Is digital play popular? Examining parents' play preferences for their children

Dijital oyun bugün evlere ve çocukların yaşamlarına girmiş ve beraberinde pek çok tartışmayı getirmiştir. Okul öncesi dönem çocukları için dijital oyunun kullanımı ve etkileri konusunda tartışmaların çok olmasına rağmen konuyla ilgili araştırmalar sınırlıdır. Bu nedenle bu araştırmanın amacı ebeveynlerin çocukları için oyun tercihlerini dijital oyuna odaklanarak incelemektir. Araştırmaya çocuğu anaokuluna devam eden 351 ebeveyn katılmıştır. Veriler eşli karşılaştırmalar metodu ile geliştirilen Ebeveyn Oyun Tercih Ölçeği ile toplanmıştır. Araştırma verilerinin analizinde iki yönlü ANOVA ve MANOVA kullanılmıştır. Araştırma bulguları ebeveynlerin en fazla yapı inşa oyunlarını en az ise dijital oyunları çocukları için tercih ettiklerini göstermiştir. Ebeveynlerin eğitim ve çalışma durumlarının ve çocukların ise yaş ve cinsiyetlerinin oyun tercihleri üzerinde ilişkili olduğu saptanmıştır. Oyun tercihleri ve günde farklı oyun türlerine ayrılan süreler ilişkili bulunmuştur. Bu bulgular doğrultusunda evde oyunu destekleyici farkındalık çalışmaları ve ailelerin çocukları ile oyun oynayabilecekleri sosyal alanların oluşturulması ve yaygınlaştırılması önerilmiştir

Multimodal Lifeworlds: Pedagogies for Play Inquiries and Explorations

In this paper, we advocate a reconceptualisation of early learning in the 21st century in the form of multimodal lifeworlds. We review the research literature on the role of new technologies for young children’s learning, both in their homes and in educational contexts. We contend that, in order to make our work accessible, and to describe the ways in which digital artefacts can create new contexts for learning, we should foreground the learning that is possible in contemporary multimodal learning ecologies. We raise complex questions and issues that require consideration as we plan for pedagogies that will encourage, support and transform children’s learning. The paper presents an understanding of new and continually evolving technologies as artefacts that inhabit the contemporary child’s lifeworld. These resources form part of their suite of learning devices, which impact on children’s identities, learning ecologies and how they make meanings of self. Finally, we present a possible conceptualization, which combines these elements that are relevant for pedagogical planning, discussed in the article, to consider how new technologies, as social, cultural and personal artefacts can contribute to children’s learning ecologies

Neoliberal agency, relational agency, and the representation of the agentic child in the Sociology of Childhood

This critical commentary fulfils the regulations laid out by the University of Westminster as part of the submission for the award of PhD by Published Works. It accompanies nine published works that form the body of this submission and outlines their coherence, originality and contribution to knowledge. This body of work were published over a period of 6 years (2013-2019) and collectively is situated within, and at the intersection of the fields of sociology and childhood studies. In these works I interrogate the canonical concept of agency and I argue that the inherent contradictions of how agency is conceptualised, has more to do with the neoliberal model of agency being applied than whether children can and do exercise agency. The spaces of popular culture and of research with children are both contexts within which, dominant images of the child are reified and indeed produced. They offer both serious and playful spaces to critique and to reimagine the concept of agency and the potential that it offers. By considering explicitly how agency intersects with related concepts of vulnerability, care, participation, relationships and voice this body of work demonstrates there is significant analytical value in the concept of agency as applied to children and childhood. However, neoliberal models, which prize self-interested, individualistic, independent autonomy fail to acknowledge the lived realities of children’s lives or their situated and embedded nature in families, peer networks and assemblages of people and things. Like adults, children are not wholly agentic, nor are they utterly powerless. Rather, as I argue in this commentary, the agency of children is situated, contextual, contingent, and most importantly, relational; emerging in interesting and unexpected ways

Now it’s Your Turn. Preschool Children’s Social and Emotional Interaction in Small Groups

There is concern over social and emotional skill development in early childhood settings. The aim of this systematic observational study was to examine children’s prosocial and problem behaviors in small group settings. Especially, we studied how gender and closeness of friendships influence on children’s group level behavior. Altogether, nine video recordings were coded to observe peer interactions among children during tablet game sessions, where all 15 participants, aged 5 and 6 years, were allocated into four-member groups. The recordings were coded with a modified version of the Social Skills Improvement System Rating Scale. Social network analysis was employed to analyze the density and centrality of the interactions. Our results showed a wide variety of frequencies in different behaviors. In all, prosocial behavior was four times more typical than problem behavior, and there were more initiating than responding behaviors. Unlike prosocial behaviors, which were often verbal, most problem behaviors were nonverbal. The children interacted more actively with their best friends, and boys contributed more to both prosocial and problem behaviors than girls. A practical and concise peer interaction observation tool (PIOT) was developed for this study that can be used to follow children’s social and emotional skills in peer interactions

A constructivist approach to elementary school music learning experiences with reference to the ideas of John Dewey

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-132). ix, 132 leaves ; 29 cm..The term "constructivism" has become increasingly prominent in the field of education. The purpose of this· investigation was to examine some fundamental concepts associated with constructivism in order to determine how constructivist pedagogy might inform the theory and practice of elementary school music education, with particular focus on the ideas of John Dewey . . To that end, this investigation first explored a brief history of the concepts associated with constructivism. Thereafter, it considered distinct branches of constructivism as well as current applications in contemporary education, including descriptions of four studies that linked music in some manner to constructivism. This study then examined John Dewey's concept of"art as experience" as a theoretical perspective by which music educators might employ a constructivist approach in the elementary music classroom. The author suggested how Dewey's perspective might inform specific learning experiences in elementary music education, and discussed current approaches to music education in a constructivist framework in terms of some specific benefits and challenges. This analysis concluded that Dewey's concept of experience could both nurture and criticize contemporary constructivist thought as it may relate to music education. Specifically, the author suggested that certain premises of music education as aesthetic education, particularly to the extent that they are centered in a philosophy of music per se and tend to negate the interconnectedness of environment and organism, may be fundamentally incompatible with a constructivist pedagogy informed by Dewey's idea

Cosmology and Curriculum: A Vision for an Ecozoic Age.

The text of this dissertation explores interconnections between cosmology and curriculum. I believe the demands of an Ecozoic Age will initiate a reconceptualizing of curriculum. Further, I believe the particular cosmological perspective I advance can help us with this reconceptualization. Chapter 1 utilizes the multi-faceted insights of scientific, historical, and speculative thought. The texts used in this chapter incorporate an engagement with past cultures (Ong, Eliade), with contemporary theoretical perspectives (Munitz, Haught, and Stafford), and with a scholarship that envisions alternative futures (Bohm). Chapter 2 uncovers how modernity\u27s relationship to the earth is rooted in the scientific, political, and social philosophies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The mechanistic and rationally controlling world views launched in these centuries still govern our destructive attitudes toward the earth. Contemporary societal and educational ecologies are scrutinized. Modernity\u27s dualistic structures, its epistemologies of control, its analytico-referential discourse, and its liberal discursive practices are questioned. Bower\u27s writings are added to those used in Chapter 1. Chapter 3 enunciates a particular vision of cosmology as story, change, and interpretation. Utilizing philosophical hermeneutics, the complex and interlocking dynamics of social and cultural phenomena are disclosed, and the effects these occurrences have on a society\u27s cosmology are scrutinized. Cosmology as story is essential to this interpretive endeavor. Chapter 4 examines contemporary cosmological scholarship, utilizing the works of Berry, Oliver with Gersham, Sagan, Sahtouris, and Toulmin. The significant and divergent contributions of each thinker are explored, especially as these thinkers reenvision human-earth relations. Chapter 5 establishes the connections between cosmology and curriculum resulting in a new curricular paradigm for an Ecozoic Age. I suggest a cosmic vision that goes beyond survival and critique to creativity. The integrative movement of theory (insight) and praxis (creative action) is contextualized within a vision of human-earth relations. The Coda marks the finale of the dissertation. Its purpose is twofold: to contextualize the cosmological curricular theory presented in the preceding chapters and to suggest a hermeneutic methodology for earth-centered schools

Reading Against the Goo: Goosebumps, YTV, and Canadian Children's Television

This thesis examines the oversight of Canadian children’s television through the Canadian-American co-venture Goosebumps (1995-1998) and the Canadian specialty children’s network YTV. Grounding Goosebumps within the North American post-network television landscape, this thesis argues that the show anticipates hypercommercialism, a term used to define “the way in which advertisers tend to colonize media spaces” (Asquith 2012). This thesis proposes that by detaching YTV and Goosebumps from the threatening connotations of hypercommercialism, scholars can better engage with the show’s reception. It further contends that Goosebumps is imbued with sensorial and perceptual operations which can help children achieve the “mastery of intertextuality” (Kinder 1999). Analyzing how the poetics of the children’s horror genre are articulated through the show’s form, this thesis argues that Goosebumps cultivates the child audience through sensorial and perceptual operations, preparing them to engage with increasingly hyper-saturated media spaces. This audience training is problematized by the suffusion of the aesthetics of children’s horror into the marketing efforts of Goosebumps and YTV. Analyzing two multi-part episodes of Goosebumps, this thesis argues for the merits of textually analyzing children’s programming, an approach that opens up inventive pedagogies through which young people and academics alike can critically engage with commercial children’s television

Studying literacy as situated social practice : the application and development of a research orientation for purposes of addressing educational and social issues in South African contexts

This is a study of the application in South Africa of a social practices approach to the study of literacy. A social practices approach conceptualizes literacy practices as variable practices which link people, linguistic resources, media objects, and strategies for meaning-making in contextualized ways. These literacy practices are seen as varying across broad social contexts, and across social domains within these contexts, and they can be studied ethnographically. I examine how this approach is applied across four critical themes of study in South Africa, namely: the uses and valuations of reading and writing by adults without schooling; the historical circumstances whereby literacy comes to be identified as a resource of European culture in colonial South Africa; children's early engagement with literacy informal and informal contexts; and reading and writing in relation to electronic and digital media. I review examples of ethnographic research in each case, in which I have participated as a researcher, and examine how the approach has been applied, tested and modified in each case of its application. The research in each case showed literacy's incorporation in complex and variable ways in situated, located human activities. Whereas the first application of the social practices approach, that of the SoUL project detailed how literacy operated as everyday practice amongst people with little or no schooling, the research lacked a theoretical perspective to explain how these practices came to take the form and status that they did, as regards the influences upon them from outside the immediate settings that were studied. Over the subsequent studies I developed a revised approach to the study of literacy which detailed the explanatory usefulness of studying how literacy practices that network across larger domains than the local have effect on the construction of local practices, in both historical as well as contemporary examples. Literacy practices were not simply the products of local activity but involved rather the particular local application of communication technologies, language and artefacts that originated from outside the immediate social space. However, local applications involved original, indeterminate and varied uses of those resources. Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-223)