Puddles and iPads: Early Childhood Education and Digital Literacies

There's a long-standing tradition in early childhood education of "child over curriculum" (Wohlwend, 2018, p. 162). This educational stance involves following young people's interests and play rather than pushing a predetermined curriculum. Rather than lacking curricular-area learning, early learning environments focused on children's interests generally present new information and opportunities through play, with the adult in a role of mentor and guide rather than a role of teller of information.

The image this type of learning usually conjures for me is that of a young person (usually MY young person) learning about how water works by stamping in it, or about gravity by dropping sand off her hands, or about ants by staring at them really closely.

And, even though I love, love, love digital literacies, I often find myself wondering how screens (with their ability to draw in a child's attention, rendering her motionless, until she seems to not even have a body and only be a pair of eyes) might play into these types of constructivist, interest-driven pedagogies. 

In a recent article, Wohlwend (2018) looked at research on child-centered literacy pedagogies that embrace new technologies. Some of her observations:

1. Family literacies are valuable. Book-reading is awesome. So is magazine-reading. So is grocery-list reading. So is television-program analysis. Valuing multiple types of literacy in the classroom is an important way to welcome all young learners.
2. Children learn with their whole bodies, and acting out books and other literacy events is an important way for children to experience literacy. 
3. There is a large body of research on the ways that young children engage with contemporary technologies in relationship to literacy. Children have been collaborating to act out video games, create movies, and extend television stories since these technologies appeared. Although these literacy practices are well-documented, this body of research isn't often included in the canon of literacy research that makes it into policy. 

Wohlwend points to literacy playshops and makerspaces as two types of classroom spaces that engage with family literacies, whole body learning, and contemporary technologies. 

Literacy playshops are imaginative spaces with costumes and props (or materials to make costumes and props) that also introduce the concept of filming and replaying a production. Here's a blog post by Wohlwend about her research on playshops. 

Makerspaces might also include some of the same recording devices as literacy playshops, but they focus more on designing, building, and playing with other components of new technologies, like coding programs or electronics. I was originally going to link to something amazing about makerspaces, but if you're interested in knowing more about them, one quick web search will give you a million ideas, so it's probably not worth me finding just one link for you.

As I was reading, I was trying to think of some other ways that literacy and contemporary technologies might intersect with child-centered pedagogies. Some ideas: set up a domino run and film it, set up a camera to take time-lapse photography of the view out of a classroom window, and, because young children love the letters in their name, invite them to use digital cameras to capture photos of the letters in their name in the environment around them.

My takeaways on this: no, I still do not like the way my children get sucked into every screen. However, even very young children can engage in child-centered learning environments that value digital literacies. As with so much of literacy, it's not about one type of literacy versus another; rather, it's about the ways that all these literacies intersect.

That is, as long as the preschooler isn't trying to intersect my iPad with that puddle up there.

Wohlwend, K. E. (2018, January). Playing to our strengths: Finding innovation in children’s and teachers’ imaginative expertise. Language Arts, 95(3), 162-170.