone] 20 D   ((holds mobile phone in hand(( 21     ((presses mobile buttons with thumb)))) 22    why 23 M    cause I’m interested 24 S?  [(         )] 25 S?  [(     ask   )] 26 S?  (   [     )] 27 S3       [how much] easier would it be 28 M   because I want to know I I can’t fathom how= 29     =you’d try and escape from a jail

The mother (M) initiates a topic relevant to their forthcoming trip to Melbourne to see the Pentridge Prison. She verbally introduces a query – that she is interested to know if anyone has escaped from the jail. She continues with a justification for her query (lines 1–2). At this point, there is no reference to a Web search, and one of the four siblings (S2) begins an attempt to spell “jail” (line 3). The mother questions this focus on spelling, producing laughter from the family members. The family conversation continues as to whether the correct terminology should be prison or jail. At this point, the query is actioned by discussing and finding the most relevant keywords for beginning a Web search. In line 14, the mother again reiterates her original query, and immediately proposes a strategy for finding out: “search it up please” (line 16). This directive is issued without naming any one family member to do this. Immediately following, a sibling has a go at guessing how many might have escaped, suggesting 16 people (line 17), to which no one responds. Rather, the mother repeats her directive, slightly rephrasing it, to ask who wants to “search it up” (line 18). At this point, dad (D) produces his mobile phone and asks for a reason for the search. Being “interested” (line 23), the mother’s response, and her justification for being 407

Susan Danby and Christina Davidson

interested, is sufficient for the father to begin his search. At this point, what has been produced is a query that arose through the mother’s stated interest, and this was deemed sufficient to begin a Web search. Here, the mother used a real-life experience (the family’s forthcoming visit to the former prison) to produce a Web search query and a justification for her query. Episode 1(b) continues a few moments after Episode 1(a). The father begins a Web search in response to the mother’s query about escapees. Episode 1(b) ARCFF_Data descriptor_CC_A_300415_00017, 4.32) 61 S? Ai[den ] 62 D    [esca-]escapes. 1851 Frank Gardner one of fifteen to escape 63      [(that day)]((looking at mobile)) 64 S3            [how old do](you need) to be= 65 D   1899 Pierre Dook [Doer] 66 M              [Does] Does it say how he escaped= 67 S?  (           ) 68 D   no= 69 S?  (          ) 70 D  ((reading from phone screen)) 1901 Mr Sparks never heard of again 71 [(.1901.)] 72 M [laughs ]never heard of again 73 D   John O’Connor caught in Sydney two weeks later 74     1926 Jay Kay Monson caught several weeks later in Western Australia 75    1939 George Thomas Howard caught after two days 76    1940 Kay Are Jones caught in Sydney two weeks later 77 M   Gosh not very successful to get out 78 D   1951 Victor Frenz caught next day (       ) 79 S? ((laughs)) 80 D     19[52 ] 81 S3     [why would] you go to Sydney 82 M   ((laughs)) go to the big smoke 83 D   They all go to Sydney 84       hey (what are [they going to see] 85 M         [(see Nona )]= 86 D   =when they [going to Sydney] 87 M          [(they’re going] to see Nona)

The father begins by scrolling through the Web page on his mobile phone, scanning the information and reading aloud selected extracts of text. He reads the names of the escapees, the year they escaped, and when and where they were caught (lines 70–71, 73–76, 78, 80). Other family members initiate a series of questions based on the results of the Web search: One of the siblings (S3) asks about how old you need to be to be an escapee (line 64). Assessments are produced about the escapees being caught quickly (line 77), and these turns of talk are accomplished with laughter by the mother and siblings (lines 72, 79, 82). One sibling (S3) asks why 408

Webs of relationships

the escapees would go to Sydney (line 81), and dad upgrades this assessment (all go to Sydney) (line 83). The mother produces a reason; she refers to visiting a family member, to see the grandmother (Nona). In this sequence of talk, the family members self-selected to talk, resulting in multiparty talk where participants’ turns overlapped each other. At the same time, family members who were present during the discussion, even though they did not contribute to the discussion, were able to overhear this conversation, potentially adding to their own knowledge of the topic under discussion. This family mealtime talk, touched off by the family’s forthcoming visit to Pentridge Prison, and information was built on by the results of the Web search about the prison’s former escapees. Assessments were made by the family members about the results. Clearly evident in this episode is how real-life experiences are intertwined with selecting the topic for the Web search. Information about the prisoners being quickly caught was met with laughter from family members, displaying shared enjoyment. At the same time, there were links with places of meaning and relationships to the children: Melbourne, the city they were visiting; and Sydney, where their grandmother (Nona) lived. This episode shows the blurring of physical and digital spaces (de Souza e Silva 2006). The family’s Web searching produced collaborative efforts in making assessments about the Web search results, and the Web search itself was based on a forthcoming family experience.

Episode 2: Web searching at preschool The use of popular culture in the early childhood years has a positive effect on language and literacy learning, and child motivation (Dyson 1997; Marsh 2005). Episode 2 involves the topic of super heroes that had been initiated by the preschool-aged children as they talked about their favourite super heroes. Carter had said that he did not know who the Lone Ranger was, and together he and the teacher decided that they should “look it up”. This Web search involves six children in the preschool class, and discussion was led by the teacher. Seated on the carpet in the preschool classroom, the children gathered around the tablet (an iPad) that the teacher was holding. Episode 2 (ARCFF_Datadescriptor_S_ CC_240615_00060, 2.42). 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402

C

.hh Um:: (.) can we (.) um (.) can we look at Captain(’Merica) now? T We can. .hh talking about America the Lone ((scrolls screen))    Ranger ( ) is actually an American character   ( ) ? Yeah:. C Yep. ? ( ) C And guess what. ? ( ) ip ((Lone Ranger image on screen)) T [you’ll have to do the search the::re C [I actually seen the real Captain America actor ( ) 409

Susan Danby and Christina Davidson

403 T The real Captain America A::ctor 404 T ((turns the iPad towards herself)) 405 C YEAH AND HE said he knows the Lone Ranger .hh 406 and he 407 T ooh really 407 ? been friends with him since when .hh since (.) 409 Every (.) .hh be- before he was when he- when= 410 T oooh shock 411 =he even got bo::rn 412 T They were friends just for ever and ever 413 ((turns iPad between her and IJ)) 414 C YEAH SO THEY WERE- THEY WERE EVEN FRIENDS WHEN 415 THEY WERE BO::RN 416 T (JUST ) 417 ( ) 418 T How bout that I didn’t know that did you? 419 C                 [An’ I- I- ’cot I420 ’cause I met both of them and they were the real 421 character that met them we were w( ) the real 422 him and the real Captain America actor 423 T fa::bulous ((presses screen)) 424 T Now- ( ) Carter can you have a look at me 425 ((turns screen between boys)) 426 there’s some choices= 427 ((turns screen to Carter, points and talks)) 428 =(.) Captain America (.) 429 Captain America civil wa::r (.) Captain America 430 Three (.) Captain America the (.) First Avenger 431 ( ) Which one do we wanna [look at 432 C                    [Captain Am- Is there 433    a Captain America the one with Loki in it? 434 T   ((turns iPad towards herself, touches screen)) 435 T   I’m not sure that’ why we’re looking it up 436 ’cause that’s information we don’t know 437 C   Loki. (0.3) He called Loki.

After the children and teacher had searched for information about the Lone Ranger on the tablet (ip) being held by the teacher, Carter (C) asks to look at Captain America. The teacher (T) shifts the discussion to Captain America, and begins scrolling the screen, which still has an image of the Lone Ranger on it. She next points to a place on the tablet, and says to Carter that this is where he will need to begin the new search (line 400). Her directive is overlapped by Carter’s announcement to the group that he knows the real Captain America (line 401). Carter goes on to explain the personal relationship between these two heroes as explained to him by the real Captain America actor (line 403). He continues to talk loudly, emphasizing that the super heroes had been friends for a very long time (405–415). To this information, the teacher in line 412 acknowledges his news by reformulating what he has said, and she displays some 410

Webs of relationships

surprise and appreciation of this news (lines 407, 410, 418). Here, the super hero discussion and Web searching touched off Carter’s recall of his prior experience of meeting the actor who played Captain America, and he shared this knowledge with others. In line 424, the teacher shifts the activity back to the Web search. She asks Carter to look at her, and then she shows him the screen and points to it. In lines 428–430, she reads aloud as she scrolls through the main headings on the screen. Following this, she again asks him about which aspect of Captain America’s life he wants to look at. This is not sufficient information for Carter to make his choice and he asks the teacher about where he might find information about Loki, a fictional antihero. At this point, in lines 435–436, the teacher reminds Carter that finding out unknown information is possible when it is looked up; that is, the reason for doing a Web search. This comment orients Carter, and those other children listening to this conversation, of the role of Web searching in informing the reader as to what is currently unknown. In this small group activity, children brought their own interest and knowledge about popular media characters, resulting in a conversation about the super heroes. The teacher drew on Carter’s question as a way to provide a rationale for why the Web is a useful information tool. This episode of Web searching, while informal, brought together both virtual and physical worlds, and also the world of popular culture. Overall, Web searches in preschool classrooms were initiated by children noticing something in their everyday life (e.g. an insect) and that noticing becoming an opportunity to explore further through the Web (Spink et  al. 2010). For example, Ekberg and colleagues showed how a teacher explored the life cycle of a tick, a small parasitic arachnid, through Web searching (Ekberg et al. 2016). Similarly, Houen and colleagues (Houen et al. 2016b) identified the interactional work of teachers and preschool-aged children as they performed a Web search to explore factual information about the hairy caterpillars found in the garden. These items of interest arose out of everyday experiences that were further explored through the Web searches. Across these different examples of Web searches, what was common is the social nature of the interaction when the teacher and children engaged in the Web searches.

Conclusion Studies that have compared the practices of adults and children to indicate the Web searching problems experienced by children involved older elementary school or adolescents, and promoted a view that Web user competence is an indicator of developmental differences. The approach taken within this chapter focuses on the actual practices and understandings of children as they competently manage their social interactions with others during Web searching, and brings a different research agenda, one where the achievements of young children are explored and understood. This perspective is increasingly important given the global uptake of the Internet by young children, and educational agendas including Web searching as an important component in accessing knowledge. The centrality of young children’s meaning-making is through purposeful activity, their use of existing knowledge and previous experiences, their capacity to engage with new information through images and through printed sources, and how digital practices such as Web searching contribute to their growing understanding of how print works. Rather than taking a position that Web searching is defined and examined in relation to children’s capacity to Web search for information, this chapter has investigated the ways in which young children use Web searching in practice for their own purposes or for purposes negotiated with others. 411

Susan Danby and Christina Davidson

In Web searching in home and school contexts, the children searched for a range of purposes, including finding out things that they did not know, and sharing knowledge and experiences. They also sought Web sites that were familiar to them, for the pleasure of enjoying them again. The Web searches were purposeful, based on the interests of those requesting the search, the topic was motivated by a real-life interest, and the Web search involved social interactions with a range of participants. As well as orienting to the text on the screen, the children made meanings from the screen images. In this way, children were able to display existing knowledge rather than (necessarily) only new knowledge. A focus on young children’s social interactions when Web searching makes possible a construction of children as agentic, as they manage both knowledge and experience. In considering the digital and social resources that young children draw on to support their search practices, evident is how they negotiate these explorations, often in social contexts that include the participation of educators, peers and family members. Through talk around and about the Web, children gain access to local, community and global knowledge, as well as to technological understandings and practices. In addition to assembling social relationships and making sense of their social, physical and cultural worlds, the children’s orientation to the digital screen shows complex, sustained and multifaceted knowledge construction. Young children’s communicative competence as they connect with the Web both blurs and connects their experiences across physical and digital spaces.

Acknowledgements This research was funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC FT 1210731). We thank the children, families and teachers for their participation, and Sandy Houen and Esther StutzleCzara for transcribing the data segments.

Appendix Transcription conventions adapted from Jefferson (2004) [] = (0.8) (.) .,¿?

:: word WOrd °° ↑↓

>< .h .hh (( )) ()

412

Overlapping talk Equal signs indicate no break or gap between the lines. Numbers in parentheses indicate silence. A dot in parentheses indicates a micropause less than 5/10 of a second. The punctuation marks indicate intonation. The period indicates falling intonation, the comma continuing intonation, the inverted question mark slightly rising intonation and the question mark indicates a rising intonation. Colons are used to indicate prolongation or stretching of the immediately prior sound. A hyphen after a word indicates a cut-off or self-interruption. Underlining indicates some form of stress or emphasis. The more the underlining the greater the emphasis. Especially loud talk is indicated by upper case. The degree signs indicate that the talk between them was quieter than its surrounding talk. The up and down arrows mark a sharp rise/fall in pitch. Left/right carets indicate that the talk between them is slowed down. Right/left carets indicate that the talk between them is speeded up. Hearable inbreaths are shown with a “.h” – the more h’s the more inbreath. Double parentheses are used to mark transcriber’s descriptions of events. Empty parentheses indicate that something is being said but no hearing can be achieved.

Webs of relationships

References Azpiazu, I. M., Dragovic, N., Pera, M. S., and Fails, J. A. (2017). Online searching and learning: YUM and other search tools for children and teachers. Information Retrieval Journal, 20: 524–545. Beheshti, J., Large, A., and Charles-Antoine, J. (2005). Designing a virtual reality interface for children’s web portals. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of CAIS. Available at: https://journals.library.ualberta. ca/ojs.cais-acsi.ca/index.php/cais-asci/article/view/271/233 (accessed 6 May 2019). Bilal, D. (2002). Children design their interfaces for web search engines: a participatory approach. Proceedings of the 30th Canadian Association of Information Science (CAIS/ACSI) Conference. Toronto, Canada. Bilal, D., and Boehm, M. (2013). Towards new methodologies for assessing relevance of information retrieval from web search engines on children’s queries. Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries: An International Journal, 1(1): 93–100. Bilal, D., and Ellis, R. (2011). Evaluating leading web search engines on children’s queries. In: J. A. Jacko (ed.), Human–computer Interaction: Users and Applications. HCI2011. Lecture notes in computer science (pp. 549–558). Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer. Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Simpson, A., and Walsh, M. (eds.) (2017). The Case of the iPad: Mobile Literacies in Education. Singapore: Springer. Byrne, J., Kardefelt-Winther, D., Livingstone, S., and Stoilova, M. (2016). Global Kids Online research synthesis, 2015–2016. London: UNICEF Office of Research–Innocenti and London School of Economics and Political Science. Danby, S. (2013). Smart phones and tablets in the early years: a waste of time or a valuable opportunity for accessing information and communicating? Reflections, Summer 2013: 15–17. Danby, S. (2017a). Social interactional understandings in investigating family practices of digital media use. In: A. R. Lahikainen, T. Mälkiä and K. Repo (eds.), Media, Family Interaction and the Digitalization of Childhood (pp. 29–48). Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing. Danby, S. (2017b). Technologies, child-centred practice and listening to children. In: L. Arnott (ed.), Digital Technology, Play and Learning in the Early Years (pp. 127–136). London: Sage. Danby, S., and Baker, C. (2000). Unravelling the fabric of social order in block area. In: S. Hester and D. Francis (eds.), Local Educational Order: Ethnomethodological Studies of Knowledge in Action (pp. 91–140). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Danby, S., Davidson, C., Ekberg, S., Breathnach, H., and Thorpe, K. (2016). “Let’s see if you can see me”: making connections with Google Earth in a preschool classroom. Children’s Geographies, 14: 141–157. Danby, S., Evaldsson, A.-C., Melander, H., and Aarsand, P. (2018). Situated collaboration and problem solving in young children’s digital gameplay. British Journal of Educational Technology, 49(5): 959–972. Danby, S., Houen, S., Grant, S., Davidson, C., and Thorpe, K. (2013). Young children and teachers accessing knowledge through web interactions. Early Childhood Teachers’ Association Newsletter, 19: 30–32. Davidson, C. (2009). Young children’s engagement with digital texts and literacies in the home: pressing matters for the teaching of English in the early years of schooling. English: Practice and Critique, 8: 36–54. Davidson, C. (2011). Seeking the green basilisk lizard: acquiring digital literacy practices in the home. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 12: 24–45. Davidson, C. (2012). When “yes” turns to “no”: young children’s disputes during computer game playing at home. In: S. Danby and M. Theobald (eds.), Disputes in Everyday Life: The Social and Moral Orders of Children and Young People (pp. 355–376). Bingley, UK: Emerald. Davidson, C., Danby, S., Given, L. M., and Thorpe, K. (2016). Facilitating young children’s use of the Web in preschool. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 30: 569–584. Davidson, C., Danby, S., Given, L. M., and Thorpe, K. (2018). Producing contexts for web searching during adult-child interactions at home and preschool. In: S. Danby, M. Fleer, C. Davidson and M. Hatzigianni (eds.), Digital Childhoods: Technologies and Children’s Everyday Lives (pp. 65–82). Singapore: Springer. Davidson, C., Danby, S., and Thorpe, K. (2017). “Uh oh”: Producing multimodal meaning making during viewing of YouTube videos in preschool. In: M. Narey (ed.), Multimodal Perspectives of Language, Literacy and Learning in Early Childhood: The Creative and Critical “Art” of Making Meaning. (Educating the young child), 2nd ed. (pp. 233–255). New York: Springer. De Souza e Silva, A. (2006). From cyber to hybrid mobile technologies as interfaces of hybrid spaces. Space and Culture, 9: 261–278. 413

Susan Danby and Christina Davidson

De Vries, B., Van der Meij, H., and Lazonder, A. W. (2008). Supporting reflective web searching in elementary schools. Computers in Human Behavior, 24: 649–665. Druin, A., Foss, E., Hatley, L., Golub, E., Guha, M. L., Fails, J., and Hutchinson, H. (2009). How children search the internet with keyword interfaces. In: P. Paolini and F. Garzotto (eds.), 8th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children (pp. 89–96). Como, Italy. Duarte Torres, S., Weber, I., and Hiemstra, D. (2014). Analysis of search and browsing behavior of young users on the Web. ACM Transactions on the Web, 8: Article 7. Dyson, A. H. (1997). Writing Superheroes: Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy. New York: Teachers College Press. Ekberg, S., Danby, S., Davidson, C., and Thorpe, K. J. (2016). Identifying and addressing equivocal trouble in understanding within classroom interaction. Discourse Studies, 18: 3–24. Enochsson, A. (2005). The development of children’s web searching skills – a non-linear model. Information Research: An International Electronic Journal, 11(1). Flewitt, R. (2011). Bringing ethnography to a multimodal investigation of early literacy in a digital age. Qualitative Research, 11: 293–310. Foss, E., Druin, A., Brewer, R., Lo, P., Sanchez, L., and Golub, E. (2012). Children’s search roles at home: implications for designers, researchers, educators, and parents. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63: 558–573. Francis, D., and Hester, S. (2004). An Invitation to Ethnomethodology: Language, Society and Interaction. London: Sage. Freebody, P., and Baker, C. D. (1985). Children’s first schoolbooks: introductions to the culture of literacy. Harvard Educational Review, 55: 381–398. Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Houen, S., Danby, S., Farrell, A., and Thorpe, K. (2016a). Creating spaces for children’s agency: “I wonder . . .” formulations in teacher-child interactions. International Journal of Early Childhood, 48: 259–276. Houen, S., Danby, S., Farrell, A., and Thorpe, K. (2016b). “I wonder what you know . . .”: teachers designing requests for factual information. Teaching and Teacher Education, 59: 68–78. Houen, S., Danby, S., Farrell, A., and Thorpe, K. (2017). Web searching as a context to build on young children’s displayed knowledge. In: A. Bateman and A. Church (eds.), Children’s Knowledge-in-Interaction (pp. 57–72). Singapore: Springer. Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In: G. H. Lerner (ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the First Generation (pp. 13–31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jochmann-Mannak, H., Huibers, T., Lentz, L., and Sanders, T. (2010). Children searching information on the Internet: Performance on children’s interfaces compared to Google. Workshop on Accessible Search Systems, SIGIR ’10, July 23, 2010, Geneva, Switzerland. Knight, S., and Mercer, N. (2015). The role of exploratory talk in classroom search engine tasks. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 24: 303–319. Kroustallaki, D., Kokkinaki, T., Sideridis, G. D., and Simos, P. G. (2015). Exploring students’ affect and achievement goals in the context of an intervention to improve web searching skills. Computers in Human Behavior, 49: 156–170. Lankshear, C., and Knobel, M. (2003). New technologies in early childhood literacy research: a review of research. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 3: 59–82. Livingstone, S., Carr, J., and Byrne, J. (2015). One in Three: Internet Governance and Children’s Rights. Waterloo, Ontario: Centre for International Governance Innovation and The Royal Institute of International Affairs. Marsh, J. (2005). Digikids: young children, popular culture and media. In: N. Yelland (ed.), Critical Issues in Early Childhood Use of Popular Culture, Media and New Technologies (pp. 181–196). Maidenhead: Open University Press. Marsh, J. (2010). The relationship between home and school literacy practices. In: D. Wyse, R. Andrews and J. Hoffman (eds.), The International Handbook of English, Language and Literacy Teaching (pp. 305–315). London: Routledge. Marsh, J., Brooks, G., Hughes, J., Ritchie, L., Roberts, S., and Wright, K. (2005). Digital beginnings: Young Children’s Use of Popular Culture, Media and New Technologies. Sheffield, UK: Literacy Research Centre, University of Sheffield.

414

Webs of relationships

Plowman, L., Stephen, C., and McPake, J. (2010). Growing Up With Technology: Young Children Learning in a Digital World. London: Routledge. Prout, A., and James, A. (1997). A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood? Provenance, promise and problems. In: A. James and A. Prout (eds.), Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood (pp. 6–28). London: Falmer Press. Spink, A., Danby, S., Mallan, K., and Butler, C. W. (2010). Exploring young children’s web searching and technoliteracy. Journal of Documentation, 66: 191–206. Wells, G. (1991). Talk about text: where literacy is learned and taught. In: D. Booth and C. Thornley-Hall (eds.), The Talk Curriculum (pp. 45–88). Carlton, Victoria: Australian Reading Association.

415

Part VI

Emergent themes and future visions

30 Future pedagogical approaches to digital and multimodal practice in early childhood education Reijo Kupiainen, Pirjo Kulju, Marita Mäkinen, Angela Wiseman, Anne Jyrkiäinen and Kirsi-Liisa Koskinen-Sinisalo

Introduction Rapid societal and technological changes worldwide have challenged educators to reconceptualize pedagogy in early childhood education, as well as in primary settings. Today, young children use a variety of tools, such as images, photos, screens, tablets, written texts, spatial materials, gestures, virtual reality and the Internet of Toys (see Holloway and Green 2016). Their use reflects the diversity in representations and meaning making in formal early childhood educational contexts and at home. In twenty-first-century classrooms, the variety of texts and increased possibilities for digital communication have diversified the ways that children interact, understand and make meaning in different social contexts. Furthermore, classrooms are more diverse due to gender and ethnic differences, identity politics, life experiences, abilities and learning needs, socioeconomic backgrounds and various cultural settings (Kulju et al. 2018). The importance of multiple modalities and social diversity in meaning making had already been raised in the discourses on pedagogy and research in 1996, with the manifesto entitled “A pedagogy of multiliteracies” (New London Group [NLG] 1996), using the concept of multiliteracies. The manifesto has been cited widely and used as a foundation for new curricula, models and pedagogy in literacy education (Serafini and Gee 2017). The original idea of the pedagogy of multiliteracies has also been subsequently developed, especially by Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope, who were original members of the NLG (see Kalantzis and Cope 2008, 2012; Cope and Kalantzis 2009, 2017). Twenty years after the NLG publication, the concept of multiliteracies has been implemented in Finnish school settings, from early childhood to upper secondary education, as one of the seven transversal competencies (National Core Curriculum [NCC] 2016). Additionally, the Common Core State Standards in the United States (US) focus on students’ use of technology and digital media to access information and communicate knowledge (National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers 2010). These changes in Finland and the US serve as the impetus for our interest in studying how multiliteracies in primary education have been understood globally. We collaboratively conducted a 419

Reijo Kupiainen et al.

literature review by examining research projects on multiliteracy and multimodal classrooms (Kulju et al. 2018). In doing so, we analysed research regarding how multiliteracies had been implemented in primary classrooms globally. However, the research projects seem to have been mostly undertaken in Australia, the US and Canada, which have long histories of implementing multiliteracies in school pedagogy (Kulju et al. 2018). In this chapter, we build on our work of analysing research on multimodal classrooms by projecting into the future to imagine the possibilities of a pedagogy of multiliteracies for young children. We aim to identify projects that could help develop the pedagogy of multiliteracies, as well as the lack of pedagogical practices that could be emphasized due to the rapidly changing media and learning environments for young children. Our approach in this chapter could be characterized theoretically as thinking with theory (Jackson and Mazzei 2012). In our study, this means plugging in our dataset and the theory of pedagogy of multiliteracies, as described in the NLG manifesto and the writings of scholars who have continued the NLG’s work, with the possibility to design a social future. Using an iterative process of conceptualizing and engaging with the NLG’s theoretical framework and analysing current research on early childhood classrooms, we consider significant themes and propose future directions.

Method In this chapter, we build a systematic review of research articles that deal with the pedagogy of multiliteracies in primary classrooms (Kulju et al. 2018). Our search for articles extended through 2014, when the Finnish Core Curriculum for Primary Education (NCC 2016) was published, with the concept of multiliteracies. The data was collected in 2015 to understand how the concept had been transferred and adapted to the NCC in relation to international contexts. In this chapter, we do not follow our literature review as such, but examine our data from the perspective of thinking with theory (Jackson and Mazzei 2012) to highlight the main themes for a possible future pedagogy of multiliteracies. First, we reorganized the original article dataset by using a new inclusion criterion, that is, children under the ages of eight to nine. This categorization was somewhat challenging because some articles only mentioned the school grades, not the actual ages of the children. Therefore, the categorization included articles involving children from kindergarten through third grade, reflecting the US school system. Based on this categorization, in this chapter, we include 32 out of the 67 articles from our original data set. Additionally, five of the articles include both the youngest and the oldest age groups. The next phase entailed examining our dataset from the perspective of the pedagogy of multiliteracies. The idea behind thinking with theory is to use the data to think with theory and to use theory to think with the data (Jackson and Mazzei 2012). We interpreted the data, especially across the NLG’s theory of multiliteracies, by connecting the data and the theory to each other. We started to think of articles with basic concepts of the theory and decided to pick individual vignettes from our data. Vignettes provide examples of how the pedagogy of multiliteracies works in early childhood settings based on our data, and reveal some deficiencies if we think of multiliteracies from the future perspective. In the following sections, we focus on a few articles from the perspective of the pedagogy of multiliteracies (NLG 1996).

Pedagogy for social change In its manifesto, the NLG suggests that the term multiliteracies supplements traditional literacy pedagogy and “creates a different kind of pedagogy, one in which language and other modes are dynamic representational resources, constantly being remade by their users as they work to 420

Future pedagogical approaches

achieve their various cultural purposes” (1996: 64). We are interested in how this “different kind of pedagogy” is present in classroom practices in early childhood and primary settings. The writers of the manifesto are clearly interested in not only theoretical assumptions about literacy but also the activism and social change in the late 1990s. The manifesto is both a pedagogical framework and a political treatise about education in changing times (Serafini and Gee 2017). The social and the political aspects of multiliteracies are even more important in this era of fake news, political populism and the rise of nationalism. In literacy research and pedagogies, the notion of social change seems crucial to our increasingly globalized and interconnected world. A multiliteracy approach emphasizes the social aspect of technology use and literacy education. This feature is clearly observed in our data. One example of learning for social change could help provide an understanding of the approach. The following vignette (referred to as vignette one) is from the article “Critical literacy finds a ‘place’: writing and social action in a low-income Australian grade 2/3 classroom” by Comber et al. (2001). Their study was conducted in a class of second- and third-grade children aged six to eight. In the project that the researchers followed, the children engaged in the material and discursive practices associated with an urban renewal project through their involvement in its literacy and social power unit (Comber et  al. 2001). The children discussed their views, wrote texts and drew images in response to their teacher’s questions about what the best things in their lives were; what made them happy, worried or angry; what they would wish for if they had three wishes; what they would change in their neighbourhood, school and world; and whether they thought that young people had any power to change things. Shifting from the personal to the local and finally the global perspective, the children expressed their concerns and wishes through drawings and discussions. When the children learned about their neighbourhood, the teacher made available models and resources to engage them in local action. When the children expressed their concerns about the poor condition of their environment and its few trees, as well as the major changes planned for their neighbourhood, their analyses were used as starting points for further inquiry and curriculum design. The children combined production, design and communication in a variety of modes to connect with the community members and redesign the local environment. The classroom project was “materially as well as textually practiced – it [was] an action involving language, body, and place” (Comber et al. 2001: 454). These kinds of community-based learning processes lie in the heart of multiliteracies although our data showed a low number of such learning projects. There has been a lot of discussion about participation and the voices of children, but it seems that very few research projects have been identified in pedagogy, where active participation and meaning making in the community have occurred and have been integrated into the pedagogy of multiliteracies in the context of early childhood education. Undoubtedly, this is one of the challenges of the future pedagogy of multiliteracies.

Social diversity and multilingual classrooms Our dataset brings forth another aspect that is essential in the pedagogy of multiliteracies – language and cultural diversity in the classroom. For example, in their research, Taylor et al. (2008) (referred to as vignette two) focused on ethno-racial and language minority groups, involving four- and five-year-old children in Canada. The starting point of their study was that the home languages and the literacies of children from cultural and linguistic minority backgrounds were generally ignored by schools and teachers. At the same time, this cohort’s parents played only a limited role in their children’s learning because of their marginal expertise in the curriculum (Taylor et al. 2008). 421

Reijo Kupiainen et al.

Immigrants and children belonging to cultural and linguistic minority groups challenge the educational monocultures of classrooms with a single language, culture, ethnicity and origin. The multiliteracy approach has tried to focus on multi in its various possible dimensions, including different sorts of literacy events and practices; various literacy practices across several cultures, institutions and social groups; diverse modalities in meaning making, and so on (Gee 2017). Literacy is understood here as a social practice and a communal resource, not as a set of individual competencies, skills or attributes. This understanding offers the possibilities of bringing to the classroom the children’s interests, families, sociocultural backgrounds and other out-of-school literacies. In the pedagogical activities studied in vignette two (Taylor et al. 2008), the children’s emergent home language and English literacy were embedded “within a linguistically rich, personally meaningful social context” (pp. 275–276). The children’s family members and home literacies were important parts of the project. The pedagogical innovation entailed producing duallanguage stories with the families to be shared with the children. Each child’s story about himself or herself, his or her family, friends, favourite foods and activities at home and in kindergarten, as well as future aspirations, were recorded and transcribed in English by the teachers and other staff members and printed in his or her personal book. The children added their drawings to their books, and their families collected some photographs and translated the children’s text into their first language. These books with two languages, pictures and photos were then shared with peers and scanned as electronic books to be shared with their families. In its original manifesto, the NLG emphasized four components of the pedagogy of multiliteracies, as follows: situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing and transformed practice. Cope and Kalantzis (2009) reframed these four components into four pedagogical orientations or knowledge processes of experiencing, conceptualizing, analysing and applying. In the elaborated form, these are not methods that need to be followed step by step but constitute a “map of the range of pedagogical moves that may prompt teachers to extend their pedagogical repertoires” (Cope and Kalantzis 2009: 186). These orientations help teachers reflect on their classroom practices. In vignette two (Taylor et  al. 2008), situated practice or experiencing needs to be highlighted. It is a starting point that draws on the meaning-making experience in the lifeworlds of children and families and bridges learning spaces between school and out-of-school settings. In the future, the distinction between formal and informal pedagogy will not be valid any more. Learning is a fluid process occurring in different spaces, connected by social, material and virtual networks. The future classroom is understood as a “complex of mobilities” or an “active body”, where different flows permeate it from every direction (Leander et al. 2010: 332). The complex of mobilities is a perspective that challenges the stable classroom and opens a learning space for different information flows, bodily presence, and children and their parents with different experiences. This challenges the pedagogy of multiliteracies to be open to different flows and the complex of mobilities in the future.

Exploring third spaces The previously described project built a bridge between home and school literacies and helped the families reconceptualize family literacy practices for the children’s biliteracy and identity development (Taylor et al. 2008). Bridging home and school literacies is an important aspect of multiliteracies and is sometimes called third space learning (Pahl and Rowsell 2005; Gutierrez 2008; Potter and McDougall 2017). The term third space comes from the hybridity theory (Bhabha 1994), which “posits that people in any given community draw on multiple resources 422

Future pedagogical approaches

or funds to make sense of the world” (Moje et  al. 2004: 42). The third space comprises a complex of mobilities that brings together different sets of knowledge, practices and discourses. In education, this means the knowledge, practices and discourses that come from out-ofschool settings and are taken seriously as part of the learners’ identity and meaning making. Kindergartens, schools and classrooms are intersections of multiple cultural resources and different kinds of contexts – some local, others global. This makes education more porous and networked or a kind of a knot in the web of different practices. The term third space is not mentioned in the NLG manifesto but is implicitly present in the theory of multiliteracies and in our data, where we can identify many kinds of third spaces in learning, including school literacies bridged with home literacies, school practices bridged with social practices in the neighbourhood, the physical learning environment bridged with the virtual learning environment, and the local bridged with the global perspective. The third space takes into account the children’s lived experiences (vignette one), home languages (vignette two), media practices, hobbies, social backgrounds, and so on. An example of the third space in our dataset is a study in which the home languages were incorporated into multimodal and digital early childhood literacy settings (Lotherington et al. 2008) (referred to as vignette three). The study aimed to create a third space by engaging young children in writing multilingual stories. For example, the multilingual stories were first created by using plasticine in boxes, following a storyboard template, which were then photographed and programmed in iMovie with oral narration. The families were asked to help with stories in their home languages, which created wonderful connections between schools and families, with their cultures and prior knowledge. One of the teachers involved in this project commented on her fascination with the total number of languages (16) spoken by the children. An underlying assumption is that children in contemporary urban societies bring to school their multilingual backgrounds, which are important to their learning and identities and serve as valuable resources (Lotherington et al. 2008). Another vignette (referred to as vignette four) in which the pupils’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds were considered was taken from Marshall and Toohey’s (2010) study about an intergenerational storytelling project in a Canadian school. They explored what would happen when the funds of knowledge (González et  al. 2005) that the children brought to school challenged the curricular and institutional practices in the classroom. In the project, the children first recorded and translated their grandparents’ stories of life in India from Hindi to English and then created picture books. In the retelling process, the pupils drew on a multiplicity of ancestral, globalized and Western discourses in their textual and pictorial illustrations. Marshall and Toohey (2010) emphasized culture as constituting hybrid and dynamic social practices in which people engaged. The stories presented by the children thus represented their hybrid identities as grandchildren of Punjabi Sikh newcomers to Canada, as children growing up in twenty-first-century North America and as elementary-grade pupils attending public school (Marshall and Toohey 2010). The authors found that some of the knowledge that the children shared through their grandparents’ stories challenged school notions of gender equity, cultural authenticity and sunny childhoods, for example. The children’s stories also illustrated the diversity of possible views that a minority community held about history, morality, justice and conflict. Vignette four (Marshall and Toohey 2010) raises the questions of broadening the educators’ minds about the use of these resources and developing primary education curricula towards a wider understanding of social, cultural and linguistic resources in third spaces. In fact, Marshall and Toohey (2010) pointed out that theorists and educators had long recommended that school instruction be more closely linked to the cultural and linguistic practices of the homes and 423

Reijo Kupiainen et al.

communities of minority children. The pedagogy of multiliteracies needs to meet this challenge more explicitly in the future.

Digital technology and multimodal learning in early year settings Besides home languages, the future pedagogy of multiliteracies in early year settings could focus more on third space learning, with the aid of digital technology. In her teacher–researcher project, Hill (2010) (referred to as vignette five) explored how four- to eight-year-old children understood and worked with new forms of literacy at home and in school. She found that in most cases, the children had access to and could use information and communication technologies (ICTs) far in advance of the equipment in many of the schools and preschools. In the project (conducted in 2002–2005), computers and television were the most popular forms of entertainment and access to knowledge available in homes. Children as young as four years old visited websites linked to television shows, used search engines to find information and played interactive games online. The young children’s visual mode of communication supported their learning in preschool, for example, in searching for more information on caterpillars seen in the yard. Regarding instruction, the teachers reported their need for a metalanguage to be explicit about how learning skills, strategies and problem solving could be used in one medium and transformed into another type of text (Hill 2010). According to Hill (2010), new ways of teaching emerged when some children acted as coaches or mentors in the classroom since they were using similar software in school and at home. In other words, following the pedagogy of multiliteracies, the instruction bridged learning spaces between school and out-of-school environments and everyday experiences. In the future pedagogy, this will be increasingly emphasized due to the rapid development of mobile technology. Our data did not include the use of mobile technology in early year settings, probably because our data collection only covered the 1996–2014 period. However, today’s mobile technology allows bridging physical and virtual spaces. Some examples of this kind of technology include augmented and virtual realities, which are not found in our dataset. The research on early childhood education has hardly focused on augmented and virtual reality technologies (Freina and Ott 2015; Marsh et al. 2017). However, new technology offers new potentials for learning. It can increase motivation, engagement and even critical thinking, as well as support knowledge transfer. Augmented reality can provide opportunities for new forms of storytelling, play and creativity (Yamada-Rice et  al. 2017). From the perspective of multimodality, new technology not only brings novel modes to the meaning-making repertoire but also connects and bridges spaces in ways that have not been previously observed. Vignette five (Hill 2010), as well as other vignettes, also provides an example of multimodal learning that is at the heart of the pedagogy of multiliteracies. The new digital and mobile media mix modes of meaning making in extremely powerful ways (see Cope and Kalantzis 2009). From the perspective of the pedagogy of multiliteracies, digital and multimodal learning are much more than new technological devices in the classrooms. Cope and Kalantzis (2017) use the metaphor e-learning ecologies to describe “the complex interaction of human, textual, discursive, and spatial dynamics” (p. 1) in digital learning environments. Digital technology offers a possibility to ecologies that “will be more engaging for learners, more effective, more resource efficient, and more equitable in the face of learner diversity” (p. 7). For Cope and Kalantzis, e-learning ecologies and digital media include seven “new learning” affordances, including multimodal meaning making. Digital media are multimodal per se. Text, image, sound and data are inseparable and manufactured of the same digital material. This makes it different from analogical modes, which have usually material differences; for example, sound 424

Future pedagogical approaches

and image are produced in different ways. Digital media bring these two modes together, for example, in a movie editor. Multimodality and digital media could have interesting advantages in the future pedagogy of multiliteracies. One of these is synaesthesia in the learning process. In this context, synaesthesia means blending of sensations, for instance, when the sense of hearing enriches the sense of sight, such as a sound enhancing an image. Remediating meanings with a new combination of modes is an example of the knowledge process of experiencing and broadens classroom repertoires (Smith and Kennett 2017).

Embodied, situated and social learning Using online virtual environments with children has been under debate in the field of education. Certainly, online life and virtuality pose many risks to the everyday experiences of young children. However, for future learning, the issue about virtual versus real life is beyond the scope of our study. On the contrary, we want to emphasize material, embodied and situational settings in both the classroom and in online or virtual learning. The NLG sets an embodied, situated and social learner at the centre of pedagogy instead of cognitive skills and competencies. Embodied, situated and social learning is nothing new and, in most cases, a familiar feature in early childhood settings. It could be connected to learning with digital technology or vice versa; digital technology could even enhance embodied, playful and creative practices. However, embodiment is not largely discussed in the context of the pedagogy of multiliteracies. The body figures more implicitly than explicitly in the discussions (McVee et al. 2017), but it challenges the so-called brain-based pedagogy and the cognitivist idea of learning that occurs only in the brain. The question of the body in learning is not about traditional handson practices but, more radically, involves shifting the perspective to embodied lifeworlds and “minds-on-bodies-on” practices (p. 157). One of the original members of the NLG, James Paul Gee, has argued about embodied and situated learning even in the area of digital technology (Gee and Hayes 2011). For Gee and Hayes, digital media bring language back from abstractions (alphabets and written language) to concrete images and experiences via social media and visual communication. Digital media feed all senses and bring “language back to its conversational, interactive, hereand-now foundations” (p. 12). Connected to learning, it could be embodied and situated in new ways. Embodiment highlights children’s relations to the material world. Technological devices and screens are also parts of the material world, whether they are in the hands of users in the classroom or early childhood settings (Potter and McDougall 2017). New arrangements of bodies, devices and locations in meaning-making processes need to be studied further. This perspective usually belongs to the sociomaterial theory of education, where materiality, devices and concrete things in a classroom are distributed as social, spatial and physical processes and assemblages, for example, in human–digital device relations. Sociomaterial networks and assemblages are present in some of the studies in our dataset. One example is incorporating popular culture and ICT into learning in the process of available designs, designing and the redesigned, which are the three main tenets of the NLG manifesto. Available designs are resources for designing meaning, including semiotic systems and material things, such as paper, pen, cardboard, modelling clay, tablets, and so on, in a particular sociocultural and sociomaterial context. During the designing process, a child works with available materials by constructing new meanings and representations and finalizes a tailor-made new product for his or her own purposes. The whole process is networked with different materials, 425

Reijo Kupiainen et al.

tools, time, space, symbols, meanings and people in and out of school. In this network and within these actions, the classroom becomes a dynamic knot on the web, part of a multilayered world (Hesterman 2011). Hesterman’s (2011) study (referred to as vignette six) is an example of research on the use of popular culture and material objects as resources for a Star Wars project involving five- to seven-year-old boys in a Reggio Emilia school in Australia. One of her main foci was on how popular culture and ICT broadened multiliteracy learning. In the project, the children aimed to make a movie, communicating their story of good versus evil and victory over defeat. During the process, they engage with various activities including: experimenting with light, shape, shadow and reflective images; designing spaceships; using visual design with pencil and paper; and studying a range of nonfiction texts, for example, on the science of planet hunting. During the ICT design, costumes were used in acting out the scenes of the developed movie script, and special effects were introduced, which highly motivated the boys to redesign their script. As stated by Hesterman (2011), the children actively transferred the knowledge that they had gained from the Star Wars popular culture to the design of a new movie sequel. In addition to applying a wide range of skills, such as problem solving and researching, the children became aware of the procedure of making a movie. In conclusion, vignette six showed the children’s creative intelligence in connecting different materialities, embodiments, physical processes and assemblages to access, design and communicate meaning in many ways. Pedagogies traditionally concentrate on the teacher–learner and peer-to-peer relations, not so much on complex social and material relations in different settings. Moreover, education has traditionally tended to focus on human, cognitive and interpretive analyses, not on complex networks of meaning making and hybrid assemblages of heterogeneous materials. Written in 1996, the NLG’s original manifesto does not discuss these kinds of hybrids, but for us it seems clear that the future pedagogy of multiliteracies should consider networked relations and hybrids, where both learners and teachers are parts of hybrids.

Designing as meaning making The use of popular culture is connected to one of the key concepts of the NLG and the pedagogy of multiliteracies, namely, design in meaning making. Husbye et al. (2012) (referred to as vignette seven) explored processes in which groups of young children created films. The children viewed popular media clips, collaborated in writing scripts, drew storyboards, animated media toys and handcrafted puppets as characters. Their collaboration opened up entry points for all of the children to participate in the storytelling process. Through play, the preschoolers progressed from being curious about the camera to learning to control what they recorded. Popular media characters, such as those of Star Wars Legos, served as available designs, supported playfulness in the filmmaking process and provided storylines. Husbye et al. (2012: 84) cited Lensmire (2000), who explored “voice as participation”, an alternative to “voice as individual expression”, which positioned children as independent authors who were expected to articulate their unique voices on paper. Rooted in critical pedagogy, “voice as participation” views a child’s voice as a social self, created from the cultural resources at hand; in vignette seven, the children actively constructed themselves during the writing workshop (Husbye et al. 2012). Besides collaboration in groups, design in meaning making provides concepts to understand the creative textual processes of individual children as well. Ranker (2007) (referred to as vignette eight) examined how John, an eight-year-old boy, composed a comic story during an informal writing group session in school. John applied various available designs in his writing process; for example, he used comic frames to create the narrative space. Furthermore, the 426

Future pedagogical approaches

hypertext format of the Web served as a source of characters and images. The television series Grim and Evil made the Grim Reaper available as a central character, and concepts of power and energy in the video games that John played were central to his plot. By investigating John’s composition process, Ranker (2007) learned that John, indeed, was not replicating but redesigning. Ranker concluded that pupils’ writing using popular culture was a key variable in giving more pupils access to literacy. Vignettes seven and eight indicate that the pedagogy of multiliteracies progresses to active meaning making by designing processes. Designing is a “sign” or meaning making, for which an agent selects modes and materials. In the design process, different resources for meaning making – such as in John’s composing process – are integrated with one another (Bezemer and Kress 2016). Kress (2009) introduced the designing process in the following way: meaning makers’ existing interest shapes their attention, which produces engagement, leading to the selection of elements for specific purposes. For this purpose, agents could use all available designs and resources, such as comic frames in John’s case. This kind of play and design process (creative meaning making) that strengthens agency and the possibilities for multimodal expression is central to the pedagogy of multiliteracies. Cope and Kalantzis (2009: 177) argue that the pedagogy of multiliteracies challenges “the inert notions of acquisition, articulation, competence or interpretation that underpin the old literacy teaching” and recognizes the role of subjectivity and agency in the meaning-making process. The “meaning-maker-as-designer” uses cultural resources by expressing an individual’s own identity “at the unique junction of intersecting lines of social and cultural experience” (p. 177). In this way, meaning making is valuable for everyone and leaves the “traces of transformation” in the social world, which others can use for their own designing process. The pedagogy of multiliteracies identifies the meaning making as a valuable contribution to the social world and the transformation of subjectivity and learning.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have highlighted studies concerning multiliteracies in early childhood education. Based on the thinking with theory process, we have presented eight vignettes from these studies to consider different aspects of the future pedagogy of multiliteracies. These aspects have been classified into pedagogy for social change; social diversity and multilingual classrooms; third spaces; digital technology and multimodal learning; embodied, situated and social learning; and designing as meaning making. These themes have emerged across the highlighted studies but, together, they might gather insights into the pedagogy of multiliteracies based on research articles that include classroom activities among the youngest age groups of children in preschool and in school. To summarize, we can describe the pedagogy of multiliteracies as one in which learning is a fluid process in different spaces connected by social, material and virtual networks. In these third spaces, the pupils’ linguistic and cultural backgrounds, such as their home languages and cultural resources, are perceived as resources for design processes and pedagogy, together with other available designs drawn from popular media and material resources, for example. Connected to collaboration and play and the use of ICT during the creation processes, the pedagogy of multiliteracies provides spaces to develop awareness of the pupils’ own identities and agency, as well as the surrounding social environment, even for embodiment and social change. The pedagogy of multiliteracies brings together traditionally separate research strands related to the educational field, such as media education, digital learning, studies on language instruction, and literacy studies on reading and writing, and design and arts. This achievement means more holistic pedagogy. 427

Reijo Kupiainen et al.

The articles in our dataset do not cover all future aspects, such as mobile technology and virtual reality as future technologies in early education settings. However, our study’s outcomes clearly demonstrate the creativity of children and teachers and the active role played by children in meaning making during learning processes. Based on our data, learning is more often connected to out-of-school spaces via digital devices and multimodal textual resources. Future trends seem to emphasize digital and multimodal text creation and production in order to strengthen young people’s abilities to engage in active agency in both real and digital worlds.

References Bezemer, J., and Kress, G. (2016). Multimodality, Learning and Communication: A Social Semiotic Frame. London: Routledge. Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The Location of Culture. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Comber, B., Thomson, P., and Wells, M. (2001). Critical literacy finds a “place”: writing and social action in a low-income Australian grade 2/3 classroom. The Elementary School Journal, 10(4): 451–464. Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2009). “Multiliteracies”: new literacies, new learning. Pedagogies: An International Journal [online], 4(3): 164–195. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/15544800903076044 (accessed 16 June 2018). Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (2017). Conceptualising e-learning. In: B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds.), e-Learning Ecologies. Principles for New Learning and Assessment (pp. 1–45). New York: Routledge. Freina, L., and Ott, M. (2015). A literature review on immersive virtual reality in education: state of the art and perspectives. In: I. Rocenau (ed.), The 11th International Conference on Elearning and Software for Education, April 23–24, 2015. Bucharest, Romania [online]. Bucharest: carol I NDU Publishing House, 133–141. Available from: www.itd.cnr.it/download/eLSE%202015%20Freina%20Ott%20Paper.pdf (accessed 28 November 2017). Gee, J. P. (2017). A personal retrospective on the New London Group and its formation. In: F. Serafini and E. Gee (eds.), Remixing Multiliteracies: Theory and Practice from New London to New Times (pp. 19–34). New York: Teachers College Press. Gee, J. P., and Hayes, E. R. (2011). Language and Learning in the Digital Age. London: Routledge. González, N., Moll, L. C., and Amanti, C. (eds.) (2005). Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Routledge. Gutierrez, K. (2008). Developing a sociocultural literacy in the third space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2): 148–164. Hesterman, S. (2011). Multiliterate Star Warians: the force of popular culture and ICT in early learning. Australian Journal of Early Childhood, 36(4): 86–95. Hill, S. (2010). The millennium generation: teacher–researchers exploring new forms of literacy. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 10(3): 314–340. Holloway, D., and Green, L. (2016). The internet of toys. Communication Research and Practice, 2(4): 506–519. Husbye, N. E., Buchholz, B. A., Coggin, L. S., Wessel-Powell, C., and Wohlwend, K. (2012). Critical lessons and playful literacies: digital media in PK-2 classrooms. Language Arts, 90(2): 82–92. Jackson, A. Y., and Mazzei, L. A. (2012). Thinking with Theory in Qualitative Research: Viewing Data across Multiple Perspectives. Abingdon: Routledge. Kalantzis, M., and Cope, B. (2008). New Learning: Elements of a Science of Education. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Kalantzis, M., and Cope, B. (2012). Literacies. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Kress, G. (2009). Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge. Kulju, P., Kupiainen, R., Wiseman, A. M., Jyrkiäinen, A., Koskinen-Sinisalo, K. L., and Mäkinen, M. (2018). A review of multiliteracies in primary classrooms. Language and Literacy [online], 20(2): 80–101. Available from: https://doi.org/10.20360/langandlit29333 (accessed 16 June 2018). Leander, K., Phillips, N., and Taylor, K. (2010). The changing social spaces of learning: mapping new mobilities. Review of Research in Education, 34(1): 329–394. Lensmire, T. (2000). Powerful Writing: Responsible Teaching. New York: Teachers College Press. 428

Future pedagogical approaches

Lotherington, H., Holland, M., Sotoudeh, S., and Zentena, M. (2008). Project-based community language learning: three narratives of multilingual story-telling in early childhood education. Canadian Modern Language Review [online], 65(1): 125–145. Available from: http://dx.doi.org/10.3138/cmlr.65.1.125 (accessed 23 November 2017). Marsh, J., Mascheroni, G., Carrington, V., Árnadóttir, H., Brito, R., Kupiainen, R., and TrueltzschWijnen, C. (2017). The Online and Offline Digital Literacy Practices of Young Children: A Review of the Literature. COST Action IS1410 [online]. Available from: http://digilitey.eu/wp-content/ uploads/2017/01/WG4-LR-jan-2017-1.pdf (accessed 28 November 2017). Marshall, E., and Toohey, K. (2010). Representing family: community funds of knowledge, bilingualism, and multimodality. Harvard Educational Review, 80(2): 221–242. McVee, M. B., Gavelek, J. R., and Shanahan, L. E. (2017). What scholars of multiliteracies can learn from embodied cognition. In: F. Serafini and E. Gee (eds.), Remixing Multiliteracies: Theory and Practice from New London to New Times (pp. 148–160). New York: Teachers College Press. Moje, E. B., Ciechanowski, C. M., Kramer, K., Ellis, L., Carrillo, R., and Collazo, T. (2004). Working toward third space in content area literacy: an examination of everyday funds of knowledge and discourse. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(1): 38–70. National Core Curriculum (2016). National Core Curriculum for Basic Education 2014. Helsinki: Finnish National Board of Education, 2016: 5. Available from: Apple iBook. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers (2010). Common core state standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects [online]. Washington, DC: Common Core State Standards Initiative. Available from: www.corestandards.org/ela-literacy (accessed 23 November 2017). New London Group (1996). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. Harvard Educational Review [online], 66(1): 60–93. Available from: doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.66.1.17370n67v22j160u (accessed 23 November 2017). Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2005). Literacy and Education: Understanding the New Literacy Studies in the Classroom. London: Chapman. Potter, J., and McDougall, J. (2017). Digital Media, Culture and Education: Theorising Third Space Literacies. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ranker, J. (2007). Designing meaning with multiple media sources: a case study of an eight-year-old student’s writing processes. Research in the Teaching of English, 41(4): 402–434. Serafini, F., and Gee, E. (2017). Remixing Multiliteracies: Theory and Practice from New London to New Times. New York: Teachers College Press. Smith, A., and Kennett, K. (2017). Multimodal meaning: discursive dimensions of e-learning. In: B. Cope and M. Kalantzis (eds.), e-Learning Ecologies: Principles for New Learning and Assessment (pp. 88–117). New York: Routledge. Taylor, L. K., Bernhard, J. K., Garg, S., and Cummins, J. (2008). Affirming plural belonging: building on students’ family-based cultural and linguistic capital through multiliteracies pedagogy. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy [online], 8(3): 269–294. Available from: doi: 10.1177/1468798408096481 (accessed 23 November 2017). Yamada-Rice, D., et al. (2017). Children and Virtual Reality: Emerging Possibilities and Challenges. COST Action IS1410 [online]. Available from: http://digilit.eu (accessed 23 November 2017).

429

31 Emergent challenges for the understanding of children’s digital literature Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

Introduction It has become commonplace for literacy studies and media studies to emphasize the influence of electronic literature on young children’s developing literacy skills. Companies and publishers supply digital literature for young children, including for infants and toddlers, in digitized versions of printed books or newly created stories that benefit from the specific affordances offered by digital media, with hypermedia narratives and transmedia storytelling. Digital literature for children usually has a complex format, since it combines written text, visuals, sound, film and hypertext. It is either produced as an e-book, i.e. an electronic version of a printed book that can be read on a computer, tablet or smartphone, or as an app, i.e. a newly developed narrative especially created for use on electronic devices (Al-Yaqout and Nikolajeva 2015). Moreover, digital literature ranges from concept books and picture books to poetry and fictional stories, including stories for young and very young children. The increasing proliferation of digital books and digital media goes hand in hand with heated debates on the ‘future of reading and the book’ (see Goldbart 2006; Schons 2011; Levy, Yamada-Rice, and Marsh 2012; Buckingham 2013). Manifold reasons have been proposed in discussions of the advantages and disadvantages of print versus digital literature for children, particularly considering the fact that publishers and producers increasingly target children of preschool age. This discourse is closely related to the so-called ‘media panic’ dispute that typifies pedagogical discussions every time a ‘new’ medium, such as comics, radio, TV or the Internet, enters the realm of children’s literature and culture (see Drotner 1992; Strandgaard Jensen 2017). Whenever a novel medium format prevails, pedagogues, parents and caretakers working in the realm of children’s literature express their fears that the new medium will replace ‘older’ media, such as the printed book. The same observation applies to digital media, which are regarded by many as driving children’s traditional print books from the market. In contrast to this pessimistic view, media researchers point to the survival of the printed book alongside other media, such as film, video games and TV. Moreover, they emphasize that every new medium has brought its own aesthetics and educational values, which complement rather than displace older media (Bolter and Grusin 2000; Mackey 2018).

430

Children’s digital literature

However, these critical debates mostly focus on the question of what young children can learn from digital media, and what cognitive skills they require to handle technical devices competently, and to understand the narratives and reading tasks presented in digital media. While studies in the field of digital literacy are legion, most to date have been ‘child-oriented’ rather than ‘text-oriented’, focusing on the needs and capabilities of children rather than on the aesthetic potential of the digital media supplied for children (Thomas 2014). Most studies in this field feature children’s digital e-books that rely on previously published print books, or apps that involve newly created stories. Even successful games, such as Pogo Word Whomp and Minecraft, have sections with stories, and thus complement children’s digital play with narratives. This implies a need for research into children’s digital literature that should consider the specific features of these stories and how they impact on children’s developing literacy skills, including cognitive, linguistic, emotional and aesthetic aspects. This chapter, therefore, aims to open up new vistas in the investigation of digital literature by addressing these largely neglected issues, and points to the important interface between digital literacy and children’s literature research. The chapter begins by problematizing the concept of ‘materiality’, which plays a dominant role in the understanding of print as well as digital media. Second, the interfaces between print and digital children’s literature are discussed, as both art forms impact on the content, narrative structure and multimodal character of literary works for children. A third significant issue is the ‘storyworld’ concept, i.e. the distinction between the user’s own ‘real’ world and the fictional world(s) depicted in children’s stories. Finally, this chapter describes the apparent changes evoked by children’s capacity to create their own stories via the digital medium and to share these easily with other children without being dependent on publishers or other producers of children’s media.

The significance of materiality With regard to the storyline, the intricate text–image relationship and the child–adult mediator dyad during the reading process have many parallels in print and digital picture books (Mackey 2011; Yokota 2015). However, the main differences seem to be in the material form, the page layout and the technical capabilities (for instance, turning a paper page versus touching a screen in order to see the next double-spread; see Burnett et al. 2014). On closer consideration, both print and digital media formats play with their material character in different ways, depending on the material quality (paper, cloth, plastic, etc.), the required fine-motor skills of the reader, and how material aspects are connected to the storyline (Hateley 2013). The material and sensory aspects of children’s books are an often-disregarded element, although these aspects operate in tandem with words and images as a potential third narrative device. Scholars such as Smith (1984) have explored how print book design may influence timing and pacing in a book in order to optimize the content and meaning of the story. Although movable books and pop-up books have a long history, starting sometime in the eighteenth century, the development of new printing facilities and digital tools has led to increasing sophistication of the printed book, which has also impacted on books targeting younger children (Do Rozario 2012). Many contemporary picture books address multiple senses, such as sight, hearing and touch, but sometimes even smell and taste, and this multi-sensory appeal requires a holistic research approach. For instance, Matthew Van Fleet’s Lick! (2013) is an interactive picture book for small children that incorporates scratch and sniff elements (Beveridge 2017). Turning pages is just one of many prime aspects of materiality that is complemented by inserted elements, such

431

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

as flaps to pull, windows to open and buttons to push, which propel the child’s interactivity (Veryeri Alaca 2018). There is no clear consensus as to whether books with interactive devices enrich or hamper the reading process. In this respect, studies in the field of cognitive science and developmental psychology scrutinize the challenges of digital media, particularly for preschool children. Some empirical findings show evidence that digital media require more resources in working memory (DeStefano and LeFevre 2007), as the reader has to simultaneously understand information and plan further steps in the story navigation process. Other studies have found that the increased demands that hyper- and digital media make on decision-making and visual processing may foster children’s reading and learning and enhance language skills, with an emphasis on vocabulary development, as well as parent–child engagement when sharing digital books or games through joint action (Hoffman and Paciga 2014; Merchant 2014; Miller and Warschauer 2014; Bus, Takacs and Kegel 2015). In contrast, other empirical studies qualify these findings by demonstrating the potentially negative effects of multitasking. Some scholars maintain that hypertextual links, inserted games and digital gadgets seem to have a distracting effect on younger children (Zucker, Moody and McKenna 2009; Strouse and Ganea 2017) or that children talk less with adult mediators when reading e-books than when reading print books (Parish-Morris et al. 2013). The increasing potential that new materials and materiality present in children’s books, along with how embodied reading and materiality are interconnected, are key questions that might offer insights into overarching issues related to both print and digital literature for children. Since increasing numbers of picture books demand further sensory engagement as the narrative is conveyed via tactile, audible and visual codes, they require children to use additional cognitive skills and sensory systems in order to understand the meaning of the narrative, thus shaping children’s learning and cognition (Küchler 2005; Overmann 2017). Daniel Miller (2005) suggests that these interactions with material aspects are central to the ways in which the experience of reading has changed over time. For example, interactive features interrupt the reading process, as the child is invited to actively do something, such as look through holes or turn the book round. Although these actions might be significant parts of the narrative, they demand a different approach toward a picture-book story in terms of reading (see also Overmann and Wynn 2018). It has been argued that the current tendency in the international book market to develop print picture books that highlight their material character and involve the reader in interactive play can be interpreted as a counter-reaction to the surge of digital picture books (KümmerlingMeibauer 2015). Contemporary interactive picture books could be regarded as a ‘middle ground’ between traditional print picture books and digital ones, thus bridging the boundaries between the two media formats. Moreover, manipulative features, whether pop-up elements, flaps and windows to pull and open, or buttons to press in order to trigger sounds and music, might contribute to the sophistication of the narrative, thus adding another level of meaning to a picture-book story. This becomes, for example, evident in the picture book The Hole (2013), by Øvvind Torseter that features a single hole from the front cover to the back. When held close, the hole serves as a peephole. In this textless picture book, the hole transforms itself from a streetlight to a balloon, from a traffic light to an eye, etc., while the main character tries to make sense of the hole, much like the viewer. The cyclical pattern of the narrative points to the ambiguity of the hole in relation to its symbolic and physical functions, leaving it to the reader to dismantle the meaning of the hole and its relationship to the main character. Digital literature for children, on the other hand, highlights other material aspects that have to do with the opportunities that electronic devices offer. The renowned Alice for the iPad (2010), often considered to be the first commercially successful app for children, invites the child-user to 432

Children’s digital literature

shake or turn the electronic medium upside down. These actions impact on the storyline, which refers to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), as users can immediately see the results of their activities: playing cards falling to the ground, the world seeming to become topsy-turvy as Alice and other figures and objects swirl around, etc. (Kümmerling-Meibauer 2015). This is just one example that demonstrates that thoughtfully created digital literature asks the child-user not only to touch and swipe the screen but to realize that electronic media have much more to offer with respect to their material affordances.

Interfaces between digital media and children’s literature in print It cannot be denied that the computer, the smartphone and social media progressively belong to young children’s daily routine. It is no wonder, then, that digital media not only influence the child’s cognitive development, but also emerge as topics in picture books and children’s books, to the extent that they imitate the child’s interactivity with a digital tool, as in Hervé Tullet’s bestselling picture book Press Here (2011). The spreads show small circles in red, yellow and blue in different arrangements and numbers. Comparable to computer games, the reader is asked to do something before turning the page, for example, rubbing the circles, tapping on a specific circle five times, or tilting the book. The subsequent spread shows the result of the reader’s action, sometimes with surprising effects. The first fully developed digital picture books were launched in 2011, such as The Heart and the Bottle (2011) by Oliver Jeffers and Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site (2011) by Sherri Rinker. Their numbers have steadily increased, ranging from simple picture books, which resemble board books or concept books, and educational picture books to more sophisticated informational and fictional picture books (Sargeant 2015; Mackey 2016; Al-Yaqout and Nikolajeva 2018). Although many e-book versions of popular children’s books rarely deviate from the print versions, and simply transfer printed double-page spreads to the screen, other e-books have embedded features such as games, audio and video. Examples of these include the iPad versions of the popular picture books Goodnight Moon (2013; print version published in 1947) by Margaret Wise Brown and Where the Wild Things Are (2016; print version published in 1963) by Maurice Sendak. Moreover, some digital picture books emphasize the metafictional character of the stories, as in The Monster at the End of this Book (Sesame Workshop 2011), which relies on the prominent print version of the same title, written by Jon Stone with illustrations by Mike Smollin, released in 1971. In comparison with the original text, the digital version makes use of the affordances of digital tools in order to highlight the complicated connection between author, narrator and character (Stichnothe 2014). Mo Willem’s Don’t Let the Pigeon Run this App (2013) goes a step further, as this bestselling app version openly refers to the active role played by the reader, who is mentioned as an additional author, indicated by “Mo Willems and you”. Based on the schema of the previously created printed picture book, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive this Bus (2003), children can either listen to a brand new, randomly generated story, which is different every time, or make choices to create their own stories. This app also contains lessons on how to draw the famous Pigeon (Turrión 2014). Children’s book apps, in turn, can be anything that can be programmed, from a movie to a game and a book, or vice versa. For instance, William Joyce’s The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore was first broadcast as a short animated film in 2011 and received an Oscar in 2012. Due to its great success, an iPad app and a printed version were released in 2012 (Schwebs 2014). Another example is the BBC television channel CBeebies, founded in 2002 and targeting children under the age of six. CBeebies has an online webpage with a wide selection of games, 433

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

video clips, songs and classic children’s stories. In the CBeebies adaptations of classical stories, still and moving images are combined with written text that appears at the bottom of the screen. The software allows texts to be inserted in any order, so that child users can follow the order of the prescribed storyline or change it and create new versions of their favourite stories and characters. The popularity of this TV channel has influenced the British book market, where there has been a significant increase in print sales of the children’s books presented on CBeebies (Kümmerling-Meibauer 2016). Moreover, advanced reality technology has altered the publishing facilities of children’s books. When the reader holds certain pages of What Lola Wants . . . Lola Gets! (2011), written by David Salariya and illustrated by Carolyn Scrace, up to a web cam, they see the characters come to life in full 3-D animation, accompanied by music (Kümmerling-Meibauer 2015). In Julia Neuhaus’ Was ist denn hier passiert? (What Has Happened Here? 2015), the reader sees amusing or strange situations, which are expressed in images and texts. Each double-page spread has an integrated QR-code that can be scanned with a smartphone or tablet. The reader is then able to watch a short animated film that explains the reasons for the unusual situations presented. The success of the cellphone novel, a new genre targeting young adults, led to the development of related digital texts for primary school children. A prominent example is the so-called SMS fairy tale. The Italian author-illustrator Fabian Negrin transferred the concept of SMS fairy tales to his children’s book Favole al telefonino (Fairy Tales on the Cellphone, 2010), which consists of abbreviated versions of 13 fairy tales by the brothers Grimm, each written as SMS with no more than 160 characters. These examples give a brief indication of the emergence of new genres and narrative concepts in children’s literature shaped by the affordances of digital media, including the bi-directional influences of print books, e-books and story apps for young children aged up to eight years. This mutual relationship, i.e. digital media impacting on the development of genres and narrative forms in children’s print literature as well as children’s print literature finding its way into digital media, might help us to gain insights into the changes children’s literature and culture are facing as a result of digitization. However, we should also bear in mind the extent to which the development of children’s literature is shaped by publishers’ and producers’ commercial interests, which often drive the field, rather than creativity and imagination.

Children’s developing literacy skills: the concept of the storyworld To understand a picture-book story is by no means a simple task, as this process requires linguistic, visual, cultural and literary literacy, even in the case of seemingly simple picture books that target infants and toddlers (Nikolajeva 2003; Kümmerling-Meibauer and Meibauer 2005; 2015). Understanding a story is all the more challenging when a picture book is available as an app, where the words, images and layout are often complemented by sound, music, game elements and short film sequences. Scholars have rightly pointed out that mastering these various features can challenge children’s emergent literacy on multiple levels (Kümmerling-Meibauer 2011; Merchant et al. 2012; Dezuanni et al. 2015). To understand the complexity of children’s meaning-making during story reading, some researchers have turned to multimodality (e.g. Simpson and Walsh 2015) to analyse the intricate combination of modes in visual narratives, such as picture books, graphic novels and film, and to highlight the complicated multimodal characteristics of digital literature, which usually combines (moving) images, sound, text and games. A precondition for understanding children’s books, whether in a printed or digital format, is the acquisition of the concept of story. As studies in developmental psychology, literacy studies and cognitive narratology have shown, this capacity develops in early childhood (from the age 434

Children’s digital literature

of two onwards) and continues until adolescence and beyond (see Kümmerling-Meibauer et al. 2015). As well as understanding the prototypical features of a story, where the structure follows the schema of beginning, climax and ending, children have to grapple simultaneously with other constituents of stories, namely characters, objects, settings, events and actions (Vermeule 2010; Kümmerling-Meibauer and Meibauer 2013; Nikolajeva 2014). All these elements belong to and construct the storyworld, a concept introduced by scholars working in the realm of transmedia storytelling (Ryan 2004; Jenkins 2006). Because children’s literature can be fiction, nonfiction or a combination of the two, the use of the term ‘fictional world’ could be misleading. The notion of ‘storyworld’, instead, refers to the shared universe represented in a narrative, regardless of whether the universe seems to be a fictional representation of a ‘real’ world or a fantastic world. Apart from this general meaning of the term, the storyworld relates specifically to transmedia texts, in a manner that a story might first be introduced in a book. In a next step, the same story would then be adapted and expanded through comics, films and television. By adding visuals, moving images, new characters and plots, the original storyworld can be experienced on many levels. This procedure applies to apps as well as popular television series or books targeting children and complemented in digital media. The different storytelling media challenge young readers in preschool and primary school, since they have to understand that a story is presented in different media formats, thus demanding an adaptation of the storyworld to the affordances of the specific medium. While this observation is not new, as franchise texts, remediation and merchandising have been common practices in children’s literature and culture since the beginning of the twentieth century, the emergence of digital media has expanded the story universe to a considerable extent: a story can be told in one medium, enhanced in a second medium, retold in a third medium, etc. (Yokota 2017). In comparison to sequels or adaptations of original stories, transmedia storytelling goes a step further, as it requires the reader to competently handle different platforms and formats in order to access a single story. Particularly with regard to transmedia storytelling, digital literature plays a major role, since this type of literature is open to multiple enhancements across diverse media channels. Although transmedia storytelling was initially developed for an adult audience – an oftenquoted example is the movie The Matrix (2003), which was complemented by film sequels, computer games and blogs, which propel the original storyline – there is an increasing number of transmedia products for young children, particularly educational series for preschool children. Many of these transmedia products combine a fictive story with nonfiction elements, thus producing stories that serve educational purposes, as in Billy Aronson’s Peg + Cat (2013), which fosters young children’s problem-solving capacities by introducing them to mathematics, and the Robot Heart Stories (2011), which support children’s emerging knowledge of geography and maps. The proliferation of transmedia products has been strongly promoted by Disney, and is built on the merchandising and franchising of innumerable media versions of popular stories. A prominent example is the animation film Cars (2006), followed by three sequels, that target children aged three to eight years. Complemented by a TV series, short films, video games (for instance, Fast as Lightning, 2014; and Driven to Win, 2017) and apps, the original story has been expanded on multiple channels, which in turn has led to new plots for subsequent short films broadcast on TV (Pietschmann, Völkel and Ohler 2014). These transmedia extensions increasingly include interactive digital applications, which invite the user’s participation (Alper and Herr-Stephenson 2013). The interactive nature of these transmedia story formats can disrupt the joint attention demanded in a child–adult mediator dyad during the shared reading of a printed book in multiple respects, as the child is asked to use different modes and channels consecutively 435

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

or simultaneously (Marsh 2010; Manresa 2015). Thus, interactivity as a prime aspect of learning is a further essential topic that belongs to the framework of literacy in general and to children’s digital literacy in particular. This line of enquiry is compatible with the work of scholars in the field of child psychology and literacy studies who have long questioned the passivity of child readers and pointed to the active role children play in the process of making sense of stories independently of the medium in which they are presented. Against this background, a broader concept of literacy has been developed in order to understand the multiplicity of contemporary literacy practices, that is, the concept of ‘multiliteracies’ (Cope and Kalantzis 2000, 2015). Multiliteracies offers a useful framework to analyse the diversity of contemporary storyworlds, as it clarifies that competent users need diverse literacy skills in order to understand and produce narratives whose storylines rely on the combination of several modes and media. As a consequent continuation of multiliteracies, the newly coined term ‘transmedia literacy’ (Ciastellardi and Di Rosario 2015) refers to the capacity to understand the affordances of each medium per se, and to recognize the intersections between these media in relation to the inherent changes to the storyworld. From the perspective of digital literacy in early childhood, there is a close connection between child development research and children’s literature research. Knowing how children learn to understand the concept of story and are able to derive a story from a multimedia product, such as a picture book or a film, is an interdisciplinary task. Situated at the interface between developmental psychology, literacy studies and children’s literature research, an interdisciplinary approach provides scope to recognize how cognitive aspects are inseparably connected to the acquisition of different literacy concepts.

Becoming authors themselves: children as creators of their own stories The potential of online technologies and new social media to support interactions between young children has garnered particular attention in digital literacy studies, with a focus on how children use specific online affordances to create their own stories and artwork (Kucirkova et al. 2013). A popular example is Story Buddy 2, where children can write their own texts and upload photos and drawings. The app then produces a book that looks like a traditional print book, although it is viewed on a screen. The far-reaching consequences of this trend have not yet been fully recognized by children’s literature research, although this tendency considerably impacts on traditional views of what children’s literature is and what it can be. If ‘literature’ is seen as an umbrella term that encompasses all literary texts performed and produced, whether by children or adults, whether orally transmitted, written down or digitally represented, then it should be crystal-clear that the stories produced by children should also be regarded as children’s literature as well (see Gubar (2013) and Kümmerling-Meibauer (2013) on earlier examples of child–adult cooperation). Scholars have tended to focus on the adult perspective, given that children’s books and other children’s media are usually created, published and bought by adults. However, researchers working in the realm of (digital) literacy have already pointed out that children write stories, draw comics and release films, by sharing these products with peers and friends via blogs, social networks and official webpages (Paley 1998; Kucirkova et al. 2013). The last decade has seen a proliferation of digital tools explicitly designed to support children publishing and discussing their own media, ranging from diaries, fictional stories, photos and illustrations to comics, games and videos. Such media-sharing sites of distribution and consumption stimulate collaborative work and induce innovative narrative formats. A case in point is personalized stories for children. Here, the child can function as an avatar, as the story is about 436

Children’s digital literature

the respective child, in ways that are comparable to the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, which were prominent in the 1970s and 1980s. Children are thus enabled to write their own personal stories, which can be printed as a book or distributed via the Internet (Kucirkova et al. 2013; Kucirkova 2017). Although the idea that children create their own stories is far from new, children are able to be creative at school and in their leisure time, sharing their texts and stories with friends, peers, teachers and family members, provided that they have equal access to digital media and online facilities. The impact of children on the reception and distribution of children’s literature is evident in their ability to comment on already publicized products, as well as their aspirations to create their own stories and visuals. Seen in this light, the concept of the ‘author’ has to be reconsidered, as it not only encompasses professionals as well as amateurs – who often turn into fan fiction aficionados – but also children from very early on, as the digital tools enable the transcription of orally transmitted narratives into written stories (Kucirkova 2017). Social media, blogs and fan fiction sites facilitate users publishing their own artworks and narratives, thus reaching a broader audience and becoming independent of any publishers’ contracts. Indeed, the proliferation of free-access digital tools may expand the literacy capacities of children, to the extent that they increasingly stimulate children’s creativity and interactivity – provided that these digital devices are adapted to respective children’s cognitive abilities. In order to become digitally literate, children need to have some understanding of the aforementioned different forms of literacy, i.e. visual literacy, linguistic literacy, literary literacy, film literacy and game literacy. It should be crystal-clear that an understanding of these different literacy forms is a cyclical process rather than a sequential one. They are then more able to understand and produce literary or informational texts and other artworks, which can be uploaded to webpages and blogs. However, the competent handling of digital media additionally requires another capacity, namely, the ability to critically evaluate information provided by social media and other Internet platforms, including fictional texts. Fictional stories for children can be used to manipulate the reader, in the sense that they include altered facts, unreliable information and sometimes even propagandistic messages. In order to prevent children falling prey to such tempting messages, they have to learn to become vigilant, i.e. to recognize and be sceptical about false information (Mascaro and Sperber 2009; Sperber et al. 2010). Epistemic vigilance as a specific cognitive capacity plays a significant role in knowledge acquisition and cannot be totally separated from any receptive and creative processes (Siegal 2008; Harris 2012). It is therefore argued that the framework of digital literacy needs to be complemented by the competency of epistemic vigilance, which lays the basis for capable interaction with digital media. There is emerging research on this topic in relation to the issue of ‘resilience’, i.e. children’s still developing capacity to critically use digital tools (Livingstone 2013; Livingstone, Mascheroni and Staksrud 2018).

Conclusion: implications for future studies Although the potential of digitized children’s books is often praised with enthusiasm, there is not yet much knowledge on how the very fast changes induced by digitization might shape children’s literate capacities. As contemporary children’s literature is accessed by a range of media, which use embedded images, sound and movement, this development has far-reaching consequences for the reading process, since children need to navigate complex texts and images on the page and on the screen (Nixon and Hateley 2013). As a result, these newly released media products challenge readers, authors and publishers in multiple ways. First, children’s digital books, with their complex formats of visual, written text, sound, film and hypertextual markers, appeal to several senses simultaneously, thus stressing their material quality. Second, 437

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

apps combine different media formats, such as computer game and film, thus fostering the child’s acquisition of digital literacy. This competence requires the ability to interpret messages in different forms, and even to analyse complex narrative strategies so as to be able to grapple with transmedia formats that require the ability of transmedia literacy. This capability helps to understand the affordances digital literature offer, for instance, changing the storyline by selecting various supplements and side-lines which complement and expand the narrative considerably. This mix of reading, learning, play and creation encourages children to concurrently use different reading and comprehension strategies (Kümmerling-Meibauer 2016; Høyrup 2017). Third, the apparent interfaces between print and digital children’s literature in relation to content, narrative structure and multimodal design can change children’s literacy competencies, requiring them to understand their specific features. Finally, free access to social media and electronic devices allows children to create and share their own literary works, thus scrutinizing the conceptualization of children’s literature being produced only by adults. It is clear that these tendencies pose a challenge for the conceptualization of children’s literature. The investigation of these changes implies the development of a digital narratology approach that engages with the processes of production and reception in relation to the understanding of digital narratives. Consequently, these tendencies necessitate a new theoretical framework in the realm of children’s literature research. Children’s literature researchers should be cognizant of these tendencies, which enable even young children to no longer attribute the creation of children’s media to adults alone. On the other hand, the influence of children’s literature on the furthering of digital literacy needs to be ascertained by scholars investigating the impact of digital media and digital literacy on young children’s everyday lives. In order to progress in this respect, interdisciplinary cooperation among researchers in these different fields is indispensable, as only such an encompassing approach can enable us to paint a detailed picture of the multiple facets of ‘digital literacy’ and how it impacts on young children’s understanding of their media-dominated surroundings. An open dialogue between children’s literature research, media studies, literacy studies and cognitive studies is likely to yield the kind of nuanced and flexible critical discourse that is necessary to navigate a rapidly evolving, increasingly diverse children’s media culture.

References Alice for the iPad (2010). London: Atomic Antelope. App. Alper, M., and Herr-Stephenson, R. (2013). Transmedia play: literacy across media. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 5(2): 366–369. Al-Yaqout, G., and Nikolajeva, M. (2015). Re-conceptualizing picturebook theory in the digital age. BLFT: Nordic Journal of Childlit Aesthetics, 6. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/blft.v6.26971. Al-Yaqout, G., and Nikolajeva, M. (2018). Digital picturebooks. In: B. Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (pp. 270–278). New York: Routledge. Aronson, B. (2013). Peg + Cat. Ill. Jennifer Oxley. USA: PbsKids, iPad edition. Beveridge, L. (2017). Chewing on baby books as a form of infant literacy. In: N. Hamer, P. Nodelman and M. Reimer (eds.), More Words about Pictures: Current Research on Picture Books and Visual/Verbal Texts for Young People (pp. 18–29). New York: Routledge. Bolter, J. D., and Grusin, R. (2000). Remediation: Understanding New Media. Cambridge and London: MIT Press. Brown, M. W. (2013). Goodnight Moon. Illus. Clement Hurd. Version 1.4. Vancouver: Loud Crow Interactive. Buckingham, D. (2013). Making sense of the ‘digital generation’: growing up with digital media. Self and Society, 40(3): 7–15. Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2014). The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35: 90–103. 438

Children’s digital literature

Bus, A., Takacs, Z., and Kegel, C. A. T. (2015). Affordances and limitations of electronic storybooks for children’s emergent literacy. Developmental Review, 35: 79–97. Cars (2006). Animation film. Director: John Lasseter. Emeryville, CA: Pixar Studios. Cars: Fast as Lightning (2015). Game version. Paris: Gameloft. App. Cars: Driven to Win (2017). Game version. Paris: Gameloft. App. Ciastellardi, M., and Di Rosario, G. (2015). Transmedia literacy: a premise. International Journal of Transmedia Literacy, 1(1): 7–16. Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (eds.) (2000). Multiliteracies: Literary Learning and the Design of Social Futures. London: Routledge. Cope, B., and Kalantzis, M. (eds.) (2015). A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Learning by Design. London: Palgrave. DeStefano, D., and LeFevre, J. A. (2007). Cognitive load in hypertext reading: a review. Computers in Human Behavior, 23: 1616–1641. Dezuanni, M., Dooley, K., Gattenhof, S., and Knight, L. (2015). iPads in the Early Years: Developing Literacy and Creativity. New York: Routledge. Do Rozario, R. A. (2012). Consuming books: synergies of materiality and narrative in picturebooks. Children’s Literature, 40(1): 151–166. Drotner, K. (1992). Modernity and media panics. In: M. Skovmand and K. Schrøder (eds.), Media Cultures: Reappraising Transnational Media (pp. 46–62). London: Routledge. Goldbart Clark, D. (2006). Hyperread: children’s literature, CD-ROMs, and the New Literacy. The Lion and the Unicorn, 30(3): 337–359. Gubar, M. (2013). Risky business: talking about children in children’s literature criticism. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, 38(4): 450–457. Harris, P. L. (2012). Trusting What You’re Told: How Children Learn from Others. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Hateley, E. (2013). Reading: from turning the page to touching the screen. In: Y. Wu, K. Mallan and R. McGillis (eds.), (Re)imagining the World: New Frontiers of Educational Research (pp. 1–13). Berlin: Springer. Hoffman, J. L., and Paciga, K. A. (2014). Click, swipe, and read: sharing e-books with toddlers and preschoolers. Early Childhood Education Journal, 42(6): 379–388. Høyrup, H. (2017). Towards a connective ethnography of children’s literature and digital media: the new media encounter. In: N. Hamer, P. Nodelman and M. Reimer (eds.), More Words about Pictures: Current Research on Picture Books and Visual/Verbal Texts for Young People (pp. 81–99). New York: Routledge. Jeffers, O. (2011). The Heart and the Bottle. New York: Penguin Group. iPad edition. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Joyce, W. (2012). The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. Version 1.4 Shevreport, LA: Moonbot Studios. Küchler, S. (2005). Materiality and cognition: the changing face of things. In: D. Miller (ed.), Materiality (pp. 106–230). Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B. (ed.) (2011). Emergent Literacy: Children’s Books from 0 to 3. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B. (2013). Childhood and modernist art. Libri & Liberi, 2(1): 11–28. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B. (2015). From baby books to picturebooks for adults: European picturebooks in the new millennium. Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry, 31(3): 249–264. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B. (2016). The impact of new digital media on children’s and young adult literature. In: M. Manresa and N. Real (eds.), Digital Literature for Children: Texts, Readers and Educational Practices (pp. 57–72). Brussels: Peter Lang. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B., and Meibauer, J. (2005). First pictures, early concepts: early concept books. The Lion and the Unicorn, 29: 324–347. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B., and Meibauer, J. (2013). Towards a cognitive theory of picturebooks. International Research in Children’s Literature, 6(2): 143–160. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B., and Meibauer, J. (2015). Picturebooks and early literacy: how do picturebooks support early conceptual and narrative development? In: B. Kümmerling-Meibauer, J. Meibauer, K. Nachtigäller and K. Rohlfing (eds.), Learning from Picturebooks: Perspectives from Child Development and Literacy Studies (pp. 13–32). New York: Routledge. Kümmerling-Meibauer, B., Meibauer, J., Nachtigäller, K., and Rohlfing, K. (eds.) (2015). Learning from Picturebooks: Perspectives from Child Development and Literacy Studies. New York: Routledge. 439

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

Kucirkova, N. (2017). Digital Personalization in Early Childhood: Impact on Childhood. London: Bloomsbury. Kucirkova, N., Messer, D., Sheehy, K., and Flewitt, R. (2013). Sharing personalised stories on iPads: a close look at one child-parent interaction. Literacy, 47(3): 115–123. Levy, R., Yamada-Rice, D., and Marsh, J. (2012). Digital literacy in primary classrooms. In: K. Hall, T. Cremin, B. Comber and L. Molle (eds.), International Handbook of Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning, and Culture (pp. 333–343). London: Sage. Livingstone, S. (2013). Online risk, harm and vulnerability: reflections on the evidence base for child Internet safety policy. ZER: Journal of Communication Studies, 18(35): 13–28. Livingstone, S., Mascheroni, G., and Staksrud, E. (2018). European research on children’s internet use: assessing the past and anticipating the future. New Media & Society, 20(3): 1103–1120. Mackey, M. (2011). The case of the flat rectangles: children’s literature on page and screen. International Research in Children’s Literature, 4(1): 99–114. Mackey, M. (2016). Digital picturebooks. In: E. Arizpe and M. Styles (eds.), Children Reading Picturebooks: Interpreting Visual Texts, 2nd ed. (pp. 169–179). London: Routledge. Mackey, M. (2018). Picturebooks and media studies. In: B. Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (pp. 451–462). New York: Routledge. Manresa, M. (2015). Traditional readers and electronic literature: an exploration of perceptions and readings of digital works. In: M. Manresa and N. Real (eds.), Digital Literature for Children: Texts, Readers and Educational Practices (pp. 105–120). Brussels: Peter Lang. Marsh, J. (2010). Young children’s play in online virtual worlds. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 8(1): 23–29. Mascaro, O., and Sperber, D. (2009). The moral, epistemic, and mindreading components of children’s vigilance towards deception. Cognition, 112(3): 367–380. Merchant, G. (2014). Young children and interactive story-apps. In: C. Burnett, J. Davies, G. Merchant and J. Rowsell (eds.), New Literacies around the Globe: Policy and Pedagogy (pp. 121–138). New York: Routledge. Merchant, G., Gillen, J., Marsh, J., and Davies, J. (eds.) (2012). Virtual Literacies: Interactive Spaces for Children and Young People. New York: Routledge. Miller, D. (2005). Materiality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Miller, E. B., and Warschauer, M. (2014). Young children and e-reading: research to date and questions for the future. Learning, Media and Technology, 39: 283–305. Minecraft Stories (2009–2018). Stockholm/Redmond: Mojang /Microsoft. iPad edition. Negrin, F. (2010). Favole al telefonino. Rome: Orecchio Acerbo. Neuhaus, J. (2015). Was ist denn hier passiert? Animation by Till Penzek. Munich: Tulipan. Nikolajeva, M. (2003). Verbal and visual literacy: the role of picturebooks in the reading experience of young children. In: N. Hall, J. Larson and J. Marsh (eds.), Handbook of Early Childhood Literacy (pp. 235–248). London: Sage. Nikolajeva, M. (2014). Reading for Learning: Cognitive Approaches to Children’s Literature. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Nixon, H., and Hateley, E. (2013). Books, toys, and tablets: playing and learning in the age of digital media. In: K. Hall, T. Cremin, B. Comber and L. Molle (eds.), International Handbook of Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning, and Culture (pp. 28–40). Oxford: Wiley. Overmann, K. A. (2017). Thinking materially: cognition as extended and enacted. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 17(3–4): 381–400. Overmann, K. A., and Wynn, T. (2018). Materiality and human cognition. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-018-9378-y Paley, V. G. (1998). The Girl with the Brown Crayon: How Children Use Stories to Shape Their Lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Parish-Morris, J., Mahajan, N., Hirsh-Pasek, K., Michnick Golinkoff, R., and Fuller Collins, M. (2013). Once upon a time: parent-child dialogue and storybook reading in the electronic era. Mind, Brain, and Education, 7(3): 200–211. Pietschmann, D., Völkel, S., and Ohler, P. (2014). Limitations for transmedia storytelling for children. International Journal of Communication, 8: 2259–2282. Rinker, S. D. (2011). Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site. Ill. Tom Lichtenheld. Version 2.7.2. Encinitas, CA: Oceanhouse Media. Robot Heart Stories (2011). Reboot Stories. Web.

440

Children’s digital literature

Ryan, M.-L. (2004). Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Salariya, D. (2011). What Lola Wants . . . Lola Gets. Ill. Carolyn Scrace. Brighton: Scribblers Book. Sargeant, B. (2015). What is an ebook? What is a book app? And why should we care? An analysis of contemporary digital picture books. Children’s Literature in Education, 46(4): 454–466. Schons, L. M. (2011). Is the picture book dead? The rise of the iPad as a turning point in children’s literature. Journal of Digital Research & Publishing, 2: 120–128. Schwebs, T. (2014). Affordances of an app: a reading of the Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore. BLFT: Nordic Journal of Childlit Aesthetics, 5. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/blft.v5.24169. Sesame Workshop (2011). The Monster at the End of This Book. New York: Sesame Workshop & Callaway Digital Arts. iPad edition. Siegal, M. (2008). Marvelous Minds: The Discovery of What Children Know. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simpson, A., and Walsh, M. (2015). Children’s literature in the digital world: how does multimodality support affective, aesthetic and critical response to narrative? English Teaching: Practice & Critique, 14(1): 28–43. Smith, K. A. (1984). Structure of the Visual Book. 4th ed. New York: Keith Smith Books. Sperber, D., Clément, F., Heintz, C., Mascarao, O., Mercier, H., Origgi, G., and Wilson, D. (2010). Epistemic vigilance. Mind & Language, 25(4): 359–393. Stichnothe, H. (2014). Engineering stories? A narratological approach to children’s book apps. BLFT: Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics, 5 http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/blft.v5.2360.2 Story Buddy 2 (2015). Tapfuze. App. Version 2.7. Strandgaard Jensen, H. (2017). From Superman to Social Realism: Children’s Media and Scandinavian Childhood. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Strouse, G. A., and Ganea, P. A. (2017). Parent-toddler behavior and language differ when reading electronic and print picture books. Frontiers in Psychology, 8: 677. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00677. Thomas, A. (2014). Digital fiction. In: L. Unsworth and A. Thomas (eds.), English Teaching and New Literacies Pedagogy: Interpreting and Authoring Digital Multimedia Narratives (pp. 39–62). New York: Peter Lang. Torseter, Øyvind (2013). The Hole. New York: Enchanted Lion Book (originally published in Norwegian in 2013). Tullet, H. (2011). Press Here. San Francisco: Chronicle Books (originally published in French in 2010). Turrión, C. (2014). Multimedia book apps in a contemporary culture: commerce and innovation, continuity and rupture. BLFT: Nordic Journal of ChildLit Aesthetics, 5. http://dx.doi.org/10.3402/blft.v5.24426. Van Fleet, M. (2013). Lick! New York: Simon & Schuster. Vermeule, B. (2010). Why Do We Care about Literary Characters? Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Veryeri Alaca, I. (2018). Materiality in picturebooks. In: B. Kümmerling-Meibauer (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Picturebooks (pp. 59–68). New York: Routledge. Willems, M. (2011; updated 2013). Don’t Let the Pigeon Run This App. Burbank: Disney Enterprises. iPad edition. Yokota, J. (2015). The past, present and future of digital picturebooks for children. In: M. Manresa and N. Real (eds.), Digital Narrative for Children: Texts, Readers and Educational Practices (pp. 73–86). Brussels: Peter Lang. Yokota, J. (2017). Telling stories in different formats: new directions in digital stories for children. In: C. Beauvais and M. Nikolajeva (eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Children’s Literature (pp. 203–216). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Zucker, T. A., Moody, A. K., and McKenna, M. C. (2009). The effects of electronic books on prekindergarten-to-grade students’ literacy and language outcomes: a research synthesis. Journal of Educational Computing Research, 40(1): 47–87.

441

32 Researching children’s play and identity in the digital age A holistic approach Becky Parry and Fiona Scott

Introduction In a study of media literacy (Buckingham 2013), two 6-year-old children were observed making choices about the media they would most like to put in a time capsule to represent them to future generations. They deliberated over their choice of title and settled on asking the future time capsule finder to: “look carefully for our lives”. Implicit in this request is an acknowledgement that the media they engage with reveals something about who they are. As Potter (2012) observes, through the media they actively choose to show affinity to, children are curating identities. Interestingly, their choices were not the latest games or digital technologies but the films The Sound of Music, made in 1965 and Mary Poppins, made in 1964. The reasons they gave were that they reminded them of their families. Our reflections on this moment from a research study undertaken some time ago, have informed this chapter. We want to look carefully at children’s engagements with the digital and this has prompted us to productively call into question what can seem like a relentless steer to focus on the new. Like Woodfall and Zezulkova (2016), we argue that: “It is a child’s lived experience that should lead our understanding, not our own or institutional historicity and presupposition” (p. 104). In the case above, it is the role of the digital to make films from the past available to children. The films are not new, but the possibility of sharing them in this way is new and they are new experiences for the children involved. Recent studies draw attention to the relationship between play based on digital media and children’s traditional literacy development (Neumann and Neumann 2017) and there are many new digital apps, games and websites that aim to improve school-based literacy. Woodfall and Zezulkova (2016) critique research with a primary focus on a specific platform (tablets, televisions, games consoles) suggesting that many studies of children’s experiences of media begin and end with a technocentric focus on a specific device. We take this one step further in suggesting that looking at one app, game or website might lead to a focus on the affordances of the particular in isolation, rather than on how uses relate to children’s wider literacy and identity practices. This chapter, therefore, critically reflects on the task of researching children’s play in the digital age and how this play becomes a site for the performance and negotiation of identities. Our work is, therefore, theoretically aligned with the emergent area of scholarship referred to as digital literacies in early childhood (Scott and Marsh 2018), which conceptualizes 442

Children’s digital-age play and identity

literacies as sociocultural and sociomaterial processes, rather than a set of skills to be acquired. This work emerges from empirical studies where children were observed drawing on multiple cultural resources from their experiences of digital culture, and redesigning and remixing these as resources for play (Marsh and Bishop 2014). Rather than focus on children’s play with a single digital device or text, we therefore consider the ways in which children’s engagements with digital media and technologies might be researched and understood holistically. We use the word text here, and in the remainder of the chapter, to refer to a wide range of media such as comics, games, films, television programmes and toys as well as digital and paper books, following Mackey (2007). Using Marsh’s (2005) concept of the narrative web, we argue that each of these and also related lunch boxes, pencil cases and pyjamas, potentially provide opportunities for children to further engage with a favoured narrative. Play has long been acknowledged as an important context for the development of early literacies and identities. In defining play, we acknowledge what Sutton-Smith (2009) describes as its ambiguity and the many and varied discourses about play that arise from different disciplines. Our particular interest is in sociodramatic play (Bodrova and Leong 2010), including role play, small world play, fantasy play and playful performance, although we recognize that many other different types of play might occur simultaneously. However, it is play which involves taking on a particular role and exploring what it means or how it feels to be that character in a particular narrative that provides children with important opportunities to try out everyday and fantasy identities and associated literacies. Bodrova and Leong (2010) suggest that it is this sociodramatic play that provides children with a context in which to develop the higher mental functions associated with what Leont’ev (1978) described as mature play. Bodrova and Leong (2010) express concern that toys based on popular media problematically limit the learning possibilities available in children’s play, as they do not require children to create their own symbolic resources. We are wary of this assumption, not least in the way it constructs children as having little agency. We would also suggest that children have always used ‘what is to hand’ in their play (Kress 2005) and this has included popular culture and related toys since the 1950s, as Marsh (2014) illustrates, when children sang songs about Diana Dors (a glamorous film actress) and bought toys and clothes based on Davy Crockett (an American folk hero who features in popular culture). We suggest that social norms can certainly be read into the toys, popular culture and digital media made for children, but that these meanings can be contested and even subverted in children’s playful engagements with them (Esfahani and Carrington 2015). Similarly, recent research on children’s play by Marsh and Bishop (2014) problematizes distinctions made entirely based on binary notions of past and present, comparing children’s play as observed by the Opies in the 1950s and 1960s with contemporary play. The work of the Opies (1969) provides an important public record of evidence that, through pretend play, children have historically performed identities in their play which draw on characters such as mothers and fathers, schools, animals, war, cops and robbers, fairies and witches as well as those based specifically on storybooks, radio dramas, comics and films they had experienced. Marsh and Bishop (2014) found very similar scenarios being enacted in contemporary playgrounds, but with more play based on contemporary media and television programmes in particular. Important to the analysis of this play was a recognition that children adapt, rather than copy particular programmes and this process is complicated further by the way in which children transmit their viewing to others for further re-appropriation (Marsh 2006), something also found by Parry (2013) in relation to primary aged children and film narratives. In their observations of children’s sociodramatic play, Bishop and Curtis (2006) observed children drawing on television in three important ways: allusion (alluding physically or 443

Becky Parry and Fiona Scott

verbally to the characters or stars); syncretization (blending and remixing ideas from different programmes together); and mimesis (where children’s play is strongly framed by a particular text). Marsh and Bishop (2014) also described children’s play as a site of hybridization of songs, popular culture, everyday experiences, family relationships and places. Similarly, creative, active and agentic processes have been observed in a number of other studies in which the role of digital media as a cultural resource in children’s storytelling has been explored (Robinson 1997; Dyson 2002; Willet 2005; Mackey 2007; Parry 2013). The implications of this for the teaching of literacy are many, particularly in recognizing that children’s engagements with digital texts involve complex negotiation of meaning, can support school-based literacy learning, and can and should be valued as assets (Robinson and Mackey 2006). There is no doubt that we must remain vigilant to potential risks posed to children in their engagements with media. However, rather than seeing children as passive and particularly vulnerable to consumerist ideology, we draw on James and Prout (2015) to argue that children are capable, have agency and even expertise in their favoured digital media texts. Indeed, children’s mastery of personally meaningful texts might be an important facet of their developing sense of identity. Such mastery can take diverse forms, including children’s repetition, curation and redesigning of spoken, written or embodied knowledge about such texts. This is something that might be missed by focusing on children’s engagement with a particular text or device. There is a strong tradition in psychological studies of seeking to establish the cause and effect relationship between a particular media text or artefact, such as The Barbie Doll, and its impact on a child, e.g. whether it makes girls want to be thin (Dittmar et al. 2006). There are, increasingly, digital literacies studies that also start from an interest in a particular text, application or device. Burke (2013b) for example, focuses on two children as they engage with Star Dolls, but this study can only relate what the children do in response to that particular online space at a particular time and in particular set of circumstances. The findings, therefore, provide only a partial view of the way in which the children have drawn on the game as a resource, contributing to how they are then positioned as lacking agency and being inducted into particular gendered and consumerist identities. We believe that this sort of work provides a useful snapshot of particular practices, but that these must be seen in the light of research that captures children’s broader, everyday experiences. Indeed, in Burke’s (2013a) classroom study, she observes children forming affinity groups in relation to popular culture which enable them to share expertise in everyday and virtual identities, and exercise agency in combining them to perform different roles. A research focus on a child’s direct interaction with a digital media text can reveal something about identity as a momentary performance, but by adjusting the lens to a wider focus (both temporally and conceptually) we begin to piece together how such micro-performances of identity connect with more substantial, longer term and wider aspects of a child’s evolving identity. This is especially pertinent when we consider that data from annual surveys of children’s media use do not always correspond to common assumptions made about children’s media as reported in the news and taken up as issues in research. For example, older forms of media, such as television and film, continue to be those that children spend most time engaging with (Ofcom 2017), despite a preoccupation with social media and screen time. This has important implications for any research focused on digital literacies but film and television have, as Burn (2007) demonstrates, been leap-frogged by research focused on games and social media. Although film and television were once created using analogue technologies, they are now created digitally and accessed through mobile digital devices as well as on television and cinema screens and as such, should be included in the types of text we refer to when describing digital media for children. Furthermore, brands for young children such as Peppa Pig and Dora the Explorer are increasingly transmedia: they can be engaged with through a range of media, 444

Children’s digital-age play and identity

artefacts and online. Although very young children are increasingly using YouTube, it is often to find episodes of favourite content from, or linked to, children’s film, television and games (Ofcom 2017). However, the impact of the digital on the way children engage with film and media – the ability to fast forward and rewind easily, to watch favourite sequences, to freeze frame and to rewatch – is under-researched. Furthermore, although film and television continue to be associated with passive engagement, Scott’s (2019) ethnographic work reveals a different picture where at times outdoor, physical play and play with materials as well as sociodramatic play interweave, often demonstrating active meaning making. Indeed, the work of Bazalgette (2018), focused on very young children watching film and television, demonstrates the extent to which children learn how moving image texts work in their earliest years in the process of viewing them; as Meek (1988) established, “texts teach texts”. It is clear then that through digital devices and technologies children can and do continue to access a wider range of moving image content, and this content, often narrative, provides them with cultural resources for play especially in terms of characters, plots, settings and language. Children do not simply adopt these ideas and play, in particular, becomes an important ritual for young children where they explore and understand schemas, for example common storylines, and also try out and perform different identities (Marsh 2005). In this theorization, we follow Marsh (2005) in drawing on Giddens’ (1991) theory of identity as a narrative process through which individuals construct a sense of self, drawing on their own historical sets of practices in response to specific contexts. In the context of early years play, therefore, perhaps the most significant impact of the ‘digital revolution’ is that many older films and television programmes are available to children, and their engagements with these form part of their affective relationships with family members and peers. There have been a number of attempts to understand children’s play with, and participation in, digital media intersecting with other influences and relationships as an ecology (Mackey 2007; Ito 2011). Carrington usefully points out the limitation of an ecological analogy which implies hierarchical relationships and seeks to establish the way in which different aspects of children’s experience constitute a coherent whole. We have looked to Carrington’s (2013) use of assemblage theory, which explores assemblage in relation to transmedia brands, realized and experienced as they are in many different forms. This has parallels in Marsh’s (2005) use of the term ‘narrative web’ in which a specific narrative is understood to be central to understanding children’s engagements with a range of texts, artefacts and practices. A narrative web is especially helpful for thinking about all the different ways children engage with a narrative based on a film, game or television programme they particularly like. However, children’s collaborative, sociodramatic play potentially draws on a wider range of ideas and materials depending on who is playing, with what and where, and we suggest that it is important to look at the way different ideas, materials and experiences are drawn on by children. In response to this dilemma we have drawn on recent sociomaterial approaches to young children’s digital engagement. Wohlwend’s (2012) research into play in early years education settings demonstrates the need to research ways in which different children, practices and materials assemble in the moment. Wohlwend observed children playing with a doll’s house, dolls and media-related figures and drawing on fairy story narratives in traditional and more contemporary digital media forms. In assembling cultural resources and material objects together in this way, the children negotiated and resisted gender identities. Our concern is that if a study focused on the same children’s use of one new digital media content or device, rather than on their play as it assembled in this particular place and time, this complex meaning making might be missed. An assemblage or, as Burnett and Merchant (2016) suggest, the verb assembling, enables us to recognize these differently dynamic, ephemeral and enduring practices relating to children’s 445

Becky Parry and Fiona Scott

play, identities, literacies and media engagements. “Assemblages dismantle and reassemble in different combinations as context and requirements shift” (Carrington 2013: 209). For research focused on play, the term usefully encompasses not only instances but also how these evolve and fluctuate over time, recognizing the way in which play itself is not best understood as a coherent single entity. The idea of an assemblage is, therefore, a useful tool for understanding play as a site for the negotiation of identities. Research of this kind results in complex, polysemic data which presents challenges to researchers in terms of analysis. Attempting to record children’s experiences but also how they emerge from different cultural, social, temporal and spatial practices is perhaps rather like trying to capture the trails and trajectories left by sparklers in the night sky. Wohlwend (2009) and Scott (2019) have attempted to map the ‘nexus of practices’ (Scollon and Scollon 2004) that emerge through which children share cultural practices and resources and implicitly recognize ways of doing things together through play. The idea of a nexus of practices usefully reminds us of the need to recognize that, in a particular assembling, children will draw on those affective cultural and life experiences which have become significant to them. This has led us to present a vignette of data from a recent study which demonstrates the different relationships, materials, ideas and resources that children draw on ‘in the moment’ in role play with siblings. This vignette has been chosen as an example of the way in which children’s play with media is not restricted to the times when they hold devices in their hands or are watching screens. The vignette is ‘about’ digital literacies, despite digital devices not being physically present. Our aim is to reflect on what can be learnt about identity from such moments of children’s experience, rather than purely focusing on moments when the devices are materially present. We suggest that the most salient cultural resources for children are those that they continue to draw on and play with even when they are away from screens and devices or accessing particular content.

Playing ‘mummies and daddies’ The vignette presents data from a recent research project, ‘Preschool Children’s Engagement with Television and Related Media in a Digital Age’. The project was undertaken by Fiona Scott between 2015 and 2016 (see Scott 2019). This project’s aim was to understand 3–6-yearolds’ day-to-day engagement with television and other forms of digital media. A mixed methods approach was employed, which comprised a survey of 1,200 parents and longitudinal ethnography in the homes of eight families, each with at least one child aged 3 or 4 years at the onset of the study. The research process was shaped to accommodate the preferences of each family so the amount of data collected varied – the least detailed case study involved three visits to a family over two months, while the most detailed involved seven visits over 11 months. Research visits lasted anywhere between an hour and around six hours. The methods employed evolved from initial structured tasks, including parent interviews and involving the child in a ‘toy tour’ of the home (Plowman 2015) to a far messier, more naturalistic mix of approaches that evolved uniquely in each context. For example, some children seemed to take great pleasure in the toy tour approach and re-performed this process on subsequent visits. Others, such as 3-year-old Niyat, perceived the researcher (Fiona) as somehow very like a child and drew her into play activities as a friend (Scott and Bird 2019). In every case, no guidance or framing was given to parents or children beyond that they should try to behave however they usually would, albeit with the additional presence of a stranger. The more traditional/planned research methods included: parent interviews; parent timeline activities; parent close interviews; child-led toy tours; photo taking; drawing; observation; participant observation; and one semi-structured tablet task, although child-led methods emerged, e.g. child-led voice recording; dressing up; 446

Children’s digital-age play and identity

roleplay; and trampoline play, to name just a few. The research activity generated a variety of data, including audio and video files, field notes, photos, photo diaries, parent videos and children’s drawings. Parents were recruited to take part in the original survey either through an online survey or through a face-to-face survey at nine Sheffield early childhood settings. Parents who indicated they would be willing to take part in further research were contacted via telephone for the ethnographic phase. Since the survey provided demographic data, efforts were made to recruit a varied sample in terms of gender and ethnicity. The broader project had an explicit focus on including families from economically and socially disadvantaged communities. For this reason, particular attention was paid to recruiting families of different socioeconomic classifications, including those from economically and socially disadvantaged communities. The qualitative data were analysed using a sociomaterial nexus analysis approach (see Scott 2019), informed by Wohlwend (2009) and Scollon and Scollon (2004). The particular example we have chosen focuses on Nora and her siblings playing ‘Mummies and Daddies’, where the performance of identities from the children’s directly observable, everyday adult world was central. The ‘Mummies and Daddies’ game can be found both in the Opies’ studies of the 1950s and in the contemporary digital era (Marsh and Bishop 2014). In the present vignette, elements of the everyday domestic lives of parents can be traced. However, through and within the play, the girls’ identity performances spill out beyond the roles of ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’. As we will return to, these identities are associated with aspects of the girls’ digital engagements, but are hybrid and fluid, rather than fixed and mimetic. Nora is a White British girl, aged just 4 years at the time of the study. She lived with her Mum (Helen, 40) and Dad (Elliot, 40) as well as five older siblings: Poppy (5); Maisie (6); Felix (8); Mason (15) and Jade (18) in a city in the North of England. Helen described Nora as “the quiet one” in the family, who would “rather get on and do things by herself”, but had recently begun to “come out of her shell” more at nursery. Nora attended an early education setting for mornings only, and was due to start school after the summer holidays. Nora enjoyed watching the same shows as her two closest-age sisters, Poppy (5) and Maisie (6), as well as programmes they had grown out of, especially Peppa Pig. Nora’s mother reported that she and her two closest-age sisters tended to play what (ostensibly) sounded like rather traditionally gendered games, while their brother, Felix (8) did not: Sometimes they like to play princesses and things like that, or they’ll play mums and dads, whereas he’s not as bothered about that kind of thing. He likes to sit on the tablet for a bit, or he’ll play football in the garden. (Helen, Transcript, Visit 1). Nora’s sisters played a prominent role in her everyday life, for example, Nora’s mother explained during an interview that Nora often asked her sisters questions about media-viewing in ways that helped her to confirm her own interpretations: They discuss it more between them, but if it’s just me and Nora, yes she will. She’ll talk to me about it. Usually she’ll ask them to say what’s happening, even though she can see herself. I think she always likes to ask them to see what they think is happening [. . .] she’ll say to them, what’s happening and why is he doing that? I think she just likes to get their opinion on it, see what they think. (Helen, Transcript, Visit 2) 447

Becky Parry and Fiona Scott

Nora shared a bedroom with Poppy, Maisie and Felix. As well as being a place to sleep, the bedroom and its material features (television, two sets of bunkbeds, dressing up box with many princess and other costumes) formed a material basis for a good deal of imaginative play. The girls often erupt into spontaneous physical play, performing acrobatics on the bunkbeds or ‘princess play’ (Wohlwend 2009, 2012; Coyne et al. 2016). The researcher asked the girls about their favourite things to play with and place to play. The girls discussed and demonstrated imaginative play with toys (especially the Peppa Pig dollhouse and characters), DVDs and the dressing up box. They began to discuss their plans for their play: Maisie: I want to play mums and dads. Poppy: Me too. Nora: Yes! Fiona: Will you show me mums and dads then? Nora: Why don’t you know how to play it? Fiona: Because I’ve never played it before. Maisie: Can we dress up? The sisters began to dress up – Nora in a Dorothy (from The Wizard of Oz) dress, Poppy in a Goldilocks dress and wig and Maisie in a princess dress of some description. Fiona: So what game are you going to play? Poppy: Mums and dads (raises her hand) I’m Mummy! Maisie: (raises her hand) I’m Big Sister. Fiona: Nora, who are you going to be? Nora: Dorothy. [. . .] Nora: I’m Dorothy and my pet doggy. Maisie: I’m Princess Isabel. Poppy: I’m Goldilocks. Fiona: So, what’s this game called? Is it still Mummies and Daddies? Maisie: Yes, and the title is ‘Goldilocks, Dorothy and Princess Isabelle’. Nora: (handing Fiona Marvin the monkey and Toto the dog stuffed toys) These two are brothers. That’s the big brother and that’s the little brother. (Transcript, Visit 2) As the excerpt above illustrates, ‘mummies and daddies’ as a ‘game’ was not a fixed entity: it was a fluctuating co-construction by the three sisters. As discussed in previous work (Scott and Bird 2019), the presence of adult researchers in children’s worlds creates new assemblages of meaning within the existing play repertoires of their participants. I undoubtedly played a role in this particular co-construction. Likewise, the girls’ identities were by no means fixed within the loose structure of the ‘game’. When Nora’s claimed identity fell out of sync with the familial themed identity choices of her sisters, they immediately assumed identities in line with her choice of fantasy/heroine themed identity. At first the girls allude to the characters and then they begin to syncretize them, but there is little evidence here of adherence to a particular storyline or fictional world. Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz was one of Nora’s favourite roles to play. As her mother explained, she had been watching The Wizard of Oz and introduced the girls to it, not knowing if they would enjoy it “because it’s so old . . . because it’s in black and white . . . but Nora 448

Children’s digital-age play and identity

absolutely loves it! She’s got a little Dorothy dress that she’s usually got on by now”. Nora’s Dorothy costume may have been brand new and, at first sight, could be read as the permeation of consumerist values into children’s everyday lives. And yet, understanding identity as existing within a nexus of practices allows us to see that her adopted identity as ‘Dorothy’ originated in an affective relationship with her mother, her enduring interest in Dorothy as a character beginning with her first (and then continued) viewing of the original The Wizard of Oz film with her mother, made available to watch and watch again through innovation in the way digital technologies make content available. Each of the girls displays an affective connection to particular narratives and characters. Nora has a stuffed toy dog which she refers to as ‘Toto’ and likes to take with her to nursery. Likewise, Maisie and Poppy are drawing on specific aspects of their own interest and experience. Poppy has a Goldilocks costume and wig and frequently favours this identity in their princess roleplay. As Marsh (2005) demonstrates, parents and grandparents often support children in having favourite narratives that become part of a family narrative of their childhood. The material artefacts, toys and costumes, are part of the remixing of fairy stories and films where the girls are the characters, in the sense that they are recognized as having a special relationship with them but they also act or become them in their play. Maisie, meanwhile, has recently been to a school trip to Conisbrough Castle and has been taken with the story of ‘Princess’ Isabel (the daughter of one of the castle’s famous residents, the third Earl Warenne). This also becomes a salient new cultural resource in the game ‘Mummies and Daddies’, a game that flows through multiple iterations which were clearly familiar rituals for Nora and her sisters. Though the girls had adopted their fantasy/princess identities, the game began rather traditionally and in line with their original announcement that they would play ‘mummies and daddies’. Interestingly, in its first iteration, ‘mummies and daddies’ was expressly not about acting out traditional gendered roles. Instead, the girls drew on their own experiences of a shared family domestic routine. They climbed into their own beds, feigning sleep (snoring), before ‘waking up’ (to universal shouts of “morning, children”) and, eventually getting up. The girls ‘eat breakfast’, Nora announced (of Poppy): “she’s eating a buttie” (buttie being a Northern English word for sandwich). The girls roleplayed getting dressed and “going out” (Maisie). Maisie explained that downstairs is “Millhouses Park” (a local park in Sheffield, whose facilities include a traditional playground with swings, slides and a climbing frame). As time went on, the play spilled out into the living room and the girls explained that the sofa was the slide and the stairs were the “big girl’s slide”. Still dressed in their various princess dresses, the girls pulled the cushions off the sofa and carried them to the top of the stairs, taking turns to sit on the cushions and push themselves down the stairs, to shrieks of delight. Later still, the girls ran out into the garden (still in their dresses) and played a range of games within the game: ‘tiggy toilet flush’; ‘tigger hide and seek’; and ‘crossing the road’, interspersed with Maisie and Poppy scooting around the garden on their scooters and all three girls engaging in races: running races; crawling races; jumping races; walking backwards races; and ‘freestyle’ races – up and down the garden. It is often assumed that engagement with princess texts represents a traditionally gendered form of play, for example, recent developmental psychological work such as Coyne et  al. (2016). Based on the identification of two specific variables to test toy preference in a controlled task, along with parent/teacher reports of children’s gender-stereotypical toys, activities and characteristics, the authors point to a continued correlation between engagement with Disney princesses and more female gender-stereotypical behaviour a year later. However, the finegrained analytic work of literacies scholars such as Wohlwend meanwhile, illustrates both boys (2012) and girls (2009) drawing on Disney princesses as various ‘identity texts’ in ways that both enforce and contest gender expectations. On the surface, it could be argued that Nora, Maisie 449

Becky Parry and Fiona Scott

and Poppy were making ‘gender-stereotypical’ choices. However, the girls’ play was messy, mucky, physical and jubilant, ranging across the house and out into the garden. These princesses were not ‘damsels in distress awaiting rescue’, instead they were eating ‘butties’ for breakfast and did not let their costumes stop them from participating in crawling races in the garden. The girls’ digital media habitus along with their shared experiences of family life were rich resources for their play, which was layered around multiple meanings and texts. Far from assuming narrowly gendered and consumerist identities (cf. Burke 2013b), the girls re-appropriated the narrative and material resources associated with their princesses and these were assembled with other resources, based on the physical features of their home and community and the ideas and interests they had amassed through diverse and evolving life experiences. Drawing on nexus analysis and an assemblage theory approach, therefore, enabled us to understand the girls’ collections of digital and non-digital material objects as part of their shared ‘narrative web’ (Marsh 2005) which was central to their play. As in Wohlwend’s (2012) work, despite the traditional discourses in relation to femininity that can be found in some of the texts that the girls were drawing on, away from the screens and devices they remixed these texts to explore a range of voices, experimenting with flexible interpretations of female identities. Had the methods for the ‘Preschool Children’s Engagement’ project been limited to the parent interview in Visit 1, one would be forgiven for assuming that the girls’ play conforms to a rather narrow definition of gendered play – ‘mummies and daddies’ and ‘princesses’. In order to gain a deep insight into children’s fluid and hybrid identities both in relation to, and beyond, their encounters with digital media, a holistic examination of the reality of their play is critical. This must consider how such digital media encounters feed into play, in combination with a broader knowledge of children’s life experiences and interests.

Conclusion Researchers of children’s digital lives are working in a continually evolving field and while recent work offers important insights into the specific affordances of the very newest technology (e.g. Yamada-Rice et al. 2017), there is also a pressing need for research that starts not with the newest device, but with the children themselves, assembled as they are at school, at home and in the community, in the materially different spaces they enter. We suggest that through selfdetermined sociodramatic play, where children are exercising agency and sharing expertise, it is possible to understand more about how they are making sense of what they are engaging with. In their play, children have always drawn on all of their available experiences and it is the way in which they do so, and their affinities to some texts and phenomena more than others, that we argue should be the focus of researching the role of the digital in relation to play and identity. Children’s family relationships and friendships orientate them to texts from the past and in the digital age these are increasingly available to children, and this breadth of choices offers different fictional spaces in which to play. A sociomaterial sensibility that views play as an assemblage can help us to trace the many and varied cultural resources we find that children draw on and how these assemble and disassemble in play, where meaning making is negotiated and contested. Researching moments of assemblage in children’s play also highlights ways in which coherences in the fictional and everyday narratives can be disrupted and boundaries blurred as children’s play occurs moment by moment with peers. It is in understanding how children draw on and explore the rules of not one, but multiple resources that we might come closer to understanding the ways in which children engage with digital media and how children’s digital media relates to their identity and literacy. This view of the relationship between digital media and play enables us to construct the child 450

Children’s digital-age play and identity

as having dynamic identities, agency and social relationships which are less visible when the focus is on their play in a particular moment on a particular online space or game. Research of this sort is messy and unwieldy and requires new theory and analytical tools, but as Carrington (2013) suggests, assemblage theory provides more relational flexibility and copes better with the: “messy and multiple commercial and social spaces” (p. 208) children experience. If, as researchers, we resist the urge to look solely at children’s engagement with the newest digital device but instead pay attention to children’s play as part of a more holistic approach, further insights can be made visible.

References Bazalgette, C. (2018). Some Secret Language: How Toddlers Learn to Understand Movies. Doctoral dissertation, UCL (University College London). Bishop, J. C., and Curtis, M. (2006). Participation, popular culture and playgrounds: children’s uses of media elements in peer play at school. Paper presented at the Folklore Society Conference, Folklore, Film and Television: Convergences in Traditional Cultures and Popular Media, 31 March–1 April 2006, London. Bodrova, E., and Leong, D. (2010). Revisiting Vygotskian perspectives on play and pedagogy. In: S. Rogers (ed.), Rethinking Play and Pedagogy in Early Childhood Education: Concepts, Contexts and Cultures (pp. 60–72). London: Routledge. Buckingham, D. (2013). Developing Media Literacy: From Research to Practice. London: English and Media Centre. Burke, A. (2013a). Children’s construction of identity in virtual play worlds: a classroom perspective. Language and Literacy, 15(1): 58–73. Burke, A. (2013b). Stardolls and the virtual playground: how identity construction works in the new digital frontier. In: A. Burke and J. Marsh (eds.), Children’s Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning, and Participation. New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies series, volume 58 (pp. 38–58). New York: Peter Lang. Burn, A. (2007). The place of digital video in the curriculum. In: R. Andrews and C. Haythornthwaite (eds.), Sage Handbook of e-Learning Research (pp. 504–523). London: Sage. Burnett, C., and Merchant, G. (2016). Assembling virtual play in the classroom. In: B. Parry, C. Burnett and G. Merchant (eds.), Literacy, Media, Technology: Past, Present and Future (pp. 219–232). London: Bloomsbury. Carrington, V. (2013). An argument for assemblage theory: integrated spaces, mobility and polycentricity. In: A. Burke and J. Marsh (eds.), Children’s Virtual Play Worlds: Culture, Learning, and Participation. New Literacies and Digital Epistemologies series, volume 58 (pp. 200–217). New York: Peter Lang. Coyne, S. M., Linder, J. R., Rasmussen, E. E., Nelson, D. A., and Birkbeck, V. (2016). Pretty as a princess: longitudinal effects of engagement with Disney princesses on gender stereotypes, body esteem, and prosocial behavior in children. Child Development, 87(6): 1909–1925. Dittmar, H., Halliwell, E., and Ive, S. (2006). Does Barbie make girls want to be thin? The effect of experimental exposure to images of dolls on the body image of 5-to 8-year-old girls. Developmental Psychology, 42(2): 283–292. Dyson, A. H. (2002). The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write: Popular Literacies in Childhood and School Cultures. New York: Teachers College Press. Esfahani, N. N., and Carrington, V. (2015). (Re) scripting Barbie: postphenomenology and everyday artifacts. In: S. R. Poyntz and J. Kennedy (eds.), Phenomenology of Youth Cultures and Globalization: Lifeworlds and Surplus Meaning in Changing Times (pp. 116–131). New York: Routledge. Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Ito, M. (2011). Machinima in a fanvid ecology. Journal of Visual Culture, 10(1): 51–54. James, A., and Prout, A. (eds.) (2015). Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood: Contemporary Issues in the Sociological Study of Childhood. London: Routledge. Kress, G. (2005). Before Writing: Rethinking the Paths to Literacy. London: Routledge. Leont’ev, A. N. (1978). Activity, Consciousness, Personality. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Mackey, M. (2007). Literacies across Media: Playing the Text. New York: Routledge. 451

Becky Parry and Fiona Scott

Marsh, J. (2005). Ritual, performance and identity construction. In: J. Marsh (ed.), Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood (pp. 28–50). New York: Psychology Press. Marsh, J. (2006). Global, local/public, private: young children’s engagement in digital literacy practices in the home. Travel notes from the New Literacy Studies: Instances of practice: 19–38. Marsh, J. (2014). From the wild frontier of Davy Crockett to the wintery fiords of Frozen: changes in media consumption, play and literacy from the 1950s to the 2010s. International Journal of Play, 3(3): 267–279. Marsh, J., and Bishop, J. (2014). Changing Play: Play, Media and Commercial Culture from the 1950s to the Present Day. London: McGraw-Hill Education. Meek, M. (1988). How Texts Teach What Readers Learn. Stroud: Thimble Press. Neumann, M. M., Finger, G., and Neumann, D. L. (2017). A conceptual framework for emergent digital literacy. Early Childhood Education Journal, 45(4): 471–479. Ofcom (2017). Children’s and parents’ media use and attitudes report. London: Ofcom. Available at: www. ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/108182/children-parents-media-use-attitudes-2017.pdf (accessed 25 April 2019). Opie, I. A., and Opie, P. (1969). Children’s Games in Street and Playground: Chasing, Catching, Seeking, Hunting, Racing, Duelling, Exerting, Daring, Guessing, Acting, Pretending. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Parry, B. (2013). Children, Film and Literacy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Plowman, L. (2015). Researching young children’s everyday uses of technology in the family home. Interacting with Computers, 27(1): 36–46. Potter, J. (2012). Digital Media and Learner Identity: The New Curatorship. New York and Basingstoke: Springer. Robinson, M. (1997). Children Reading Print and Television. London: Falmer Press. Robinson, M., and Mackey, M. (2006). Assets in the classroom: comfort and competence with media among teachers present and future. In: J. Marsh and E. Millard (eds.), Popular Literacies, Childhood and Schooling (pp. 200–220). New York: Routledge. Scollon, R., and Scollon, S. W. (2004). Nexus Analysis: Discourse and the Emerging Internet. London: Routledge. Scott, F. L. (2019). Young Children’s Engagement with Television and Related Media in the Digital Age. PhD thesis. The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom. Scott, F. L., and Marsh, J. A. (2018). Digital literacies in early childhood. In: G. Noblit et al. (eds.), The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. New York: Oxford University Press. Available at: http://oxfordre. com/education/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264093-e-97 (accessed 25 April 2019). Scott, F. L., and Bird, J. (2019). Adults researching preschoolers in more-than-human contexts: rethinking ethnographer roles in the age of the Anthropocene. In: V. Reyes, A. Nye, J. Charteris and S. Mavropoulou (eds.), Educational Research in the Age of the Anthropocene (pp. 110–142). Hershey, PA: I.G.I. Global. Sutton-Smith, B. (2009). The Ambiguity of Play. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Willett, R. (2005). ‘Baddies’ in the classroom: media education and narrative writing. Literacy, 39(3): 142–148. Wohlwend, K. E. (2009). Mediated discourse analysis: researching young children’s non-verbal interactions as social practice. Journal of Early Childhood Research, 7(3): 228–243. Wohlwend, K. E. (2012). ‘Are you guys girls?’: boys, identity texts, and Disney princess play. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 12(1): 3–23. Woodfall, A., and Zezulkova, M. (2016). What ‘children’ experience and ‘adults’ may overlook: phenomenological approaches to media practice, education and research. Journal of Children and Media, 10(1): 98–106. Yamada-Rice, D., Mushtaq, F., Woodgate, A., Bosmans, D., Douthwaite, A., Douthwaite, I., et  al. (2017). Children and Virtual Reality: Emerging Possibilities and Challenges. Available at: http://digilitey.eu (accessed 6 May 2019).

452

33 Taking a wide-angled view of contemporary digital literacy Amélie Lemieux and Jennifer Rowsell

Reflecting on the contemporary moment in digital literacy Digital literacy has a reified feel to it, when in reality there are so many variations and contours to it that demand nuancing and, what is more, it is fraught with issues and tensions such as the digital divide and gatekeeper rhetoric about screen time and the evils of gaming (to name a few). Foregrounding these topics and others, there has been a spate of special issues on digital literacy highlighting embedded relationships with ecoliteracies (Speight 2017), multimodal practices (Garcia and Seglem 2017) and even multimodal learning specific to Nordic countries (Tømte 2018). Another recent special issue was dedicated to the study of early childhood epistemologies and ontologies such as posthumanism (Kuby and Rowsell 2017; Kuby, Spector and Thiel 2019). These special issues pursue newer lines of inquiry such as new materialism and posthumanism as well as more lasting paradigms, all of them thinking about children’s rich capacities to communicate and express themselves in multiple ways. There has been a braiding together of disciplines to allow for this work and it has generated new directions in literacy studies worldwide. In this chapter, we extend these theories to provide broader understandings about innovations in early childhood digital literacies. Welcoming change as an outlet for progress sometimes means confronting tensions, digital divides, and pushing against persistent reservations about the unknown. We maintain that it is by investigating what is not yet, that we give ourselves opportunities to think about new ways of framing early childhood digital literacies in curriculum and pedagogy. In this chapter, we do not offer an exhaustive and thorough survey of digital literacy research, rather we profile work around a cluster of ideas we regard as important to contexts, cultures, and societies. These ideas are: digital literacy and popular culture; race and digital literacies; digital literacy and social class; digital literacy and multilingualism; sustainability and digital literacies; and, finally, the affordances of iPads as offering alternative ways of knowing within literacy learning and teaching.

Ties between digital literacy and popular culture Jackie Marsh (2005) has contributed significantly to the field of digital literacy. Marsh’s research and writings, among other things, frame identity construction as a central aspect of children’s 453

Amélie Lemieux and Jennifer Rowsell

affinities and interactions with popular culture. Since popular culture is an integral part of digital worlds, it also takes a vital place in identity construction. That is, children build their self-identity progressively as they enter narratives, by playing with characters and engaging in imaginative compositional practices. Families still play a key role in forging children’s identities, but Marsh’s main point is that there exists a reciprocal relationship between identity construction and literacy practices, how one influences the other and vice versa. Popular culture and media are motivational forces that children are drawn to as they develop their identities, despite evident drawbacks and concerns based on research about education on consumerism and shopping habits. Marsh’s arguments highlight the intersectionalities between literacy practices, identity construction, and popular culture. Children express their agentic practices in forging meaning-making in relation to what they know about media and popular culture. With regard to the digital world, this ideology means that children are prone to identify with transmedia characters and stories online, in addition to various popular culture outlets that can be discussed with friends in and outside the classroom. What we realize and acknowledge is that children forge their identities with regard to digital literacies as they evolve in, and interact with, digital stories that involve popular culture characters that are marketed through various outlets. In a similar vein, Levy, Yamada-Rice and Marsh (2013) have looked at digital literacies in early childhood as repertoires for competencies improvement. Defining digital literacy as the everyday practices of processing and interacting with technology, the authors conceptualize literacy practices as being one with multimodality. Before entering kindergarten, most children are already acquainted with, and competent in, accomplishing multimodal tasks. Using social media platforms, such as Twitter, bolsters children’s engagement inside and outside of the classroom. There has been rich and generative work examining the interface between popular culture and digital literacies and one researcher who stands out in this area is Karen Wohlwend (2009, 2013). Wohlwend (2009) investigated how 5 to 7-year-olds make sense of their own material creations in classroom situations where there is no access to technologies. She identified how children engaged with participant-made artefacts that mimicked digital practices at home. Her research shows how children mobilize what they know from home and through media use and how they apply these skills, sometimes furtively in classrooms, to complete school work. Rowsell and Wohlwend (2016) have studied children’s interactions with digital applications to elucidate and understand how they enact different types of digital literacy practices. Drawing from empirical research, they established six concrete and useful aspects of participatory literacies: multiplayer, productive, multimodal, open-ended, pleasurable, and connected. These six dimensions can be measured from levels of ‘low’ to ‘high’, with specialized insights into the literacy practices of youth as they engage with digital apps. These dimensions have concrete repercussions in and implications for classroom-based practices, including how teachers negotiate their own approaches to digital app use with students and, more importantly, how students negotiate their own learning and engagement practices with apps.

Thinking about race and digital literacies Classrooms are situated spaces where political notions and discourses around race circulate. These can be discussed to develop students’ ethical and moral values, especially in English Language Arts classrooms (Lewis and Tierney 2013; Thomas 2015). In a study presenting conversations between an African American male teacher and a white female teacher around strategies to address race and diversity matters in their classrooms, Thomas (2015) observed through an ethnographic lens the recollected instances of discourse between teachers and 454

A wide-angled view of digital literacy

students. She demonstrated how these conversations, during classroom time, were punctuated by silences and evasive tangents when heated exchanges around race arose. The use of digital technologies, Thomas (2015) suggests, should further be investigated in literacy research to address those conversations around race and social contexts. Thomas and Stornaiuolo (2016) have adapted Rosenblatt’s transactional theory of reading in an effort to understand the scope of youth’s holistic, albeit punctuated, engagements with restorying. In so doing, the authors theorize critical reader response with considerations of youth’s digital literacy practices as they shape their narrative and personal identities. They conclude that the scope of their study provided new insights into discourses that highlight the rhetoric of “I exist, I matter, and I am here” (p. 332), fostering student agency and ownership with “racebending” (p. 332) so as to consider representations of race as part of the discourse. Recent literacy and digital literacies studies (Haddix 2017, 2018; Lewis Ellison 2017) have sought to reverse the negative light that research has cast on reading attainment and literacy practices of African American men. Haddix and Sealey-Ruiz (2012) have drawn specific attention to dismantling stereotypes of “school-to-prison pipelines” (p. 189). Interested in students’ out-of-school literacy engagements, the authors demonstrated that students do engage digitally with multiple modes: poem compositions, digital writing on mobile phones, comic book readings, texting with classmates, and so on. Reframing the scope of 21st-century teaching and learning, the researchers suggest such sites as storybird, storify, bitstrips, and xtranormal with the primary objective of shifting writing instruction in classroom settings. In subsequent studies, Haddix (2017, 2018) has pursued this idea and suggested concrete pedagogical avenues for inclusiveness and social justice. For example, Haddix (2017) developed sustained strategies to support community literacies, which took the form of a collaborative project called Writing Our Lives. The latter aimed to foster storytelling and story-sharing among youth writers (grades 6–12) in the Syracuse area. Empowering student voice was particularly important in this initiative, building on social justice typologies previously explained (Haddix and Sealey-Ruiz 2012). Yet another article (Haddix 2018) highlighted sustained contributions of the Writing Our Lives project and celebrated writer diversity. Looking at the project’s significance and success, Haddix showed how progressive social justice programmes enhance writing attainment and improve test scores. Social justice is relevant for digital literacies as it broadens the landscape of decision-making and agency, taking into consideration issues emerging from systemic racism and social inequities in both mass media reception and production contexts. Recent studies have demonstrated that an effective way to restore social inequities is to move beyond an ethos of digital production and reception-driven multimodal activities in educational settings (Mirra, Morrell, and Filipiak 2018), and to focus more instead on power relationships, attention to audience, social constructs, and civic action. In addition, more research has exemplified that black girl adolescent literacies are indeed multiple and based on collaborative practices that are related to identities, histories, intellectual practices, and policies (Muhammad and Haddix 2016; Price-Dennis, Muhammad, Womack, McArthur, and Haddix 2017). There is an inherent and urgent need for teachers, educators and researchers working in classroom contexts to integrate such dimensions in their ethos and praxis, by not only giving students access to digital tools but also providing critical age-adequate frameworks to understand the larger implications of their digital receptions and productions. These epistemological stances presuppose a directed outlook on critical media literacy with current innovations to disrupt unilateral forces that lie behind mass media production. The implications of such practices go beyond the adoption of multimodal practices in the classroom and require, instead, sustained emphasis on critically examining oppressive systems and choosing adequate and fitting modes to address such inequalities and imbalances. Paired with 455

Amélie Lemieux and Jennifer Rowsell

digital literacies, emphasis on counternarratives (Wargo 2018; Young, Foster, and Hines 2018) and critical examinations of stereotyped media images (Gutiérrez and Johnson 2017; Patterson, Howard, and Kinloch 2016) have the potential to subvert dominant narratives to give voice to traditionally marginalized communities and restore social justice in classroom settings. Educators need to embrace a logic of access when working with multimodality by providing students from all backgrounds equal access to critical texts about contemporary issues and allowing them to analyse dynamics of inequality in digital texts which naturally extend to the images reflected daily in mass media.

Digital literacy and social class Digital literacy, or digital literacies in the plural, imply a world where children have constant access to technologies and media, which of course is not the case. Children do not have liberal use of technologies and often use more primitive, cheaper forms of technology and simply make them work to engage in imaginative communicative practices. Through this line of inquiry and thought, Collier’s (2017) research has focused on how social class dimensions enfolded as two white, working-class elementary school children engaged with cosmopolitan practices when they created digital posters as part of their English Language Arts classroom. The findings pointed to increased engagement with humour, masculinities, and femininities as they materially represented their identities. Broadly viewed, cosmopolitanism was a pervasive part of their performed identities in the study. Such research on children’s digital literacies encourages researchers to start to examine not only degrees of access, but also the kinds of literacy practices that children engage in. Engagements with popular culture shape children’s and adolescents’ identity constructions, sense of performed genders (masculinities/ femininities), desires and pleasures as students (Collier 2015). The implications of social class for digital literacies surpass patterns of reception and production with regard to digital texts in classroom settings. In particular, we find that educational policies need to address more specifically how digital literacy practices can serve as a repertoire for stereotyping categories embedded in social class (Van Leeuwen 2018). In classroom and pedagogical settings, this means prioritizing opportunities to deconstruct social classes and relationships with access to digital tools, critical readings, and adequately surveying the affordances of certain modes over others. For instance, one may ask: is sound paired with video a better outlet to address social class in comparison to sound paired with moving image and kinesthetic touch? What are the affordances of digital consumption and digital production in situated early childhood contexts? To teach digital literacies responsibly, we must all take these types of questions into account as we prepare children for future literacy landscapes.

Thinking about linguistic diversity and digital literacies Using ethnographic methods, D’warte (2014) investigated the collaborative literacy practices that took place across 105 students from grades 5 to 8 and their teachers in four schools located in Australia. The researcher presented qualitative insights into what it means to be multilingual, with the use of language maps, family history presentations, and qualitative commentaries on the ethos of using multiple languages. As an outcome, teachers were impressed with how students built on their multiple language skills to make meaning and they were additionally able to develop subsequent translation skills. In sum, the research provided effective ways to look at students’ everyday skills, and more importantly shaped language as a social establishment in which students could confide, all the while tightening their multicultural awareness and competencies. 456

A wide-angled view of digital literacy

In a subsequent study, D’warte (2015) worked with a multicultural and multilingual population composed of grade 7/8 students and teachers to shed light on linguistic diversity in Australian classrooms. To do so, teachers and students embraced linguistic ethnographer roles, drew language maps, analysed and discussed the intricacies and functionalities of language, delving deeper in meaning-making in plurilingual contexts. From there, the study calls for further work in bolstering students’ self-confidence in ELA classrooms using visual tools that render literacy practices visible, relatable, and understandable. Canadian studies on mapping language use (Dagenais, Moore, Sabatier, Lamarre, and Armand 2009) have similarly investigated the importance of ‘linguistic landscapes’ awareness with specific attention to diversity, religion, culture, and ethnicity. Other scholars based in Montreal have used mapping language tools to identify such educational matters as language anxiety (Godfrey-Smith 2017) and multilingualism practices in youth (Lamarre 2013). Technologies and digital literacies played a role in these research studies, but in an allusive way – rather they helped children and participants piece together the ways that multiple linguistic systems flow through pedagogical spaces through visual modes, which are themselves inherent to digital literacies. In addition, D’warte, Daniel, and Allan (2018) mapped multilingual relationships as they analysed how children interpreted practices and ways of knowing in geography, history, English, and mathematic dimensions of learning (i.e., from researching family histories to graphing data). Giving students the tools to improve their connected learning, critical abilities, voice, and opportunities for innovation, the study framed new directions in cultural diversity and awareness using linguistic maps.

Thinking about digital literacy, ecoworlds, and sustainability What role does nature and the environment play in digital literacy? This is a question that Somerville (2011) reflects upon in her work, as she researches and writes about uncovering how identity development in young children takes place in consideration of social spaces and integration of the practices that students daily operate. Somerville’s perspectives bring an understanding of digital literacies as a framing, a concept that sees movement and embodiment as key components of multimodal literacy practices and children’s development. In the Eastern Canadian context, recent applied research has framed ecosustainability and digital ecologies around children working with iPads (Rose, Fitzpatrick, Mersereau, and Whitty 2017). Specifically, this study revitalized the relationships between the University of New Brunswick’s Children Centre and local families and their children’s desiring to explore digital literacies in out-of-school contexts. Exploring iPad use on the playground, the researchers along with four teachers guided 4-year-old children as they engaged in playful experimentation, using iPads as tools for inquiry, and developed immersive relationships with storytelling and witch play. The authors recommend adopting such practices to foster digital engagements outside the classroom. The ongoing work of Harwood in Canadian contexts (Harwood 2015, 2017) promises heightened investigations into the lives of children who engage with ecoliteracies and digital worlds in situated learning spaces and places. As such, play in the 21st century embeds a logic that surpasses kinaesthetic assemblages, and considers the environment, musings, and contextually relevant pedagogy-in-the-making. Exploration, trial-and-error, decision-making, and creativity occupy a determining role in these digital literacy pedagogies. In the Canadian landscape, more consideration is being given to the ongoing reciprocal relationships between literacies, spaces, and land, particularly in efforts to decolonize literacies through creative multidimensional and digital means (Doucet 2018; Tuhiwai Smith, Tuck, and Yang 2019; Whitty 2017). These social justice initiatives can be addressed by respecting 457

Amélie Lemieux and Jennifer Rowsell

traditional lands, integrating digital literacy practices in storytelling, and reversing dominating settler discourses (Barton and Barton 2017; Doucet 2018; Styres 2018). Posthuman Indigenous research looking at the more-than-human dimensions of literacies and place (Nxumalo and Cira Rubin 2018) have laid the ground for further research in areas that extend early childhood literacy. Other recent studies aimed to provide wider unrestricted access to literacy resources, all the while working with materialities with concerns for access and equity in university settings (Lemieux and McLarnon 2018). Across these empirical studies, there is an unrelenting will to restore social justice in established and existing systems, whether these are embedded in materialities and in immaterialities at play. The work toward social justice not only needs to permeate ideologies, but also the materialized results of oppressive systems that need to be untangled through such effective means as digital literacies.

Improvising on identity in digital literacies In her book Writing Superheroes: Contemporary Childhood, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy, Dyson (2003a) frames children’s interactions with texts explaining how text is socially constructed but is also open in ways that allow for discussion and open interpretation. In addition, themes such as race and social class are intrinsically part of the textual discourse as framed by Dyson. Children’s engagements with texts are therefore influenced by their place in the world, their socio-cultural affinities, and their ties with popular culture. Bakhtin’s dialogism could be connected to an understanding of Dyson’s (2002) work on children’s mediations with stories on two levels: (1) within her own reflexivity as a scholar working with children, and (2) in her study of children’s “communicative utterances” (Dyson 2013: 404) as they use words reciprocally in situated social and ideological contexts. When thinking about children’s identities, we must embrace – not constrict – their mediations with texts and with themselves, all the while considering their writing for perceived audiences and the resulting social implications of discourse. Identity is thus relational, embedded in social practices, and circumstantial to local and global contexts. In addition, Dyson and Dewayani (2013) report an ethnographic inquiry showing how children’s writer identities are shaped by their relationships with “textual toys” (Dyson 2003b), i.e., by how they mediate between their knowledge of cultural texts and their composing practices. Children’s social identities determine how they process writing. Notions of agentic bodies, constricted but still there in place to learn and compose or ‘make’. Remix is an example of how children recontextualize and repurpose cultural texts in their own meaning-making multimodal productions (Knobel and Lankshear 2008). The role of popular culture in forging children’s identities is a pivotal concept for Dyson. That is, the reciprocal relationships children must have with ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ school worlds in the hopes of developing rich possibilities for their literacy futures (Dyson 1999; Dyson and Dewayani 2013). For Dyson (1999), the objectives are about making visible the resources children use in their social worlds and making them valuable in official worlds. Children’s meaning-making abilities should be enhanced through embracing their ‘know-how’, contextualizing their knowledge considering their cultural and social understandings of the world that they live in.

Exploring the affordances within digital literacies iPads are “mediating artifacts” (Flewitt, Messer, and Kucirkova 2015: 291) that empower children in their learning processes, even in the face of digital divide issues. Seen as

458

A wide-angled view of digital literacy

children-friendly tools, iPads foster intuitive gameplay, but more research is needed in classroom settings. In a qualitative study gathering professionals’ viewpoints toward iPads’ usefulness in early literacy development, Flewitt et al. (2015) found that iPads develop specific sets of skills and improve literacy conditions in children’s learning, according to their teachers. Among these, iPads afford better motivation circumstances, increased motivation, sustained focus, meaningful opportunities for collaboration, and independent work. These conditions are made possible through two main iPad affordances: immediacy and wonder. If we capitalize on these two important facets of digital kinaesthetic technologies in early childhood literacy, then we can get better insights into classroom-based practices. Furthermore, iPads have the potential to act as a source of motivation for young children, providing additional ways to guide students who find it difficult to engage in reading. From Flewitt and colleagues, we gather how important it is for early childhood educators to consider the benefits of digital applications with children. In a study on children’s storytelling and acting as multimodal renderings of creative action, Flewitt et al. (2015) explained how youth’s situated actions and gestures, in addition to language, shape their meaning-making practices. This chapter advocates for multimodal and multisensory experiences in the childhood years. We are tempted to generate such questions as: How do we make sense of children’s bodies-in-action as they interact in their classrooms, playing with apps and engaging in the process? Flewitt et al.’s (2015) work gives us answers that point to teachers’ agency when they choose digital apps and when they craft lesson plans that valorize children’s embodied meaning-making processes in the classroom.

Gaming and digital literacies Videogames and digital literacies have become popular areas of inquiry for research. Abrams and Gerber (2014: 21) talk about how video games like Minecraft call on spatial sensibilities and design competencies that demand a sense of place: Returning to Ethan as an example, we saw how he has to consider the architecture and integrity of the spaceship, and he has to read the various gauges that inform him of his fuel, missiles, money, and shields. He has to consider science-related issues, as the game is based in outer space, and Ethan encounters vocabulary, such as nebula and density. He has to interpret in-game maps, such as a “beacon map,” and he has to read and navigate a spaceship blueprint. Calling on various eclectic sources of information, Minecraft players demarcate their designed worlds through physical features and through objects and artefacts around designed spaces. These choices carry with them material and immaterial dimensions (Burnett, Merchant, Pahl, and Rowsell 2014). That is, children’s decision-making influences largely their designed worlds and how they interact in gameplay. O’Mara and Laidlaw (2011) identified children engaged in an im/material tea party. The children operated in the digital world, engaging with the Toca Tea Party app, and transitioned to the physical world, with plastic teapots, cups, and a blanket. The children shifted between these two worlds seamlessly, engaging in dramatic play that spanned two realms. Burnett et al. (2014) have looked at how common classroom tasks, such as students writing on a smartboard, illustrate how children navigate the im/material:

459

Amélie Lemieux and Jennifer Rowsell

As children take their turns to access the [smartboard] programme, they must both navigate the material world to avoid bumping into one another and deploy the whiteboard tools to navigate the virtual world. In doing so, they appear to believe in both worlds. (Burnett et al. 2014: 5) Discussions around materiality thus become pivotal in determining and defining children’s digital interactions in the everyday.

Synthetizing avenues for future research: timescales and provocations Part of the richness of young people’s engagements with digital literacies is that we have so far to go in understanding the intricacies and ontologies behind them. As we bear witness to a nuancing of the topic by examining how race, culture, social class, and idiosyncratic practices inform deeper understandings about digital literacies, we get closer to reimagining what literacy is, can be, maybe even should be. What we tried to achieve in this brief look at niche topics within digital literacy is to offer readers a landscape view of complications in how digital literacy is cast and taken up in pedagogical environments. Within the landscape view, there are thinking and epistemological dimensions as much as there are the doing and enactments with technologies and digital worlds that point to remarkably different definitions and framings of literacy. As well, there is the point that Lemke (2000) made so long ago about the timescales and, for us, what we have observed of longer timescales spent within immersive and digital worlds. Children, teenagers, and adolescents spend an inordinate amount of time in front of screens and surely this in itself underscores the importance of documenting and theorizing the practices and habits of mind that unfold. There are longer timescales in our lifetime that can be calculated from the sheer amount of time invested into an action or a thing, and then there is the duration of time spent doing something or having it in our lives. In both of these senses of timescales, young people have continuously shown how tacit and fundamental digital literacies are to them, and we can try as we might to gatekeep and to censure their use, but there is no denying that digital literacies and the worlds and communicative practices that they imply consistently compel and ignite the interests of our students. Obsession and excitement sit in a complicated balance when it comes to digital literacies. For us, as digital literacy researchers, we not only marvel (and maybe worry a little) at the time and thinking that goes into these practices, but also we view them as a generative way of connecting with young people. In his seminal article, Lemke (2000) asked two important questions vis-à-vis timescales: “How do actions or events on one timescale come to add up to more than just a series of isolated happenings? How does a community emerge from many people-in-action?” (p. 273). These questions relate to our discussion about digital literacies and they also identify gaps in the field of digital literacies. One gap in research attends to examining a series of longer timescales with digital literacies and that is conducting longitudinal research with participants and, ideally, longitudinal work that involves mixed methods so that the field gets a qualitative and quantitative picture of digital literacies. Yet another gap is work that examines the intersection of race, culture, religion, and digital literacies. Useful research already conceptualizes Critical Race Theory in relation to multimodality (Haddix 2009, 2012; Lewis and Tierney 2013), however, there needs to be more research on race, culture, religion, and digital literacies. Add to this, a lack of digital literacy scholarship on young children as English Language Learners engaging in digital literacy practices. Finally, there is a need for more research that digs deeply into the nature and 460

A wide-angled view of digital literacy

properties of digital reading and of enacting apps pedagogy. Perhaps the greatest gap in research and theory pertains to the increasing digital divide that we have witnessed globally that will only get worse with time (Rowsell, Morrell, and Alvermann 2017). There is a large community of children enacting digital literacies, however, there is an equally large disparity between those who have the expensive, high-end technologies and those who make do with what they have. In the field of digital literacies, we are woefully lacking in digital divide work and we encourage more researchers to take up the banner. Finally, ongoing work on affect and embodiment allows us to conceive more open opportunities for research inside and outside of conventional educational settings. Elucidating emotions, embodiment, and affect within digital literacies moments allows researchers to explore more human and idiosyncratic dimensions of digital encounters and engagements. Considerations of dimensions such as space, technologies, and identities offer much to ponder in early childhood literacy research. For example, it would be valuable to understand how children situate themselves as they discover digital narratives in virtual reality simulations. Are conceptualizations of identity situated, or rather progressively evolving, similar to ontological developments of identities in the making? More research in these areas will provide worthy solutions and avenues for digital literacy research, in Canada and internationally, and will help guide decision-making in and outside classrooms.

References Abrams, S. S., and Gerber, H. (2014). Cross-literate digital connections: contemporary frames for meaning making. English Journal, 103(4): 18–24. Barton, G. M., and Barton, R. S. (2017). The importance of storytelling for children: an exploration of Indigenous approaches to learning. In: S. Garvis and N. Pramling (eds.), Narratives in Early Childhood Education: Communication, Sense Making and Lived Experience (pp. 61–74). London: Routledge. Burnett, C., Merchant, G., Pahl, K., and Rowsell, J. (2014). The (im)materiality of literacy: the significance of subjectivity to new literacies research. Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(1): 90–103. Collier, D. R. (2015). “I’m just trying to be tough, okay”: masculine performances of everyday practices. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(2): 203–226. Collier, D. R. (2017). Rescripting classed lives and imagining audiences as online cosmopolitan practice. In: R. Zaidi and J. Rowsell (eds.), Literacy Lives in Transcultural Times (pp. 136–154). New York: Routledge. Dagenais, D., Moore, D., Sabatier, C., Lamarre, S., and Armand, F. (2009). Linguistic landscape and language awareness. In: E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (eds.), Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery (pp. 253–269). New York: Routledge. Doucet, A. (2018). Decolonizing family photographs: ecological imaginaries and non-representational ethnographies. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, January: 1–29. D’warte, J. (2014). Exploring linguistic repertoires: multiple language use and multimodal literacy activity in five classrooms. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 37(1): 21–30. D’warte, J. (2015). Building knowledge about and with students: linguistic ethnography in two secondary school classrooms. English in Australia, 50(1): 39–48. D’warte, J., Daniel, P., and Allan, A. (2018). Enhancing learning through building on students’ and parents’ linguistic and cultural repertoires in year 1 classrooms. Practical Literacy, 23(1): 31–34. Dyson, A. H. (1999). Transforming transfer: unruly children, contrary texts, and the persistence of the pedagogical order. Review of Research in Education, 24(1): 141–171. Dyson, A. H. (2002). A Bakhtinian buzz about teacher talk: discourse matters in “What Difference Does Difference Make?” English Education, 35(1): 6–20. Dyson, A. H. (2003a). Writing Superheroes: Contemporary Childhook, Popular Culture, and Classroom Literacy. New York: Teachers College Press. Dyson, A. H. (2003b). The Brothers and Sisters Learn to Write. New York: Teachers College Press. Dyson, A. H. (2013). The case of missing childhoods: methodological notes for composing children in writing studies. Written Communication, 30(4): 399–427. 461

Amélie Lemieux and Jennifer Rowsell

Dyson, A. H., and Dewayani, S. (2013). Writing in childhood cultures. In: K. Hall, T. Cremin, B. Comber, and L. C. Moll (eds.), International Handbook of Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning, and Culture (pp. 258–274). West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Flewitt, R., Messer, D., and Kucirkova, N. (2015). New directions for early literacy in the digital age: the iPad. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 15(3): 289–310. Garcia, A., and Seglem, R. (2017). Twenty years of multiliteracies: moving from theory to social change in literacies and beyond. Theory into Practice Special issue, 57(1): 1–78. Godfrey-Smith, L. (2017). “Pardon my French”: a non-static case-study of the social dimensions of non-classroom language anxiety in Montréal. Unpublished dissertation, McGill University, Montréal, QC. Gutiérrez, K. D., and Johnson, P. (2017). Understanding identity sampling and cultural repertoires: advancing a historicizing and syncretic system of teaching and learning in justice pedagogies. In: D. Paris and H. S. Alim (eds.), Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World (pp. 247–260). New York: Teachers College Press. Haddix, M. (2009). Black boys can write: challenging dominant framings of African American adolescent males in literacy research. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 53(4): 341–343. Haddix, M. (2012). Reclaiming and rebuilding the writer identities of Black adolescent males. In: D. E. Alvermann and K. A. Hinchman (eds.), Reconceptualizing the Literacies in Adolescents’ Lives: Bridging the Everyday/Academic Divide (pp. 112–131). New York: Routledge. Haddix, M. (2017). “Are you still helping that community?” Reflections on “community” in literacy research and practice. Michigan Reading Journal, 49(3): 57–60. Haddix, M. (2018). What’s racial about youth writing? Seeing and honoring youth writers and their literacies. Voices from the Middle, 25(3): 8–12. Haddix, M., and Sealey-Ruiz, Y. (2012). Cultivating digital and popular literacies as empowering and emancipatory acts among urban youth. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56(3): 189–192. Harwood, D. (2015). Crayons & iPads: children’s meaning making in a digital world. An Leanbh Og (The Young Child) Journal, 9(1): 107–120. Harwood, D. (2017). Crayons and iPads: Learning and Teaching of Young Children in the Digital World. London: Sage Swifts. Knobel, M., and Lankshear, C. (2008). Remix: the art and craft of endless hybridization. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 52(1): 22–33. Kuby, C. R., and Rowsell, J. (2017). Early literacy and the posthuman: pedagogies and methodologies. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 17(3): 285–296. Kuby, C. R., Spector, K., and Thiel, J. J. (2019). Posthumanism and Literacy Education: Knowing/Becoming/ Doing Literacies. New York: Routledge. Lamarre, P. (2013). Catching “Montreal on the move” and challenging the discourse of unilingualism in Quebec. Anthropologica, 55(1): 41–56. Lemieux, A., and McLarnon, M. (2018). Artful portable library spaces: increasing community agency and shared knowledge. In E. Hasebe-Ludt and C. Leggo (eds.), Canadian Curriculum Studies: A Métissage of Inspiration/Imagination/Interconnection (pp. 35–46). Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Lemke, J. (2000). Across the scales of time: artifacts, activities, and meanings in ecosocial systems. Mind, Culture and Activity, 7(4): 273–290. Levy, R., Yamada-Rice, D., and Marsh, J. (2013). Digital literacies in the primary classroom. In: K. Hall, T. Cremin, B. Comber, and L. C. Moll (eds.), International Handbook of Research on Children’s Literacy, Learning, and Culture (pp. 333–343). West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Lewis, C., and Tierney, J. D. (2013). Mobilizing emotion in an urban classroom: producing identities and transforming signs in a race-related discussion. Linguistics and Education, 24(3): 289–304. Lewis Ellison, T. (2017). Digital participation, agency, and choice: an African American youth’s digital storytelling about Minecraft. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 61(1): 25–35. Marsh, J. (2005). Ritual, performance and identity construction: young children’s engagement with popular cultural and media texts. In: J. Marsh (ed.), Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood (pp. 21–38). London/New York: Routledge Falmer. Mirra, N., Morrell, E., and Filipiak, D. (2018). From digital consumption to digital invention: toward a new critical theory and practice of multiliteracies. Theory into Practice, 57(1): 12–19. Muhammad, G. E., and Haddix, M. (2016). Centering Black girls’ ways of knowing: a historical review of literature on the multiple literacies of Black girls. English Education, 48(4): 299–336.

462

A wide-angled view of digital literacy

Nxumalo, F., and Cira Rubin, J. (2018). Encountering waste landscapes: more-than-human place literacies in early childhood education. In: C. R. Kuby, K. Spector, and J. Johnson Thiel (eds.), Posthumanism and Literacy Education: Knowing/Becoming/Doing Literacies (pp. 201–213). New York: Routledge. O’Mara, J., and Laidlaw, L. (2011). Living in the iWorld: two literacy researchers reflect on the changing texts and literacy practices of childhood. English Teaching: Practice and Critique, 10(4): 149–159. Patterson, A. N., Howard, A., and Kinloch, V. (2016). Black feminism and critical media literacy: moving from the margin to the center. Meridians, 15(1): 40–64. Price-Dennis, D., Muhammad, G. E., Womack, E., McArthur, S. A., and Haddix, M. (2017). The multiple identities and literacies of girl blackhood: a conversation about creating spaces for black girl voices. Journal of Language & Literacy Education, 13(2): 1–18. Rose, S., Fitzpatrick, K., Mersereau, C., and Whitty, P. (2017). Playful pedagogic moves: digital devices in the outdoors. In: D. Harwood (ed.), Crayons and iPads: Learning and Teaching of Young Children in the Digital World (pp. 16–28). London: Sage. Rowsell, J., Morrell, E., and Alvermann, D. E. (2017). Confronting the digital divide: debunking brave new world discourses. The Reading Teacher, 71(2): 157–165. Rowsell, J., and Wohlwend, K. E. (2016). Free play or tight spaces? Mapping participatory literacies in apps. The Reading Teacher, 70(3): 197–205. Somerville, M. (2011). Becoming-frog: learning place in primary school. In: M. Somerville, B. Davies, K. Power, S. Gannon, and P. de Carteret (eds.), Place Pedagogy Change (pp. 65–80). London: Sense. Speight, S. (2017). Learning for sustainability in the digital world. On the Horizon, Special issue, 25(1): 1–3. Styres, S. (2018). Literacies of land: decolonizing narratives, storying, and literature. In: L. Tuhiwai Smith, E. Tuck, and K. W. Yang (eds.), Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View (pp. 24–37). New York: Routledge. Thomas, E. E. (2015). “We always talk about race”: navigating race talk dilemmas in the teaching of literature. Research in the Teaching of English, 50(2): 154–175. Thomas, E. E., and Stornaiuolo, A. (2016). Restorying the self: bending toward textual justice. Harvard Educational Review, 86(3): 314–338. Tømte, C. (2018). Online learning in Nordic countries. Nordic Journal of Digital Literacy, Special issue, March/Spring. Tuhiwai Smith, L., Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2019). Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education: Mapping the Long View. New York: Routledge. Van Leeuwen, T. (2018). Legitimation and multimodality. In: R. Wodak and B. Forchtner (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Politics (pp. 218–232). New York: Routledge. Wargo, J. (2018). #SoundingOutMySilence: reading a LGBTQ youth’s sonic cartography as multimodal (counter)storytelling. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 62(1): 13–23. Online First doi: 10.1002/ jaal.752. Whitty, P. (2017). Complicating literacies: settler ways of being with story(ies) on Wabanaki lands. In: R. Zaidi and J. Rowsell (eds.), Literacy Lives in Transcultural Times (pp. 17–31). New York: Routledge. Wohlwend, K. E. (2009). Early adopters: playing new literacies and pretending new technologies in printcentric classrooms. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 9(2): 117–140. Wohlwend, K. E. (2013). Literacy Playshop: New Literacies, Popular Media, and Play in the Early Childhood Classroom. New York: Teachers College Press. Young, J. L., Foster, M. D., and Hines, D. (2018). Even Cinderella is white: (re)centering black girls’ voices as literacies of resistance. English Education, 107(6): 102–108.

463

Index

3D model of literacy 22–23, 95–97, 104, 188 21st century skills 2–3, 9, 14, 21, 30, 182, 199, 229, 241, 258–259, 262–263, 265–267, 304 Actor-Network Theory (ANT) 39, 119, 153, 244, 372, 394, 395, 399 activity theory 159 adult-led play 215, 218, 222 affordance 2, 8, 11, 22, 26, 36, 84, 147, 153–154, 160, 165–166, 194, 201, 203, 206, 248, 261, 264, 271–274, 276–277, 287, 306, 326–328, 330, 333, 336–339, 374–375, 424, 430, 433–436, 438, 442, 450, 453, 456, 458–459 agency 5, 8–9, 13, 22, 32, 36–38, 40–41, 51, 53, 65, 82, 87, 97, 102, 105, 127, 146, 150, 158–159, 165–166, 196, 201, 204, 215, 217–218, 223, 239, 245, 247–248, 250, 252, 272–273, 275–276, 285, 288, 291, 300–301, 366, 387, 396, 398, 404, 427–428, 443–444, 450,451, 455, 459 agential realism theory 9, 243, 245, 372 agentive self 36 analogue 3, 123, 215, 355, 444 animation (3-D) 207, 434 anonymity 4, 6, 64–65, 67, 70–71, 75 app/application 4, 9, 11–12, 19–20, 82, 86–87, 99, 101–104, 113, 126, 129, 137–138, 140–143, 149, 161, 202–203, 205–209, 216–217, 242, 273, 275, 282, 285, 287–292, 295–296, 298–306, 308–320, 327–329, 331, 333, 343, 345–346, 348, 351, 354–363, 391–392, 394–399, 430–436, 438, 442, 454, 459, 461; alphabet book app 9, 10; book app 305, 433; bookmarking apps 208; comic strip apps 208; drawing apps 208, 216, 327; music-making apps 208; storybook apps 9, 126, 206, 282, 308–309, 311–314, 316, 319–320, 434; writing apps 207–208 appropriation 11, 104, 109, 114, 191, 265, 355, 443 artefact 4–5, 22–23, 25, 36, 39–40, 49–52, 54, 73, 96–97, 109, 117, 119, 124, 147, 194, 214, 233, 258, 261, 263–267, 297, 355, 444–445, 449, 454, 459 464

Artificial Intelligence 210, 230 assemblage (theory) 12, 56–57, 367, 371–372, 374, 391–392, 394–396, 398–399, 425–426, 445–446, 448, 450–451, 457 assent 68, 331 audio 1, 3, 49, 54, 56–57, 68, 136, 189, 190, 192, 204, 207, 243, 245, 259, 283–285, 288, 292, 299, 305, 331, 351, 433, 447 audio-visual 48, 50, 137, 171 Augmented Reality 20, 81–82, 208, 210, 224, 290, 424 avatar 12, 147, 158, 162, 316, 372, 374, 394, 396–399, 436 baroque sensibility 11, 342–344, 349–350, 352 benefit/beneficence 6, 20, 64, 67, 72–75, 82–85, 87, 98–99, 105, 138, 142, 194, 208, 273, 283, 289, 296, 320, 354, 356, 396, 398, 430, 459 bilingual 11, 148, 155, 208, 230, 236, 239, 273, 325–327, 329, 333, 334, 336–337 biliteracy 422 blog 4, 72, 161, 166, 311, 317–318, 320, 377, 435–437 bodies 65, 87, 153, 243, 245–251, 305, 344, 356, 361, 378, 388, 391–392, 394–395, 399, 425, 458–459 boundary objects 153 boundary crossing 8, 160, 164 case study 7, 48, 54, 56–57, 84, 97, 103–104, 124, 128, 148, 165, 446 child development 11, 45, 85, 88, 95, 112, 123–124, 194, 196, 221–222, 262, 290, 308, 319, 327, 349, 355, 359, 362, 380, 422, 432–434, 436, 442, 457 child-initiated play 218, 222, 345 childhood 1–9, 12–14, 20, 25, 31–33, 36, 38–41, 45–47, 51, 54, 56–58, 66, 69–70, 73–74, 84, 86, 95, 109–110, 112, 114, 116–120, 125, 134–135, 140, 146, 154, 173, 175, 177, 180, 187–188, 191–192, 195–196, 200–202, 204, 209, 214–218, 221, 224, 227, 229–230, 234–235, 244, 246, 276, 296, 311, 327, 354,

Index

356–358, 378–379, 391, 394–395, 402, 409, 419–421, 423–425, 427, 434, 436, 442, 447, 449, 453–454, 456, 458–459, 461 children’s culture 14, 70, 110, 117–118, 215, 217, 229, 233, 375, 430, 434–435, 438 Children’s Intimate Geographies 110, 116–117 children’s life worlds 216, 223–224, 422 children’s literature 6, 12, 314, 430–438 class 8, 23, 39, 47, 54, 56, 80, 82, 86, 88, 109–110, 114–115, 146, 148–149, 152–155, 161, 179, 197, 201, 228, 230–232, 234–236, 238, 243, 248, 263, 276, 312, 331–332, 337–339, 361, 392, 409, 421, 453–454, 456, 458, 460 co-construction 20, 263, 448 co-creation 57, 74 cognition 174, 270–272, 432 citizenship: collaboration 10–11, 14, 20–21, 25, 54–55, 57, 144, 189–190, 192–193, 202, 205, 232, 244, 260, 327, 338, 366, 387, 392, 399, 404, 426–427, 459; collaborative action research 9, 25, 57, 228, 230–231; collaborative learning 9, 13, 193, 239; collaborative reading 9, 194; collaborative writing 9, 193–194, 232 commercial 3, 12, 38, 56, 65, 86, 95, 99, 119, 141, 305, 310, 312, 314, 318, 354–355, 358–363, 366, 373, 391–392, 394–395, 398–399, 432, 434, 451 communication 1, 3–4, 11, 19–20-22, 35–36, 40, 49–51, 56–57, 71, 83, 114, 117–118, 124, 135–136, 138, 142–143, 155, 162, 171–174, 192, 194, 196, 206, 215–216, 229, 234, 258–260, 263, 266, 270, 272, 289, 296–297, 306, 326, 330, 337, 355, 366, 375, 380, 402, 419, 421, 424–425 community 1–2, 4–5, 7–8, 12, 21, 24, 57, 70, 74, 81–83, 111, 113, 117, 144, 148, 155, 158, 160, 162–164, 166, 176–177, 187–188, 190–192, 202, 205, 230–232, 236–237, 291, 325–326, 329–330, 334, 337–338, 368, 370, 374–375, 377, 412, 421–423, 450, 455, 460–461 competencies 86, 172, 174–175, 177, 181, 189, 194, 230, 233, 381, 388, 419, 422, 425, 438, 454, 456, 459 comprehension 155, 179, 207–209, 274, 277, 283–284, 287–289, 297, 305–306, 308–310, 319, 438 computer 3, 6, 21–22, 24, 53, 57, 65, 71, 82, 100–101, 109, 128, 149, 151–152, 176–178, 190–193, 203, 243–244, 260, 270, 283–284, 291, 297–298, 304, 309, 313, 319, 328, 367–368, 370–371, 374–375, 379, 383–386, 395, 397, 402, 404, 424, 430, 433, 435, 438 computer games 128, 192–193, 309, 379, 433, 435, 438 computer literacy 21–22, 24, 176, 178 confidentiality 6, 64–65, 67, 70, 72, 74–75

connectivity 4, 80, 84, 87, 101, 116, 148, 151–152, 203, 205, 363, 396 consent 6, 56, 64, 67–70, 74, 135, 331, 355, 360–361, 381 consumer 12, 36, 84, 86, 137, 194–196, 261, 317–318, 355, 360, 391–396, 398–400, 444, 449–450, 454 context 4, 6–9, 13, 20–23, 25–26, 31, 33–35, 37–39, 46–49, 53–54, 66, 68–72, 74–75, 79, 81–84, 87–88, 95, 99, 102–104, 109–110, 112–119, 123–124, 127, 129–130, 135–136, 138–139, 143–144, 146, 148–149, 151–155, 159–161, 172–173, 175–176, 181, 188, 190–191, 193–195, 200–209, 215–219, 222–223, 227, 229–230, 232, 258–259, 261, 263, 266–267, 270, 272, 275, 283–285, 287, 291, 297–299, 302, 304–305, 311, 313, 325–327, 330, 334, 336–338, 343, 345, 359, 369, 375, 378, 381, 385, 387, 393–395, 400, 402–403, 405–406, 412, 419–423, 425, 443, 445–446, 453, 455–458 continuing teacher development 223 converged play 9, 190, 214, 216–224, 367 convergence 26, 35, 136, 216, 217, 219, 221–223, 272, 298, 391–392, 394–395, 399, conversation analysis 9, 11, 48, 52, 377, 381, 404 covert 70, 396 creative meaning making 426–427, 459 creativity 20, 54, 69, 73, 81, 83, 97, 105, 137, 143–144, 176, 206, 215, 218, 220, 223, 348, 424, 428, 434, 437 critical analysis 104 critical framing 191, 394, 422 critical media literacy discourse 173 Critical Race Theory 460 Cultural-Ecological Theory 113 culture 2–3, 13, 23, 24, 26, 37, 46, 55, 57, 66–67, 70, 74, 88, 97, 105, 109–110, 113–114, 117–118, 123, 136, 144, 147–149, 180–181, 190–191, 194, 201, 214–224, 228–230, 232–233, 235, 238, 244, 251, 258, 266, 317, 327, 338–339, 346, 355, 358–359, 362–363, 366, 369, 371, 375, 383, 392–395, 398–400, 409, 411, 422–423, 425–427, 430, 434–435, 438, 443–444, 453–454, 456–458, 460; cross-cultural 113, 136; cultural activities 34, 188, 215; cultural authenticity 423; cultural diversity 9, 84, 197, 202, 228, 334, 397, 421, 457; cultural minority groups 117, 421, 422; curriculum 6, 9, 39, 41, 54, 57, 81–82, 84, 144, 151, 153, 159, 172, 174, 175–178, 180–181, 189, 194, 202, 204–205, 209, 214–224, 228, 231–232, 258–259, 264–267, 277, 329, 334, 337, 338, 361, 400, 419–421, 453 datafication 11, 284, 354, 356, 358–359, 361–363 dataveillance 354, 358–359, 361–363 465

Index

design 2–3, 5–6, 8, 12, 19–20, 22–25, 27, 31, 35–39, 41, 45, 47–48, 54–58, 66, 71, 73–75, 82, 86–87, 96, 111, 114–115, 118, 135, 144, 146–147, 149, 151–153, 155, 158–167, 175, 189–191, 196, 204–207, 216, 222, 224, 230–231, 236, 239, 260–261, 271–273, 275, 282, 289, 291–292, 296, 298–299, 302, 310–311, 319, 326–328, 331, 333–334, 337, 339, 343, 345, 349, 352, 358, 362–363, 367, 372–375, 380, 385, 392, 398–399, 403–404, 420–421, 425–427, 431, 436, 438, 443–444, 459 developmental psychology 47, 112, 432, 434, 436 digital: digital access 4, 7, 10, 13, 19–22, 32, 36, 46–47, 58, 65, 67, 69, 72–73, 79–84, 87, 101, 104, 109, 118, 125–126, 129–130, 140–141-142, 146, 148–151, 163, 177–178, 187, 192–194, 197, 202–203, 205, 229–230, 260, 272, 308, 310, 316–318, 328–329, 334, 359, 379, 393, 395, 402, 419, 424, 437, 455–456, 460; digital artefacts 22, 25, 40, 51–52, 96–97, 109, 147, 233, 263–264; digital book 10, 12, 26, 126, 282–285, 287–292, 300, 308–320, 331, 430, 432; digital camera 3, 11, 56, 191, 208, 276, 325, 329–331, 333–334, 338; digital communication 1, 4, 40, 143, 162, 196, 270, 272, 419; digital competence 21, 135, 143–144, 383, 405; digital creation 135, 139; digital cultura 2, 46, 55, 57, 109–110, 117–118, 144, 235, 375, 395, 443; digital data 10–11, 239; digital devices 2–3, 5–8, 45, 50, 54–55, 71–72, 102, 115–116, 125–127, 130, 137–139, 172, 179, 187–188, 190, 192, 194–195, 203, 205, 220, 233, 274, 308, 313, 327–330, 334, 338, 379, 428, 437, 444–446; digital divide 125, 148, 202, 308, 379, 453, 458, 461; digital era 2, 75, 110, 118, 161, 165, 171, 229, 235, 310, 356, 447; digital footprint 19, 58, 71, 75, 355; digital industry 2, 4, 135, 144; digital literacies 1–2, 4–6, 8, 11–14, 21, 23, 26, 32, 37, 40, 45–49, 52, 57–58, 81, 103–104, 109, 114, 118–119, 147–148, 152, 158–163, 166, 172, 194, 202, 209, 229, 244–245, 252, 292, 378, 404, 442, 444, 446, 453–461; digital literature for children 430, 432; digital media 3–5, 7–9, 11–13, 20–21, 32, 38, 45–48, 54, 67, 69, 71, 75, 83–87, 98, 102, 123, 125, 128–129, 135, 137, 139–143, 146, 148–149, 152, 154, 171–172, 174, 181, 187, 189–190, 194–196, 214–216, 218, 220–221, 223–224, 235, 238, 261, 270–271, 366, 369, 372, 377, 379–381, 391, 393–394, 396, 399, 419, 424–425, 430–435, 437–438, 442–446, 450; digital narrative 10, 193, 274–276, 438, 461; digital play 9, 11, 148–150, 189–190, 196, 203, 214–217, 219, 222–223, 235, 342–343, 366, 373, 395, 431; Digital Play Framework 189; digital photo 11, 236, 288, 329–333, 355; 466

digital practices 4, 7, 13, 21, 24, 46, 48–51, 54, 64, 67, 70, 72–74, 98–99, 109–110, 116–117, 119, 159, 172, 196, 218, 222, 231, 343, 411, 454; digital reading 10, 270–273, 275–278, 284, 461; digital skills 56, 86, 98, 134, 142–143, 177, 192; digital storybook 193, 288, 309, 312, 318; digital storytelling 37, 309–310, 315, 320; digital technologies 1–9, 11, 13–14, 21–22, 24, 35–36, 38, 40–41, 45–58, 64, 67, 69, 79–84, 86–88; digital tools 1, 8–9, 11, 54, 56, 98, 160–162, 166, 187–188, 190, 192, 194–196, 202, 215, 238, 242–246, 248–249, 251–253, 325–238, 330–331, 336–339, 431, 433, 436–437, 455–456; digital toys 109, 203, 208; digital turn 1, 161; digital writing 328, 455 disadvantage 5, 83, 98, 148–149, 273, 430, 447 discourse 20, 24, 26, 48, 52, 55, 70, 83, 86, 95, 104, 109–110, 112, 114, 117, 123, 140, 150, 154–155, 158, 164, 172–174, 176–177, 187–188, 192, 195, 229, 233, 245–246, 249, 251, 258, 263–264, 287, 308, 352, 354, 358–359, 395, 419, 423, 430, 438, 443, 450, 454–455, 458; adult-centric discourse 114; critical discourse analysis 358; discourse community 192; discourse of inevitability 140; neoliberal discourse 26, 150; normative discourse 26; online discourse 70 diversity 1–2, 4, 9, 12, 38, 47, 50, 66, 84, 87, 97, 109, 114, 116–119, 125, 136, 172, 197, 201–202, 204, 228, 236, 290, 326, 334, 342, 397, 419, 421, 423–424, 427, 436, 454–457 drawing 6–11, 19–20, 22, 32, 34–36, 38, 46, 48, 50, 53, 56, 81–82, 116, 136–137, 139, 146–147, 158, 162, 177, 187, 189–191, 193, 208, 216, 234–235, 250, 258–260, 264, 276–277, 283–285, 290, 301, 303, 315, 327–329, 332, 334, 342, 346, 349, 351, 370, 375, 379–381, 387, 392, 421–422, 436, 443, 445–447, 449–450, 454 dual-language stories 422 early childhood education 8–9, 13, 20, 25, 38, 40, 173, 175, 187–188, 191–192, 195, 201, 214, 224, 227, 419, 421, 424, 427 early literacy 1, 6, 8, 20, 34, 39, 188, 191–193, 195–196, 229, 234, 244–245, 275, 400, 404, 459 early years education 105, 187–189, 445 e-book/eBook 9,11, 20, 86, 100, 126–127, 192–194, 205, 207–208, 273–274, 282–283, 325, 327–338, 431–432 ecological 23, 35, 48–49, 111–113, 115, 123–124, 445; Ecological System Theory 112, 123; Ecological techno-subsystem 124 e-learning ecologies 424 electronic book 422 electronic devices 85, 402, 430, 432, 438

Index

education policy 14, 73, 171–173 education professional 3 elementary school settings 9 embodiment 33, 37, 344, 378, 425–427, 457, 461; embodied cognition 270–272; embodied reading 432 emergent home language 422 emergent literacy 4, 9, 34–35, 99, 103, 192, 227, 234, 273–274, 277, 404, 434 emergent reading 270 emotion 10, 51, 82–83, 99, 110–111, 117, 135, 221, 271, 276–277, 290, 296, 361–363, 383, 385, 399, 431, 461 empowerment 201, 354 engagement 3–4, 7–8, 10–11, 14, 20–24, 26, 33, 35, 45–49, 51, 54, 56, 58, 68, 83, 88, 95–97, 99, 101, 103–104, 115, 119, 123–124, 130, 134–135, 137, 139, 141, 146–147, 153–155, 159, 161, 165–166, 172, 174, 179–180, 189–190, 192–194, 196, 204, 206–207, 209, 215, 220, 223, 244, 259–261, 270–271, 274–278, 284–285, 288, 290–292, 297, 299, 306, 309, 315, 319, 342–344, 349–350, 368, 381, 391, 398–399, 402, 404–406, 424, 427, 432, 442–447, 449–451, 454–458, 460–461 entanglement 33, 39, 245, 247, 351 equity 4, 46, 84, 125, 187, 233, 399, 423, 458 ethics 6, 27, 64–68, 70–71, 73–75, 86; ethics governance 64–65, 67; ethics principles 65–66; ethics standards 65, 70 ethnography 8, 70, 159, 161, 342, 369, 400, 446; digital/online ethnography 70 ethnomethodology 11, 52, 377, 404 European 2–3, 7–9, 14, 19–21, 24, 26–27, 48, 55, 64–65, 98–100, 102–103, 125, 127, 135, 172–174, 214, 259, 292, 309, 313, 320 everyday lives 4–5, 11, 19, 36, 38, 40, 102, 105, 167, 355, 366, 388, 438, 449 exclusion 7, 56, 81, 96, 117–119, 249 experimental 10, 47, 55–56, 58, 207, 233, 272, 284, 319, 361 family 5, 11, 12, 19, 20, 23, 47, 49, 51, 52, 72, 83–6, 96, 101–104, 109–120, 123, 127, 135–144, 148, 149, 154, 161, 187, 188, 191, 202, 205, 216, 218, 231, 235–238, 260–265, 300, 304, 327, 329, 332, 337–339, 354, 355, 358, 360, 366–375, 377, 402–412, 422, 437, 444–450, 456–457 fan fiction 437 fiction 12, 102, 208, 285, 288, 290, 297, 367–8, 371, 392, 399, 411, 430–437, 448, 450 film 9–13, 126, 129, 137, 191, 220, 242, 244, 247, 295–306, 308, 319, 346, 348–349, 371, 391–393, 426, 430, 433–438, 442–445, 449 film literacy 437 fine-motor skills 152, 431

gadget 13, 136, 432 game 3, 8, 9, 11–12, 19–20, 70, 86, 97, 100, 102, 118–119, 126, 128–130, 135–143, 147–150, 158–166, 175, 179, 192–193, 202–207, 215, 231–232, 238, 244, 274, 284–285, 291, 297, 299–304, 308–309, 315–319, 342, 343, 348, 352, 355, 359–360, 363, 366–375, 377–379, 38, 383, 391–399, 424, 427, 430–438, 442–451, 459; game(s) console 3, 100, 135, 137, 161, 163, 165, 203, 391, 442; game design(er) 158–159, 162–166, 352, 398; game literacy 437 gamification 193, 274 gatekeeper 7, 68, 73, 125, 128, 130, 453 GDPR 65, 68–69, 71, 135, 144, gender 8, 26, 71, 81, 87–88, 100, 112, 114–115, 136, 146, 148, 201, 205, 209, 227, 289, 357, 419, 423, 444–445, 447, 449–450, 456; gender equity 423 genre 2, 149, 229, 246, 262, 270, 274–275, 277, 289, 291, 332, 434 glitching 8, 158–167 global 1, 4–6, 9, 12–13, 26–27, 38, 79, 81, 86–87, 102, 115, 125, 148–152, 215, 218, 227, 229, 239, 258, 299, 309–310, 352, 387, 391–392, 394, 398, 402, 411–412, 419–421, 423, 458, 461 habitus 123, 180, 260, 450 harm/harmful (avoiding) 6, 64, 67, 72–73, 75, 79, 83, 85, 87, 95, 99–100, 126, 359, 362, 373 home 1–13, 19, 21, 23–24, 28, 35, 37, 39, 48–52, 70–72, 81–87, 93–151, 160–161, 166, 178, 191, 202, 205, 208–209, 214–224, 228, 235–237, 260, 263–264, 282, 285, 295–296, 299–300, 304, 310, 318, 327, 329–334, 337–338, 349, 358, 361, 366–367, 369–370, 375, 377–378, 381, 385–386, 391–392, 402, 405–406, 412, 419, 421–424, 427, 446, 450, 454 human-computer interaction 291, 404 hybrid 5, 10–11, 37, 114, 129, 136, 161, 261, 291, 303, 323, 369, 396, 406, 422–423, 426, 444, 447, 450 hyperlink 282, 283, 291 hypermedia narrative 430 hypertext 272, 278, 427, 430 hypertextual(ity) 272, 432, 437 identity 11, 23, 67, 70–71, 81, 84, 111–118, 128, 149, 155, 197, 232, 257, 263, 267, 270, 355, 357–358, 363, 392, 394–395, 397, 400, 419, 422–423, 427, 442–450, 453–461 ideology 228, 359, 444, 454 image 1, 3, 9–11, 22, 33, 35–36, 50–51, 54, 59, 69–71, 113, 130, 134, 136, 138, 140, 143, 147–148, 151, 155, 160, 189, 193–194, 220, 264, 274, 277, 295–306, 327, 329, 331–333, 467

Index

336, 338, 346, 355, 357, 363, 380–381, 384–386, 398, 403, 404–405, 409–412, 419, 421, 424–427, 431, 434–435, 437, 445, 456 imagination 140, 160, 166, 189, 218, 228, 234, 391, 395, 434 imaginative play 215, 391, 448 immersive textual universe 32 immersive world 13 immigrant 150, 161, 227, 273, 422 iMovie 423 impairment 118, 194, 203 inclusion 3, 80–81, 118, 172–173, 187, 201, 221, 233, 237, 420; inclusive contexts 206; inclusive curriculum 204; inclusive education 200–202, 205, 209; inclusive digital literacy education 8; inclusivity 8, 200–208 industry 2,4,7,10, 14, 27, 33, 73, 135, 144, 291–292, 354, 357, 393 inequality 6, 118, 152, 456 informal learning spaces 6, 13, 24–26, 93 information and communication technology/ies 171, 424 information literacy 21–22, 24, 171–172, 174, 380 innovative teaching practices 8 in-service training 173, 175 interaction 3, 6, 9–11, 20, 32–34, 37, 48, 51–53, 58, 69–72, 82, 84, 97–105, 110–118, 124, 129–130, 134, 162, 189–196, 206, 208, 215, 217, 220, 222, 230, 244–245, 260, 262, 273–276, 285, 287–292, 296, 302–303, 306, 326–327, 337, 342–343, 349–350, 360, 366–369, 372, 378–387, 393, 395, 397–399, 402–406, 411–412, 424, 432, 436–437, 444, 454, 458, 460; interactive devices 273, 432; interactive game(s) 238, 424; interactive media 216–217, 219; interactive picture book 431–432; interactive text 276, 299, 303–304; interactive whiteboard 3, 151, 192, 195, 261, 263, 266; interactivity 82, 86, 116, 270–271, 274–275, 282–284, 287, 289–290, 304–305, 309, 315–316, 319, 432–433, 436–437 interconnectivity 272 intercultural 325, 327, 330, 333–334, 336–338 interdisciplinary 2, 6, 10, 14, 21, 47, 105, 111, 119, 176–177, 195, 282, 292, 436, 438 interface 4, 83, 189, 203, 216, 272–273, 327–328, 351, 367, 371, 375, 380, 383, 385, 388, 403–404, 431, 433, 436, 438, 454 intergenerational 10, 330, 423 Internet 19, 22, 26, 65, 70, 71, 79, 80–81, 84–87, 98, 100–101, 103, 105, 117, 127, 129, 130, 134–135, 137–139, 143, 148–149, 151, 172, 174–175, 178, 190, 192, 196, 203, 205, 215, 276, 308, 311, 320, 338, 342, 355–356, 359, 363, 402–405, 411, 430, 437; Internet of Things 11, 116, 118, 208, 354; Internet of Toys 26–27, 105, 224, 388, 419 468

interview 5, 7, 48–53, 99, 129, 136–143, 148, 161–165, 178, 219–221, 261, 331, 339, 370, 446–447, 450 intra-activity/ intra-action 243–253, 372 iPad 9, 11, 51, 69, 137–138, 147, 149, 152, 161, 179, 194, 200–201, 203, 206–208, 215, 217, 220, 242–253, 261, 274–275, 282, 284, 288, 298, 303–304, 327–330, 342–352, 380–383, 387, 409–410, 432–433, 453, 457–459 iPhone 203, 298 kindergarten 8–9, 19–21, 38, 81, 104, 172–180, 188, 191, 193, 195, 218, 220, 227–228, 230, 234–237, 244, 273, 275, 310, 316, 325, 420, 422–423, 454 kindergarten teachers 9, 175, 218, 230, 234, 310 knowledge 2, 4–5, 7–9, 12, 14, 20–21, 22, 24–27, 34, 37–38, 45, 55, 65–67, 73–74, 79, 83, 95–97, 103–105, 110, 114, 123, 134–135, 138, 141–144, 154, 161–163, 174, 179, 187, 189–195, 200, 204–209, 214–224, 228, 233, 235–236, 239, 245–247, 262, 270, 272–277, 282, 288, 309, 326, 346, 356, 359–360, 363, 366, 372–374, 378–380, 383, 385–387, 396, 399, 403–406, 409, 411–412, 419, 422–426, 435, 437, 444, 450, 458 laboratory studies 282 language 4–5, 8–11, 13, 20, 23, 26, 33–35, 39, 48, 50, 86–87, 96, 114, 118, 136, 146–149, 152, 154–155, 161, 172–173, 179–180, 188, 190, 193, 200–203, 205–207, 220, 227–239, 243, 249, 251, 258, 261, 264, 266, 271, 273–274, 276–278, 288–289, 291–292, 295, 308–320, 325–339, 348–349, 367, 379, 404, 409, 420–427, 432, 445, 454, 456–457, 459–460; language acquisition 172, 295, 318; language skills 220, 310, 329, 337, 432, 456 laptop 3, 53, 65, 100, 012, 116, 135, 137, 142, 149, 193, 203, 233, 243, 296, 359, 370–372, 374, 381, 385–387 layout 33, 35, 338, 403, 431, 434 learning: authentic learning 204; context aware learning 204; contingent learning 204; digital learning 8, 81, 104–105, 424, 427; exploratory learning 239; game-based learning 204; inquirybased learning 190–191, 194; interdisciplinary learning 195; personalized learning 204, 361–362; playful learning 191, 207; seamless learning 205; situated learning 12, 204, 425, 457; social learning 205, 425, 427; virtual learning 423, 425 learning community 230–232, 236 learning difficulties 202, 273 learning environment 39, 73, 420, 423–424 learning outcome 83, 87, 201, 216, 218, 220–223, 362

Index

learning disposition: concentration 223, 275; engagement 3–4, 7–8, 10–11, 14, 20–24, 26, 33, 35, 45, 47–49, 51, 54, 58, 68, 88, 95–97, 99, 101, 103–104, 115, 119, 123–124, 130, 134–135, 137, 139, 141, 146–147, 153–155, 161, 165–166, 172, 174, 179–180, 189–196, 204–209, 215, 220, 223, 244, 259–261, 270–271, 274–278, 284–285, 288–292, 297, 299, 306, 309, 315, 319, 342–343, 349, 368, 381, 391, 402, 404–406, 424, 427, 432, 442–451, 454–461; motivation 8, 82, 99, 159, 165, 173–175, 179, 181, 191, 203–204, 208, 220–221, 274, 285, 335, 337, 362, 409, 424, 454, 459; perseverance 220, 361 learning processes 8, 84, 192, 196, 215, 223, 275–276, 278, 315, 335, 361–362, 421, 425, 428, 458; creativity 20–21, 54, 69, 73, 81, 83, 97, 105, 137, 143–144, 176, 206, 215, 218, 220, 223, 266, 348, 424, 428, 434, 437, 457; imagination 140, 160, 166, 189, 218, 228, 234, 391, 395, 434; inquiry 82, 190–191, 194–196, 223, 230, 245, 252, 272, 275, 457; metacognition 218, 223; problem-solving 21, 174, 176, 193, 195, 218, 230, 385–386, 397, 435; self-regulation 204, 218 learning spaces 6, 13, 23–26, 41, 93, 188, 246, 361, 422, 424, 457 life-long learning 2, 172 linguistic diversity 236, 456–457 linguistic minority groups 422 literacy/ies: 3D model of literacy 22, 96–97, 104; literacy curriculum 38, 54, 144, 194, 329, 334, 400; literacy desiring 9, 242–252; literacy difficulties 206; literacy education 8–9, 35, 38, 82, 85, 173, 176–177, 181, 200–204, 208, 227–229, 244, 252, 404, 419, 421; literacy environment 7, 310; literacy learning; 9, 24–25, 34, 39, 96–98, 101–105, 152–154, 188–196, 201, 203, 205–209, 229, 231, 275, 320, 326, 409, 426, 444, 453; literacy resources 195–196, 458 literacy skills 1, 4, 19–21, 34, 86, 139, 155, 180, 192, 194, 207, 228, 273, 288, 319, 430–431, 434, 436; decoding 22, 34, 36, 154, 206–207, 271, 273, 302; letter knowledge 206–207; letter writing 207; letter-sound knowledge 207; phonic(s) 34, 152, 206, 258, 302, 335; phonological awareness 206, 207, 273; sight words 206; spelling 138, 153, 206, 208, 229, 258, 264, 286, 328, 399, 403, 405, 407; vocabulary 116, 153, 206–208, 258, 262, 273, 283, 288, 315, 328, 335, 432, 459; word identification 207 literature review 7, 10, 26, 46, 51, 59, 81, 95, 96, 127, 270, 272, 327, 420 Makerspaces 54, 73, 263, 302, 361 Manipulation 57, 189, 273, 284, 287, 292, 304, 367, 374

Marginalized 87, 114, 456 material-discursive 245–246, 248–250, 252 materiality 12, 33, 39, 51, 116, 250, 272–273, 276, 278, 303, 343–344, 351, 372, 375 378, 425, 432, 484 meaning making 5–6, 11–13, 21–24, 32, 35–36, 39, 53, 97, 114, 129, 146–147, 15 3, 161, 172, 188–191, 195, 202, 206–207, 215, 218, 244, 267, 270–278, 327, 336, 343, 378, 380, 411, 419–428, 434, 445, 450, 454, 457–459 media 123–130, 146–156, 158–163, 171–184, 227–232, 258–265, 282–292, 295–306, 356–360, 392–400, 430–439, 455–459; media ecology 20, 124–125, 215; media education 171, 174–180, 427; media environment 21, 172, 177, 393; media literacy 3, 8, 21, 24, 82, 85, 104, 171–181, 373, 380, 388, 400, 442, 455; media panic 430; media production 11, 232, 366, 374, 455; media sharing sites 436; media studies 2, 147, 430; media toys 12, 48, 392–394, 426 meta-analysis 205–206, 283 metacognition 218, 223 metalanguage 278, 367, 424 minority language 227–230, 236–237 mixed methods 98–99, 104, 200, 207, 446, 460 mobile devices 3, 40, 67, 80, 86–87, 101, 126, 201–207, 238, 359; mobile media 83, 380, 424; mobile technology 127, 200, 238, 424 mobility 2, 138, 141, 300, 326, 330, 338, 393–395 mode 8, 13, 22–23, 33, 35–37, 49, 54, 83, 161–163, 166, 188, 215, 222, 263, 267, 272–277, 297–299, 336–337, 372, 374, 380, 424–427, 435–436, 455–456 mother tongue 308–312, 320 motivation 82, 159, 165, 173–175, 179, 195, 204, 220–221, 274, 335, 337, 362, 424, 459 motor skills 99, 152, 194, 220, 271, 431 movement 32, 36, 194, 196, 290, 300–305, 309, 344, 350–351, 354, 437, 457 movie 191, 231, 235, 297, 304, 426, 433, 435 moving image 274, 295–306, 380–381, 434–435, 445 multicultural 227, 230, 233, 256–257 multilingual 208, 227, 229–233, 236–239, 325–338, 421–423, 453, 456–457 multiliteracies 4, 35, 41, 172, 191, 216–218, 224, 229–233, 270, 277, 392, 419–428, 436 multimedia 1, 69, 154–155, 189, 227–232, 283–285, 289, 294, 305, 309, 311, 315–316, 319, 391–393 multimodal: multimodal learning 12, 236, 276, 424–427, 453; multimodal literacies 35–38, 46, 81, 229; multimodal meaning making 6, 13, 21, 32, 35, 172, 276–277, 336, 424; multimodal practices 2, 19–28, 30, 419–427, 453–455; multimodal text 9, 25, 36, 49, 81, 102, 147, 155, 203–208, 229, 260–271, 275–276, 328, 334 469

Index

multimodality 31–40, 147, 172, 191, 231, 234–238, 260–267, 270, 274, 380, 425–426, 434, 454–460 multisensory 33, 262–263, 272, 459 multitasking 405, 432 music 36, 126, 208, 284, 301, 304–306, 343, 369, 371, 432, 434 narrative 46, 69, 74, 96, 193, 227–237, 262–266, 270–277, 283–292, 308–319, 370, 372, 397, 426, 430–438, 443–445, 450 Network Systems Theory 110 New Literacies Research 223 New Literacy Studies 31, 34, 244, 270 New London Group 35–36, 229–230, 260 Nonfiction 246, 288, 290, 435 observational method 47–48, 73, 102, 272, 404 offline 20–23, 26, 64, 67, 70, 102, 105, 125, 129, 136, 140, 166, 364–375, 380, 398 online; online community 163–166; online environment 45, 67; online play 244 open-ended app 195–196, 284, 327–338 operational-technical literacy skills 188–189, 192, 196 ownership 80, 101, 114, 190, 359, 362, 387, 455 parental mediation 7, 24, 81, 96–97, 99–100, 104, 113, 127, 135, 141–142 parents 20, 24–27, 49–53, 65–68, 70.72, 81–87, 97–104, 115–116, 123–129, 136–144, 148–149, 202, 236–237, 287–291, 317–320, 331–333, 355–362, 375–377, 421, 446–449 participation 40, 54–57, 66–72, 112–118, 166, 176, 187–188, 192–193, 201–209, 215, 222, 274–277, 345, 354, 368–375, 377–388, 393, 403–404, 412, 421, 426 participatory research 54–55, 67, 71, 275 pedagogy 20, 55, 177, 188, 195, 214–223, 229–238, 262, 326–327, 419–427, 457, 461; pedagogical potentials (of digital tools and devices) 187–188, 191–196; pedagogical practices 20, 187, 192, 194, 218, 251, 420; pedagogical principles 187–195 personalization 205, 284–292 picture book 273, 316, 431–436 PISA 179, 272 play 158–165, 214–224, 342–350, 366–374, 391–399, 442–450; playground 204, 366–367,391–400; play practices 41, 113, 214–218; play repertoires 215–217, 224, 448; playscapes; 215, 218, 221–224, 398; plurilingual 227–239; policy 2–3, 21, 24, 26–28, 45–47, 52–58, 73, 84–87, 95, 105, 144, 152, 171–181, 216, 221–224, 230, 239, 257–260, 266, 312, 360, 402 polycentric 398–399 470

popular culture 147–148, 191–194, 214–224, 266, 366, 371 392, 409–411, 425–427, 443–444, 453–458 posthumanist theories 243, 244–246, 252 pre-reader 10, 270, 276–277, 284 pre-school 54–56, 270–275, 284, 289–291, 359–363 primary education 56, 174, 361, 419–423 print 21–22, 32–34, 45, 51–53, 126, 147, 155, 171, 177, 194–196, 202, 207–208, 228–229, 234, 259–262, 272–277, 283–285, 289–290, 311–318, 328–329, 430–436 privacy 27, 65, 70–75, 135,141, 144, 174, 355, 358–362 problem solving 135, 143, 174–176, 193, 195, 230, 385–388, 397, 426, 435 Progress in Reading Literacy Survey (PiRLS) 155 project-based learning 232, 238–239 psychology 33–34, 47, 112, 221, 362, 432, 434, 436 public policy 45–46 publisher 313–320, 430–431, 437 qualitative approaches 135 quantitative approaches 58, 200 quantified self 354–355 reading 4, 26, 33–40, 51–52, 101–102, 126–129, 152–155, 163, 188, 193–194, 206–209, 228–235, 246–251, 270–278, 282–292, 305, 358, 362, 385, 403–405, 430–438, 455 reader 31–34, 270–273, 276–278, 284–290, 300–301, 313–316, 435–437 reciprocity 129–130 reflection 66, 73, 175, 189, 331, 335, 338, 355–356, 372 relational agency 158, 166 research integrity 64, 67, 73–76 resilience 7, 143–144, 437 responsive pedagogy 217, 220 retelling 228, 235, 315, 423 risk 27, 69, 79–86, 98, 103–105, 135, 141–143, 274, 359 robotics 56–57, 86, 176, 208 safety 7, 58, 71–72, 84–86, 99, 134–144, 173–174, 205, 305 sandbox game 367 scaffolding 20, 69, 82, 85–86, 100, 193, 205, 266, 277, 283–284, 300 school literacy 13, 229, 325, 330 screen 4, 9, 10, 26, 31, 49, 72, 83–84, 98–102, 109, 125, 126–128, 135, 138, 140–143, 147, 151, 153–154, 160, 164, 174, 180, 191, 203, 217, 231, 234, 248–249, 257–266, 271–278, 282–285, 290–292, 295–305, 313, 315–316, 319, 327–330, 336–338, 342–343, 346, 348, 351–252, 355, 363, 368, 370, 372, 378, 380, 283, 385–386, 392, 397, 399, 403, 408–412,

Index

419, 425, 431, 433–434, 436–437, 444, 446, 450, 453, 460 search engine 175, 402–404, 424 security 4, 11, 115, 134–135, 142, 151, 355 sensory 4, 6, 9, 40, 69, 82–83, 119, 273, 297, 393, 431–432, 459 sharenting 7, 10, 11, 355, 359 sibling 24, 112, 115–116, 119, 123–130, 136–138, 143, 377, 406–408, 446–447 sites of learning 81 situated literacies 7, 367 situated practice 114, 191, 370, 387, 422 skill-building apps 206, 208 smartphone 3, 20, 53, 84–87, 99–101, 127, 135, 137–138, 174, 180, 203, 234, 260, 356, 358–359, 361, 434 smart Watch 203, 355 SMS-fairy tale 434 social: social action 31, 354, 388, 421; social activity 147, 358, 379, 380; social background 152, 423; social change 12, 51, 87, 229, 420–421, 427; social class 8, 23, 146, 148, 197, 453, 456, 458, 460; social complexity 270; social context 35, 38, 102–103, 112, 153, 190, 195, 375, 403, 406, 412, 419, 422, 455; social diversity 12, 116, 419, 421, 427; social discourse 20, 26; social environment 114, 148, 237, 427; social exclusion 118–119; social group(ing) 34, 115, 395, 400, 422; social imaginary 266–267; social inequalities 37, 118, 148, 155; social interaction 34, 51, 110, 112, 118, 189, 192, 196, 206, 217, 220, 245, 260, 245, 260, 296, 349, 367–368, 378–381, 402, 406, 411–412; social justice 39, 232, 455; social-material literacies 369; social media 67, 70, 84, 113, 291, 330, 361–362, 365, 368, 373, 391–394, 398–399, 402, 451, 425, 433, 436–438, 444, 454–458; social relations/ relationship 10, 12, 49–50, 56, 110, 112, 117, 123–124, 391, 412; social network(ing) 4, 11, 20–21, 65, 116, 119, 138, 190, 373, 385, 402, 436; social network platform 402; social practice 1, 3, 4, 20–23, 33–35, 38, 116, 147, 172, 190, 202, 229, 387, 392, 395, 404, 422–423, 458; social research 6, 37, 45–46, 64–66, 70, 74; social scaffolding 85; social science 4, 65, 110, 171, 188, 190, 196, 229, 258, 261, 264–265, 338, 427, 458; social semiotic 4, 35, 37, 172, 215, 270; social space 109, 113, 114, 117, 152, 190, 192, 379, 395, 451, 457; social world 1, 12, 31, 38, 53, 56, 118, 150; society 3, 23–24, 37–38, 66, 75, 80, 87, 95, 100, 109, 111, 112–113, 117, 141, 161, 172, 227–228, 238, 261, 342 sociocultural 1, 4, 7, 10, 34–35, 37, 39, 110–111, 113–118, 149, 188–191, 259, 276, 378–379, 394, 422, 425, 443

sociodramatic 13, 393, 443, 445, 450 socio-ecological perspective 216 socio-historical (sociohistorical) 34–35, 110 sociolinguistic(s) 35–36, 148, 172 Sociology of Childhood 4, 114, sociomaterial 425, 443, 445, 447, 450 socio-spatial 6, 33, 37–40 socio-technical 359, 378–379 sound 1, 3, 11, 33, 36, 54, 69, 102, 151, 154–155, 203, 207, 274, 276, 283–284, 296–297, 301, 304–305, 313, 315, 319, 327–330, 334–338, 346, 379, 380, 403, 424–425, 430, 432, 434, 437, 456 space 4–8, 10–13, 21, 23–26, 33, 35, 37, 39–41, 49–50, 57, 67, 70–71, 73, 81, 99–100, 109–119, 149, 158–166, 188, 190–191, 195–197, 203, 209, 215, 239, 242–246, 251, 263–264, 274, 291, 325–327, 330, 338, 342–343, 349, 360, 361, 366–372, 274, 378, 383, 391–395, 398–399, 404–406, 409, 412, 422, 424, 426–428, 444, 450, 454, 457, 459, 461, 431 spatial literacies 40 spatial turn 39 special educational needs 201 speech generating device 206 speech recognition software 208, 328, 338, 308 story 10, 20, 32, 69, 129, 154, 193, 207, 231, 234–237, 259, 262, 274, 283–291, 300–301, 305, 309, 314, 315–320, 332, 349, 345–346, 349–351, 366, 370–371, 397, 422, 426, 431–436, 445, 449; story app 314, 316, 434; storyboard 69, 250, 423, 426; storybook app 9, 126, 206, 282, 308–313, 316, 319–320, 328; storybook 9, 36, 69, 102, 126, 193, 204, 207, 229, 236, 273, 282, 282, 308, 311, 312, 319, 443; story comprehension 274, 283, 284, 287–289, 319; storyline 165, 283, 309, 315, 319, 348, 391, 426, 431, 433–436, 438, 445, 448; storytelling 51, 69, 86, 190, 235–238, 315, 378, 392, 423–424, 426, 435, 444, 457, 455, 458–459; storyworld/ story world/ story-world 12, 431, 367, 394, 434–436 superdiversity 227, 233 surveillance capitalism 354, 356, 363 synaesthesia 284, 425 syncretisation 444 tablet 3, 8–9, 11, 20–21, 28, 31, 39, 50–52, 83–91, 97–103, 107–109, 116. 126–131, 135–40, 147, 151, 156–157, 176, 180, 190–194, 196–200, 203, 206–208, 210–212, 216, 259–260, 270, 273–276, 279–280, 293, 297–300, 303–308, 318–320, 325–343, 356, 359, 380, 383, 390, 396, 409–410, 413, 419, 425, 430, 434, 440–442, 446, 447 Talk-Time 262–267 471

Index

teacher 8–9, 24–27, 51, 54–57, 72, 81–87, 135, 147–148, 151–155, 171–181, 190–195, 201–202, 209, 214–224, 227–239, 242–253, 257–267, 275, 278, 289–291, 310, 317–320, 325–339, 351, 355–356, 361–362, 371, 379–387, 400, 402, 405–406, 409–411, 421–428, 437, 449, 454–459; teacher education 8, 25, 173, 177; attitudes 171, 181; teacher knowledge and practice; 214–218, 223, 361; teaching practices 188, 192, 195, 218, 222; teacher professional development 8, 20, 209; teacher training 13, 82–84, 174–180, 192 technical skills/capabilities 9, 20, 143, 154, 172–178, 261, 336, 373–374, 431 technology 3, 7, 12, 19, 25, 37, 45–49, 52–53, 55, 69–74, 79, 82, 84–87, 98–104, 109–110, 113–119, 126–130, 135–144, 151–155, 172, 177–178, 187–191, 200, 204–205, 208–209, 215–222, 229, 233, 236–238, 243–244, 260, 274–275, 297, 316, 342–343, 357, 360–362, 378, 381, 387, 392, 396, 406, 421, 424–428, 434, 450, 454, 456, 459 technology interference 100–101, 105 television 3, 13, 19, 45, 100–101, 109, 125–127, 165, 295–300, 304–306, 333, 371, 392–393, 424, 427, 433–435, 443–448 temporal 49, 53, 56, 111, 297, 394, 444–446 text 10, 22–23, 31–37, 50, 148, 166, 191–196, 202, 207, 229, 247, 258–267, 271–277, 283–284, 287–292, 299–306, 311–315, 319, 326–329, 332–334, 338, 369, 372, 377, 380–387, 392, 398, 403, 422–424, 428, 430–434, 437, 443–444, 458 text-image relationship 10, 33, 147, 299–305, 327–329, 380–381, 398, 403–405, 412, 419–421, 424–427, 431, 434–437, 445, 456 thematic analysis 136 third space 12, 422–424, 427 toddlers 7, 10, 103, 123–125, 126–130, 244, 289, 295–297, 303, 316, 356, 359–360, 363, 430, 434 tool 1–5, 8–11, 20, 28, 34, 39, 46, 54–59, 66, 73, 85, 98–99, 102, 117–119, 138–143, 147, 159–163, 166, 178, 187–196, 202–206, 209, 216–218, 221–223, 233, 238, 245–253, 261–263, 275–276, 302–303, 320, 325–339, 358, 361, 367–369, 392, 411, 419, 426, 431–433, 436–437, 466, 451, 456–460 touch screen/touchscreen 4, 9, 11, 36–37, 40, 53, 82–85, 98–101, 105, 119, 130, 138, 151, 161, 194, 203, 207, 224, 271–278, 283–284, 290–292, 300, 305, 309–316, 325–333, 338, 352, 356, 359–360, 363, 367, 380, 383–385, 431–433, 456 toy 12–13, 20, 24–27, 48, 82, 86, 98–99, 105, 109, 113, 116, 119, 140, 147, 176–177, 190–191, 195, 203, 208, 217, 224, 264, 302, 472

308, 345–346, 349–351, 355, 358, 360–363, 366–368, 371, 388, 392–400, 419, 426, 443, 446–449, 458 transactional theory 455 transduction 36 transferable skills 36, 82, 190, 206, 424–426, transformed practice 58, 161, 191, 271–272, 422–424 translanguaging 325–326, 336–339, 397 translingualism 326 translocal 8, 146 transmedia 12, 160–161, 165, 215–217, 221–224, 229, 391–396, 398–399, 444–445; transmedia formats 329, 435–438; transmedia literacy 438; transmedia storytelling 9, 430, 454; transmedia text 435 transnational families 7, 118, 227–228 Twitter 69, 454 ubiquity 203, 230 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) 66, 200 universal ethics code 64–66, 73–74 video 1–5, 19–20, 40, 48–51, 56–58, 68, 71–73, 102, 118, 125–130, 138, 140, 143, 155, 175, 191–193, 202–203, 220–221, 242–252, 262–264, 274, 283–285, 295–306, 309, 317–318, 327–328, 331, 345–349, 355–360, 366–371, 377–381, 393, 398–399, 403–406, 433–434, 437, 456 video game 8–12, 100, 137, 139–140, 143, 160–166, 174, 221–222, 342–345, 391–392, 397, 427, 430, 435–436, 459 virtual 40, 67, 70, 99, 125, 147, 149, 189, 265, 298, 358, 392, 395–396, 422, 425–427, 444; virtual environment 10, 160–161, 207, 344, 368, 373, 397–398, 423, 425; virtual game 70, 163, 397; virtual interaction 10; virtual play 11, 49, 342, 343–346, 349–352, 367; virtual space 5, 10–11, 25, 35, 49, 162, 188, 215, 323, 343, 366–367, 379, 406, 424; virtual reality 26, 58, 208–210, 388, 419, 424, 428, 461; virtual world 11–12, 19, 39, 86, 129, 137, 147, 159, 163, 164, 215, 244, 343, 369, 373, 385, 396–399, 411, 460 visual communication 258, 424–425 visual narrative 309–310, 434, 437 visual processing 309–310, 315, 319, 432 visual representation 36, 202, 271, 277, 298, 328, 432, 457 voice 5, 22, 46, 53, 57, 66, 79, 87, 138, 201, 261, 264, 276, 301, 304, 309, 313, 319, 326, 331–332, 337, 446–448, 352, 355, 421, 426, 446, 450, 455–457 VoiceThread 192, 202, 244 voluntary informed consent 6, 56, 64, 67–70, 74, 135, 331, 355, 360–361, 381

Index

wearable technologies 11, 56–58, 224, 354–364 worldness 11, 366–375 World Wide Web 3, 229, 402; Web 2.0 272; Web-map 219–223; Web-mapping tool 9, 190, 216–218, 221–223; Web portal 151, 271, 239, 404; Web searching 12, 220, 402–406, 409–412, 424 word learning 1–3, 34, 154, 206–207, 258, 273, 284, 291, 308, 315, 319, 328, 334–335 working memory 432

writerly behaviour 9, 257–267 Writers’ Studio 242–243 writing on screen 4, 9, 19, 26, 40, 138, 147, 154, 161, 191, 194, 207, 257–267, 273, 328–329, 322, 336–338, 378, 385–386 YouTube 8, 24, 102–102, 129–130, 137–138, 158–165, 202, 220, 224, 299–301, 309, 318–319, 356, 360, 366–374, 378–380, 389, 405, 445

473