Children's agency and reading with story-apps: considerations of design, behavioural and social dimensions

A comprehensive understanding of children’s motivation to read e-books requires a multifaceted and contextualized conceptualization of children’s agency. In this study, agency was operationalized as a set of behaviour indicators of children’s control (behavioural agency), adults’ perceptions of reader identities afforded by the content and format of books (social agency), and specific multimedia and interactive features that afford personalisation (agentic design). In a comparative qualitative case study, seven preschool children and their mothers were observed reading four story-based interactive e-books (story-apps). Multimethod analysis that combined design evaluation with observational and interview data revealed behavioural agency was demonstrated in the children’s frequent, prolonged, and repetitive physical engagement with the story-apps. Social agency became foregrounded in relation to constitutive reader identities. Agentic design was related to children’s sense of autonomy. The findings have implications for how we theorize, operationalize, and apply the concept of agency in children’s e-books and reading for pleasure

Theorising materiality in children's digital books

Participatory literacies are new ways of experiencing narratives and of “interpreting, making, sharing and belonging in increasingly globally and digitally mediated cultures” (Wohlwend 2017a: 62). This paper discusses the material features of children’s digital books and the extent to which they support participatory literacies. The material features of digital books are conceptualised in terms of their external and internal properties. Based on a theoretical discussion and empirical observations it is argued that specific internal material properties of children’s digital books, namely their interactivity and multimedia, are uniquely positioned to support participatory literacies and are therefore a site of novelty in children’s experiences of narratives

How Can Digital Personal(ized) Books Enrich the Language Arts Curriculum?

Digital personal(ized) books are a relatively recent addition to the rich repertoire of literacy resources available to pre-K and elementary school teachers. This article summarizes the key ways in which personal(ized) books can enrich the language arts curriculum, drawing on a series of empirically based examples. The value of personalization in the digital stories is explained theoretically using the framework of five As: autonomy, authorship, authenticity, attachment, and aesthetics. The five As apply to personal(ized) stories created for, or by, young students and are used to generate some practical suggestions for future use of touchscreens in the classroom

Parents' and Childrens' Engagement When Sharing Personalised Books

This study aimed to compare parents’ and children’s engagement during shared book reading of a personalised, non-personalised and a favourite book. A within-subjects comparison of seven native English parents and their children aged between 12 and 33 months was performed, with a multi-method design in order to cross-validate the findings. Data from parents’ questionnaire reports, interviews and field notes, indicated high levels of children’s engagement with the personalised books. Video observations showed higher specific engagement levels for children when comparing the personalised with nonpersonalised book and for parents also with the child’s favourite book. There was most correspondence between parents’ and children’s engagement in the personalised book condition. The results suggest that personalised books foster a joint, specific engagement in parents and children and this is probably due to the personal information they contain. A multimethod assessment proved to be an effective technique to adequately address the multifaceted nature of parents’ and children’s engagement in sharing different types of books

Book review: Artificial intimacy: virtual friends, digital lovers and algorithmic matchmakers by Rob Brooks

In Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers and Algorithmic Matchmakers, Rob Brooks explores how new digital technologies are changing our experiences of intimacy and social interactions. While the book provides an excellent historic overview of how sexual practices change in tandem with technological advances, Natalia Kucirkova questions whether it fully grapples with the social issues and ethical questions raised by these transformations. Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers and Algorithmic Matchmakers. Rob Brooks. Columbia University Press. 2021

Trans- and intra- apps: innovating the app market and use

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the challenges, potential and theoretical possibilities of apps and considers the processes of change for education and home learning environments

Storytelling and story-acting: co-construction in action

In the light of sustained interest in the potential value of young children’s narrative play, this paper examines Vivian Gussin Paley’s (1990) approach to storytelling and story-acting, in this case with three to five year-olds. It scrutinizes how children’s narratives are co-constructed during adult-child and peer interactions through spoken and embodied modes, as their stories are scribed by an adult and later dramatised by their peers. Data are drawn from an evaluation of an eight-week training programme, based on Paley’s approach, designed for early years professionals and undertaken in different geographic and demographic locations in England. Naturalistic data collection techniques including video and field notes were used to record the storytelling and story-acting of 18 case study children. The resultant data were subject to close discursive and multimodal analysis of storytelling and story-acting interactions. Findings reveal discursive co-construction ‘in action’ and illustrate how the child story-tellers, story actors and practitioners co-construct narratives through complex combinations of gaze, body posture and speech in responsive and finely-tuned interactional patterns. The study contributes significantly to knowledge about how young children’s narratives are co-constructed through multiple modes in the classroom

Socio-material directions for developing empirical research on children’s e-reading: A systematic review and thematic synthesis of the literature across disciplines

This review integrates literature on cross-disciplinary quantitative and qualitative studies related to children’s reading on screen published between January 2016 and September 2017, with a focus on the researchers’ epistemological perspectives on knowledge and learning. Johri’s (2011) framework of socio-material assemblages, which synthesises epistemological dualities, is used to examine the ways in which researchers conceptualise children’s learning with digital books. The review shows that extant empirical studies map directly onto the social part of Johri’s framework (examination of child and adult variables and behavioural characteristics) and onto the material aspects of children’s digital books (examination of books’ contents and features). Only theoretical studies pay equal attention to social and material aspects in their conceptualisation of children’s reading on screen. Overall, it is recommended that in addition to cross-disciplinary and multiple methods, researchers consider socio-material assemblages to advance the field. A socio-material perspective could address time and space shifts in children’s reading on screen and might provide a springboard for future epistemological developments within the field

Book review: Artificial intimacy: virtual friends, digital lovers and algorithmic matchmakers by Rob Brooks

In Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers and Algorithmic Matchmakers, Rob Brooks explores how new digital technologies are changing our experiences of intimacy and social interactions. While the book provides an excellent historic overview of how sexual practices change in tandem with technological advances, Natalia Kucirkova questions whether it fully grapples with the social issues and ethical questions raised by these transformations. Artificial Intimacy: Virtual Friends, Digital Lovers and Algorithmic Matchmakers. Rob Brooks. Columbia University Press. 2021

Percolating spaces:creative ways of using digital technologies to connect young children’s school and home lives

Contemporary research suggests there are many missed opportunities for home and school to work together to define and promote effective practices with digital technologies, especially in early years. This study outlines ways in which one Early Years classroom creatively promoted bidirectional connections between children’s learning with technologies at home and in school. Nested in a posthumanist perspective on space and classroomness (Burnett, 2014), the study illuminates the complex spatial entanglement among home, school and technologies in the form of enhanced vignettes. As a space-based interpretive case study that emerged from a larger project, the data collection methods revolved around a set of two visits by each researcher, one year apart, plus analyses of school documentation and online interactions. We integrate diverse data sources to argue that innovative, multimodal practices of teaching, learning and assessment can be designed and implemented imaginatively, deploying a range of digital technologies to connect with children’s and parents’ home lives. Use of multimedia affordances of technologies, attention to children’s physical and material interactions with resources and strategic school policy made it possible for influences to percolate between home and school, to the enhancement of children’s learning in the moment