ABSTRACT
Studies carried out in the home clearly illustrate that young children’s meaningmaking practices are shaped by their access to a range of digital resources. Marsh (2004) and Giddings (2014), for example, show how very young children engage with screens and digital texts in the home with playfulness, agency and creativity. When young children enter educational settings, many bring with them extensive understandings and experience of making meaning using digital tools (YamadaRice, 2011; Levy, 2009). Despite compelling research evidence that touchscreens can support early
learning and play, Yelland (2011) reminds us how digital technologies are still not seen by all as providing valuable play opportunities for children. Tensions still exist between some principles and practices of early learning and the use of screens with young children (Lynch and Redpath, 2014). In contrast to this view, Wolfe and Flewitt (2010) demonstrate how access to digital technologies in the home,
mediated by adult support, can equip children with metacognitive strategies that enable them to engage with more sophistication with digital (and non-digital) tools in the classroom. The implication of these insights is that some children may be less well-equipped than others to utilise digital tools in meaningful ways. A long-standing concern expressed by educators and researchers is founded on the dissonances that exist between young children’s language socialisation in the home and its relationship with success in school (see Heath, 1983). This concern is further complicated when access to meaningful engagement with digital resources is brought to the discussion. Indeed, the ways in which we judge the appropriateness of touchscreens as part of young children’s early educational experiences will have a profound impact on the range and type of experiences to which children have access. It is vital, therefore, that early years practitioners recognise and respond to the findings in research into digital technologies (McPake, Ploughman and Stephen, 2012) in order that they can build on children’s daily experiences and provide opportunities for children to access digital technologies as part of their early education experiences.
