Secret Lives of Children in the Digital Age

Disruptive Devices and Resourceful Learners

Linda Laidlaw, Joanne O'Mara, Suzanna Wong

• Publisher: Myers Education Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781975504731
• Topic: Bildung
• Subtopic: Sprachen unterrichten

A 2023 SPE Outstanding Book Award Winner
2023 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award Secret Lives of Children in the Digital Age: Disruptive Devices and Resourceful Learners offers an examination of the impact on children, their families and their teachers, as digital technologies and new literacy practices have rapidly transformed how children learn, play and communicate. While ease of access to enormous knowledge bases presents many benefits and advantages, mobile screen technologies are often perceived by parents and teachers as disruptive and worrisome. Developed from a wide range of the authors' research over the past decade to an examination of remote learning during the COVID 19 pandemic, this book posits that while teachers, parents and governments are focused on protecting children, what is often neglected is children's own agency and capacity to engage with mobile technologies in ways that support them in pursuing their own interests, pleasures and learning. This text works to disrupt boundaries in research, policy and practice, between home and school, and across virtual and actual worlds, positioning children as both users of media texts and coproducers of digitally mediated knowledge, with peers, family and teachers. Secret Lives of Children in the Digital Age brings together over a decade of shared research, conversations, writing and friendships across diverse geographies. Over the past decade, digital technologies have rapidly transformed how children learn, play and communicate. Tablet devices such as iPads are now ubiquitous in the lives of many children. Such devices are easy to use and provide multimodal options (i.e. operable via touch, speech, and icons, as well as conventional text). Users do not need to be conventionally literate to have access to powerful search engines, social media platforms, a range of 'apps' and games, or to be able to share their own creations on publication venues such as YouTube, TikTok and more. While such ease of access can present many benefits and advantages when positioned in relation to children's use, but this access is not without concern, since mobile screen technologies are often perceived by parents and teachers as disruptive and worrisome, with popular media ramping up fears via publication of sensational articles. Secret Lives of Children in the Digital Age contributes to research on digital literacies, and offers a pedagogical examination of digital possibilities for bringing playfulness and innovation into learning. Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Literacy Research | Qualitative Research Methods | Early Literacy | Research Methods in Language and Literacy | Introduction to Qualitative Research | New and Digital Literacies | Digital Media Education | Theories of Language and Literacy

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

THIS BOOK OFFERS an examination of some of the impacts of new and emerging shifts in digital devices and practices on children, their families, and their teachers. It brings together over a decade of shared research, conversations, writing, and friendships across diverse geographies. Over the past decade, digital technologies have rapidly transformed how children learn, play, and communicate. Tablet devices such as iPads are now ubiquitous in the lives of many children. Such devices are easy to use and provide multimodal options (i.e., operable via touch, speech, and icons, as well as conventional text). Users do not need to be conventionally literate to have access to powerful search engines, social media platforms, a range of “apps” and games, or to be able to share their own creations on publication venues such as YouTube, TikTok, and more. While such ease of access can present many benefits and advantages, when positioned in relation to children’s use, mobile screen technologies are often perceived by parents and teachers as disruptive and worrisome, with popular media ramping up fears via publication of sensational articles.

Typically, when new pedagogical changes that diverge from traditional practices are introduced within literacy education, “back to basics” rebound initiatives are common responses. This includes the standards-based and accountability-focused approaches to instruction in the English language arts experienced in the United States, Canada, and other countries (see, e.g., Burnett, 2016; Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2016; Dombey, 2014). Such moves can increase resistance by teachers and schools in a willingness to adopt new or unfamiliar practices, as well as increase parental anxieties about achievement for their children. As our research has shown in Canadian and Australian contexts, both teachers and parents struggle with concerns about how to best navigate and support digitally mediated literacy learning and play.

Our central argument in this book is that while adults—parents, caregivers, teachers, educational stakeholders—concern themselves with how to manage children’s use of digital devices and learning, what is often neglected is the realm of children’s own agency, desires, and intentions. As our research has shown, children themselves are often taking up new digital practices in ways that allow them to pursue their own interests, agendas, social relations, text production, and digital identities. Through these endeavors they can also be disrupting, or attempting to disrupt, the systems and controls that adults have created in the aims of protection and management.

In this book, we attempt to provide a counter narrative to challenge several taken-for-granted assumptions in relation to digital practices and children. Often when it comes to young learners, schools and early childhood settings have created unhelpful binaries where “new” and “old” literacy practices are set in opposition (Merchant, 2007), and where innovation and change can be met with resistance. Our text promotes a shift toward a more complex perspective, where new/old and home/school dichotomies are challenged, based on theoretical research from complexity thinking (Davis & Sumara, 2006; Doll, 1993) and frames from literacy theory (e.g., Green, 2012, 2017; Scott & Marsh, 2018) that understand digital communication as working across multiple, interwoven dimensions and address the ways in which boundaries are blurring in the digital era (e.g., Burnett & Merchant, 2016; Carrington, 2017).

The book, as we were writing, also emerged across changing circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the early stages of the writing of this text and impacted the experiences of the teachers and children with whom we worked in our research, as well as our own lives, and necessitated some examination of what was happening for children, their families, and their teachers in relation to sudden online learning and increased time at home working and playing with digital resources. Thus, we have also included examples that address some of the shifts that have been provoked by pandemic learning conditions.

The ideas presented in this book have been developed over a decade of shared and individual research projects and ongoing interconnected conversations with one another, in person—at conferences and during research trips and sabbaticals—and through various communication technologies across time zones and geographies. When we started this work over a decade ago, Jo and Linda were academic parents of young children, connecting through shared interests in literacy research, changing digital practices, and our interests in participatory, autobiographical, and ethnographic methods. We position ourselves as accidental ethnographers in our roles as parents and the serendipitous research interests (Laidlaw et al., 2019; O’Mara & Laidlaw, 2020) that have been inspired through our children’s literacy, technology, and schooling experiences. Suzanna joined our collaborative projects as a doctoral researcher as she transitioned out of her role as a classroom teacher and school district leader and into her PhD program and has continued to work with us on recent projects as a research collaborator. Linda and Suzanna were both situated in Alberta, Canada during much of the research connected to this book, and Jo is located in Melbourne, Australia.

The work we report on draws from a series of four interlinked studies that have spanned the past decade and that were supported through three Canadian federally funded research grants (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC]). Throughout this work, we have been tracing developments announced by the arrival of mobile smart screen devices with a focus on children, parents, and teachers. Our initial pilot study explored the use of iPads in the classroom when these devices were new to schools and examined ways these might be used for meaning making and story production, using ethnographic observations and interviews as our primary methods. As a part of that initial project, we also worked with a classroom teacher, Lee Makovichuk (now a doctoral researcher herself), and a teacher research focus group.

Our subsequent 4-year study focused on how parents, teachers, and children were experiencing and responding to changes in literacy technologies, looking to uncover both the benefits and advantages of mobile digital devices as perceived by parents and teachers, as well as their concerns, questions, and some of the hurdles they experienced in technology use. Within this study, we engaged in child, parent, teacher, and educational stakeholder interviews, as well as online qualitative surveys, which enabled us to access participants in geographically diverse regions across Canada. The surveys provided us with a broad range of responses and allowed us to note some emerging trends and patterns in relation to perspectives on technology. Thirty-five teachers and 88 parents completed the online surveys.

As a part of the same 4-year study, we were also interested in looking at the influence of popular media, as these were frequently referenced by parents and teachers we interviewed. We developed a systematic review of popular media articles addressing children and technology. Our data set comprises 565 articles gathered from sources such as news articles, parent and teacher blogs, and articles prominent in social media posts. We began formally gathering media articles in September 2013 following media perspectives over time on children and emerging mobile technologies and looking for patterns and trends. We continued gathering examples into 2018, using February 2018 as our end point for this phase of our review. With the start of the pandemic, we have started a new popular media collection that we will continue to follow—however, some of this work has found a place in this book. Our tracing of these online texts reflects our understanding of popular media as an integrated network of communication and semiotic systems with the potential to influence parent and educator actions and attitudes.

Suzanna’s doctoral research study also provides examples for our text. Suzanna observed 11 young children engaging with digital literacy practices at home and in their communities over a 4-year period (2012 to 2016). This research included participant observations and informal conversations with preschoolers in their homes, semi-structured parent interviews, parent focus group meetings, and gathered children’s literacy artifacts. Suzanna’s participants were located in Alberta, Canada and in Victoria, Australia.

In our fourth collaborative study, we have returned to the 11 children who were Suzanna’s original study participants. This follow-up study continues to examine participants’ literacy practices in their home and out-of-school lives in western Canada and southeastern Australia, and as they have transitioned from elementary school. As a linked part of this study, we have also worked with a teacher focus group exploring digital literacy teaching and learning, with an emphasis on professional development and innovative classroom practice.

In addition to her work with our Canadian projects, Jo brings to the text work from several Australian Research Council-funded projects on digital games and intercultural understanding in primary and secondary schools, in addition to contracted research with Australian government education authorities on areas such as learning spaces, improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander success, and literacy. These projects have all been occurring alongside our shared work, and the conversations have continued through, across, and between our projects.

In addition to the work of our various studies, our shared work is autobiographical and autoethnographic, and as we have stated elsewhere, it begins with small stories (Behar, 1996) or “examples from home and our lives as parents, branching outward to create new dialogues with our professional and theoretical understandings” (O’Mara & Laidlaw, 2020, p. 163). We hope that this book will provoke the sorts of dialogic conversations that we (Jo, Linda, Suzanna) have experienced together—addressing theoretical, professional, and practical considerations in exploring the messy and sometimes uncertain nature of children’s engagements in the digital realm, and the new demands placed on parents and teachers in the technoliteracy era.

The chapters of the book are organized in two main parts. Part I, Disruption, comprises Chapters 2–5 and focuses on the emergence of mobile digital technologies used by children and the ways this has provoked shifts in practices and perspectives. Chapter 2 shares an article that Jo and Linda wrote in 2011, and in many ways is the starting place for the research projects that followed and for this book. At the time that we wrote it, the use of mobile devices for children (iPads and tablets) was just becoming more common, and we were interested in watching what our own young children (at the time) were doing with them. This chapter reflects on the potential of more increased home usage of mobile technologies to influence literacy teaching and learning in schools, and has framed our subsequent thinking, even when our predictions for the future differed somewhat from what eventually has taken place in relation to digital technologies in the classroom.

Chapter 3 focuses on examples from our initial pilot study and Suzanna’s dissertation study, considering how frames from complexity thinking might inform both theoretical and practical considerations for student engagement with digital practices in the classroom. While frames from complexity have become more implicit in our research and writing over time, this chapter provides some explicit description and application.

Chapter 4 examines the promise of technology for children with disabilities and differences, as well as the challenges and barriers presented when rigid systems are faced with a need to adapt, sharing comparative examples from Canada and Australia and presenting the fictional “tableau” strategy we use to bring together participant and authoethnographic data to highlight particular themes that were consistent for students with diverse abilities.

Chapter 5 concludes the Disruption section, addressing the tensions experienced by adults (teachers and parents) in relation to dealing with children’s digital experiences and learning with mobile technologies. We address the adult tensions between wanting children to be knowledgeable, “safe,” and critical consumers of digital media, and protective desires to control children’s experiences and access. This chapter focuses on our surveys and interviews of parents and teachers.

Section II, Surveillance and Secrets, focuses on some of the consequences (intended or not) and effects of children’s new digital engagements at home and at school.

Chapter 6 focuses on teacher reports and experiences addressing how administrative barriers and roadblocks to the use of mobile devices in classrooms continue to be a robust feature in many schools. Drawing from data from teacher interviews and surveys, this chapter addresses how classroom technologies may be limited, controlled and “domesticated.”

Chapter 7 shifts the focus to the digital surveillance of children occurring in homes and in schools, addressing some of the drivers of digital watchfulness. We ask “Who might be watching who?” and share examples where the tables were turned and children demonstrated their own agency in the new surveillance culture.

In Chapter 8, we address how contemporary digital culture has shifted and blurred notions of “private” and “public,” addressing the ongoing drive for children and youth to continue to seek independence and agency and to evade the gaze of parents and teachers. We present examples from child interviews and communications and our own autoethnographic examples that reveal insights into how and why such practices are emerging more widely, and address the significance of these for parents, teachers, and schools.

Chapter 9 returns to examine some of our earlier predictions developed in Chapter 2 and asks questions about the digital future for children and their parents and teachers. We examine how schools and curricula might present new opportunities and challenges for children by taking up the “hidden powers” of children in their digital endeavors and navigating the ongoing tensions.

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