An ecological exploration of young children’s digital play : framing children’s social experiences with technologies in early childhood

This article outlines an ecological framework for describing children’s social experiences during digital play. It presents evidence from a study that explored how 3- to 5-year-old children negotiated their social experiences as they used technologies in preschool. Utilising a systematic and iterative cycle of data collection and analysis, children’s interactions with 24 technological resources were examined over a nine-month period and across three phases. Findings reveal that children played in clusters, exhibiting a multitude of social behaviours and interactions and varied degrees of social participation, and assumed various social status roles and technological positions. These behaviours formed part of a Digital Play System, which in turn was influenced by the Preschool System, which comprises children and practitioners as active agents, technological affordances, and the cultural systems, routines and practices of the early childhood setting. Ultimately, children’s social experiences during digital play cannot be determined by any single element of the ecological system

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

Understanding children's voice from birth to five : dilemmas in participation and rights

Young children are often marginalised in the drive to address children’s participation and their wider set of rights (Alderson et al., 2005). This talk will discuss the role of our youngest citizens in ‘voice’ discussions and the participatory rights-based agenda. It is grounded in a research project titled Look Who’s Talking: Eliciting Voice from Birth to Seven (Wall et al., 2017). Seeking to connect with children’s play-based nursery experiences, we invited children to conduct a range of arts-based activities including drawing, craft-making, sculpting, a themed ‘play basket’ with various props, puppetry, videography, and informal conversations as a route to understand children’s own perceptions of ‘voice’. We were keen to establish ways of working with children that centred on their own creativity and play, shaped by the materials we provided but not directed by us. However, we struggled to balance our own agenda with the more open-ended methods we had used. We argue that an intergenerational approach to eliciting voices—in which adults are not afraid to shape the agenda, but do so in responsive, gradual, and sensitive ways—creates the potential for a more inclusive experience for children that also meets researcher needs. Yet, as part of this project we were left questioning whether children were actually interested in consultation about voice, or whether we as researchers were imposing this ‘right’ on then. We questioned who we were consulting for, as we positioned ourselves as experts. This dilemma of balancing children’s interests alongside the researcher/adult as ‘expert’ will underpin this talk

5 Nations Annual Early Years Summit : Report from the Summit Held at Glasgow City Chambers on 23 August 2018

Early Years Scotland (EYS) hosted the inaugural 5 Nations Annual Early Years Summit in the City Chambers in Glasgow. Glasgow City Council very kindly gifted us this prestigious venue to host the first ELC Summit. We are delighted with the agreement that this will now become a significant annual event. Across the United Kingdom and Ireland, early childhood provision is diverse, in large part to the devolution of powers across the nations of the United Kingdom. Each nation operates independently, within the remit of their individual policy, guidance and curricula to shape their early childhood education and care agenda, which results in commonalities as well as major differences in provision across the nations. Despite the close borders, until now, there has been little attempt to compile a picture of common challenges, dilemmas and areas of concern across the United Kingdom and Ireland. Similarly, strengths of each nation are largely protected by home nations. In order to meet the best interests of the United Kingdom and Ireland’s youngest citizens, there was a desire, and continues to be, for more collaborative working across borders. This report documents the key discussions that took place in this meeting in Glasgow on 23 August 2018. Details are also provided of the agreed action points to progress this partnership working, including the decision to hold the summit on an annual basis, with each nation hosting in turn

The integration of the Internet of Toys in early childhood education: A platform for multi-layered interactions

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in the European Early Childhood Education Research Journal on 3 March 2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1350293X.2020.1735738.This paper presents findings from an on-going international study of early childhood educators’ and children’s use of new digital technologies, such as the Internet of Toys (IoToys) and the pedagogic interactions which occur when these artefacts are integrated into classrooms. Based on qualitative methodology, data have been collected in four countries: Australia, Norway, Scotland and England. Data collection includes observations of interactions with IoToys (written and video), multimedia messages (digital images, videos), short written reflections and consultations with the children. Findings across all countries show that IoToys offers a platform for interactions to become multidirectional, multidimensional and multimodal. Examining the interactions in the ecology of the playroom, this study calls for pedagogy involving IoToys to provide a platform for children’s rich symbiotic explorations, creativity, collaboration and problem solvin

Theorising enabling and building capacity for voice

There is little doubt in our minds that doing voice work is cumulative; that is to say when done authentically and with the intent to enable it is cyclical and becomes expansive as children and practitioners engage in continual dialogue and meaning making. There is a virtuous cycle that overlays practice – the more you engage with children and young people the more they will engage with you and the more fluent the dialogue becomes. This rests on the caveat that the process build on mutual trust, relationships and meaningful action as described in Chapter 6, without which the cycle breaks down. Nevertheless, the more you tackle the dilemmas inherent in voice work, the more successful and effective it will be

Family learning and working in lockdown : navigating crippling fear and euphoric joy to support children's literacy

This paper offers a nuanced perspective of two families’ lockdown literacy journeys with their young children during the COVID 19 pandemic. We present informal home learning examples stimulated by play and by school-sanctioned synchronous and asynchronous activities from homes geographically miles apart yet close in terms of shared experience. In response to the catch-up and learning loss narrative which threatens to overshadow some of the positive learning experiences taking place at home, we redirect the ‘catch-up’ narrative towards a nuanced understanding of family learning at home by articulating the complexity of circumstance. Methodologically, drawing on Autoethnography, we present vignettes of lockdown life from Scotland and Michigan, USA. Throughout this paper we articulate challenges with the catch-up narrative and root our conclusions in the early childhood philosophy that learning extends beyond the mind to a whole body, holistic experience

Grasping the dynamics of creative play

In this article we give a brief overview of research findings presented in a recent paper 'Exploring the Pedagogic Culture of Creative Play' in Early Childhood Education available in the Journal of Early Childhood Research. The central focus of the journal article is on children’s creative play but from the perspective that the world is complex and cannot neatly be comparmentalised. From that perspective, we present an understanding about how the interlinking elements of a particular context shape how children’s creative play presents itself. We do not suggest that there is a typology or framework to follow which will result in children’s creativity. Rather we suggest that creativity is highly context specific and even small changes in the context will shift children’s creative experience. We say this from a positive stance because it provides opportunities for children’s creative expression to flourish in a multitude of different ways and provides practitioners opportunities to facilitate various aspects of creative play by considering the composition of the pedagogic culture

Participatory methods for understanding 0-3s' technology use in family homes

In the third article in this series, Dr Lorna Arnott from The Strathclyde Institute of Education and Dr Zinnia Mevawalla from the University of Strathclyde, discuss the participatory methods used to conduct research with babies for their project

Wee people, Big Feelings 2022

From March 2021 until July 2022, Starcatchers collaborated on the project Wee People, Big Feelings with the Ministry of Defence and Scots Corner Early Learning and Childcare Centre. Many of the children who attend the setting have a parent, or close family member, in the armed forces which makes them susceptible to The Emotional Cycle of Deployment. Whilst there are many resources on offer for primary children and above, the Ministry of Defence recognised the lack of resources to support babies, very young children, or the people who care for them. "Every forces family is different, and every deployment is different: sometimes we cope well with the transitions, and sometimes it can bring a lot of challenges. There's no one size fits all approach, it's important we develop a repertoire of techniques to support wee ones and their families" - Early Years Practitioner and Forces Family Membe