Digital Play and Technologies in the Early Years

Christine Stephen, Liz Brooker, Pamela Oberhuemer, Rod Parker-Rees, Christine Stephen, Liz Brooker, Pamela Oberhuemer, Rod Parker-Rees

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429815003
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Technologies are a pervasive feature of contemporary life for adults and children. However, young children's experiences with digital technologies are often the subject of polarised debate among parents, educators, policymakers and social commentators, particularly since the advent of tablets and smartphones changed access to the Internet and the nature of interactions with digital resources. Some are opposed to children's engagement with digital resources, concerned that the activities they afford are not developmentally appropriate, limit physical activity and restrict the development of social skills. Others welcome digital technologies which they see as offering new and enhanced ways of learning and sharing knowledge. Despite this level of popular and policy interest in young children's interactions with digital technologies our understanding of the influence of these technologies on playing and learning, and on the role of educators, has remained surprisingly limited.

The contributions to this book fill in the gaps of our existing understanding of the field. They focus on children and families from Australia to England to Estonia, the how and why of encounters with digital technologies, the nature of digital play and questions about practice and practitioners. The book raises critical questions and offers new understandings and theoretical insights around one of the 'hot topics' in early years research.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Early Years journal.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 The role of parents and parental mediation on 0–3-year olds’ digital play with smart devices: Estonian parents’ attitudes and practices
• 2 Digital play: a new classification
• 3 Interlaced social worlds: exploring the use of social media in the kindergarten
• 4 An ecological exploration of young children’s digital play: framing children’s social experiences with technologies in early childhood
• 5 Digital play as a means to develop children’s literacy and power in the Swedish preschool
• 6 Teachers’ dispositions towards the role of digital devices in play-based pedagogy in early childhood education
• 7 Developing a measure to understand young children’s Internet cognition and cyber-safety awareness: a pilot test
• Index