Early Learning in the Digital Age

Colette Gray, Ioanna Palaiologou, Colette Gray, Ioanna Palaiologou, Author

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781526446831
  9781526446824
• eBook ISBN:
  9781526463142
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Technology

Digital practices are forging ahead in leaps and bounds.

Examining digital practices in early childhood education, this book seeks to inform the discussion on how digital technologies are best integrated into play-based pedagogy, and demonstrates effective practices that enhance children's learning and development. With a range of international contributors, perspectives, and case studies, the fusion of play and portable technology is explored through contemporary research.

Part I Play and learning in a digital age

1 Children’s playful encounters with iPads

Aderonke Folorunsho

Ioanna Palaiologou

Chapter overview

A plethora of research evidence suggests that digital technology has become a major part of the lives of children and that many homes in developed countries are digitally fluent (e.g. Edwards et al., 2017; Palaiologou, 2016; Plowman, 2015). There has been a dramatic increase, especially in tablet use by children (Dunn et al., 2016), which has overtaken television as children’s first choice of digital entertainment (Livingstone et al., 2014). Although we know a great deal about what happens in home life and the inclusion of technology in everyday activities (Plowman, Stephen and McPake, 2010), research on how early childhood education can use these devices is still emerging (Fleer, 2017; Yelland, 2015, 2016). Thus, this chapter, based on a mixed methods study that was conducted in English early childhood education, discusses children’s playful encounters with technology and, through observational case studies, explores how children interact with digital devices in their everyday life.

This chapter aims to help you understand:

• what research defines as digital play
• how children interact with digital devices
• how children develop their play with digital devices
• implications for early childhood education.

Digital play

The presence of technologies in children’s daily lives has led to the term ‘digital play’ being introduced to characterise the ways children engage with digital devices (e.g. Bird and Edwards, 2015; Stephen and Plowman, 2014). An emerging body of research, as it will be seen throughout this book, also examines children’s digital profiles and the nature of these interactions/encounters to see whether they are playful (Marsh et al., 2016), contribute to children’s playful experiences (Arnott, 2016; Danby et al., 2017; Miller et al., 2017) and ‘extend play to include them in the repertoire of play experiences’ (Yelland and Gilbert, 2017: 33). Some researchers (e.g. Stephen and Edwards, 2018) go further by arguing that traditional views and theories of play are not connected with the use of digital technologies and identify the need for research on ‘an alternative theory of digital play’ (p. 85). Although there is research that examines traditional play (e.g. Brooker et al., 2014; Wood, 2015) and how it provides a platform for learning for young children, the nature of digital play as a ‘new’ type of play has not been examined in full. Despite the research, it still seems that early childhood educators are concerned about what digital play entails (Huh, 2017) and whether it has any educational value (Palaiologou, 2016).

The term ‘digital play’ has been used to describe the range of activities children engage in with digital technology (Kline et al., 2003) and its inclusion in play (Howrey, 2016; Kucirkova, 2017) these digital devices comprise touchscreens (smartphones, tablets) and applications of digital content, video games and internet-connected toys. Regardless of the emerging field of research, some believe and argue that digital play is not real play (Palmer, 2015) and that such technology may cause a decline in spontaneous forms of play (Ferguson, 2015; Kabali et al., 2015; Nathanson, 2015; Radesky et al., 2015). Despite these beliefs, emerging research is beginning to shed light on how children’s engagement with digital technology can be viewed as play (Arnott, 2016; Danby et al., 2017; Edwards, 2013; Fleer, 2017; Holloway et al., 2016; Marsh et al., 2016; Slutsky and DeShelter, 2017; Stephen and Plowman, 2014). This body of evidence is significant for early childhood educators because it will help them understand how digital play occurs (Bird and Edwards, 2015; Edwards and Bird, 2017).

Typically, research on children’s digital play uses descriptors or types of play associated with non-digital play to frame children’s digital engagements. Marsh et al. (2016), for example, examined how apps promote play and creativity by adapting Hughes’ (2002) taxonomy of play to their research. The study showed that ‘traditional’ characteristics of play could be applied in a digital context. They argued that what changed when the children engaged with digital technology was not the type of play, but the context in which the play occurred, meaning that play occurred in a digital context. The characteristics of play did not change because the mode of play changed. Types of play such as symbolic, creative, role, socio-dramatic and collaborative were evident in a digital context (Sullivan and Bers, 2016; Zaman et al., 2016). Yelland (2015, 2016) used the term ‘playful explorations’ to describe children’s engagement with digital technology and proposed that these are about making digital and non-digital activities available for children. She argued that isolating digital activities is not the way forward if we want to understand how digital play occurs. Thus, she urged fo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on the Editors and Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Play and learning in a digital age
• 1 Children’s playful encounters with iPads
• 2 Open-world games An exploration of creative play
• 3 From play to media A physical approach to digital media
• 4 Playing with technology outdoors
• Part II Multimodel spaces, opportunities and agency
• 5 It is not only about the tools! Professional digital competence
• 6 Parents’ perspectives on the use of touchscreen technology by 0–3-year-olds
• 7 Integrating technology to support children’s agency and transition to school
• 8 The digital divide Access, skills, use and ideological barriers
• 9 Digital inequity, access and provision The experience of Irish-medium schools in Northern Ireland
• 10 Digital citizens How preschool teachers and children communicate in a digital and global world
• Part III Digitally enabled learning in the 21st century
• 11 An education-centred approach to digital media education
• 12 Teachers’ digital practices in the classroom
• 13 Multimodal media production Children’s meaning making when producing animation in a play-based pedagogy
• 14 Mobile learning and the outdoors
• 15 Digital manipulatives and mathematics
• Index