Category: suggested reading

November 7, 2024

Younger Children’s Screen Time.

Sharing our reading with you…

We recently shared a variety of recommend reading links around screen time.

In this post we share some more, but this time, the research and articles focus on younger children’s screen time, some including babies.

Special thanks to our National Early Language and Communication Team colleagues for sharing many of the articles and research links with us.

Before you browse through the links below, please consider these questions first.

Q – What does screen time mean to you?

Q – Do you unpick children’s screen time in order to understand how/why the screen is being used?

Q – Do you view screen time as only watching content, or playing games, or do you view any/all kind of screen use as screen time?

Q- Do you know what the different ways we can use screens are? E.g., to consume, create or communicate content?

Q – Do you consider using screens in a practical way to solve real life problems? E.g., using apps such as the camera, calculator, weather forecast, maps, measure and audio recording?

Q- Do you view young children’s (early level and younger) screen time as an opportunity for independent learning or as a means for the adult and child to connect and play and learn together?

Q- What do you think the adult’s role should be when children are using screens?

You might find it helpful to revisit section 4.4 of Realising the Ambition: Being Me (page 49) and also 6.4 (page 70).

Our ability to use language unlocks all areas of learning. Children’s language development thrives through exposure to environments of rich and diverse spoken language experiences. We grow a sense of purpose for the child by our own use of language and engaging them with a wide variety of stories, rhymes, songs, symbols and texts in different media all around them. Building this purpose helps to nurture engagement and encourages children to see themselves as readers and writers. This doesn’t just happen by chance.

Realising the Ambition: Being Me page 70

Q – Do we use language to unlock learning when children are using screens?

Links to research and articles.

Preschoolers’ screen time and reduced opportunities for quality interaction: Associations with language development and parent-child closeness – ScienceDirect Gath, M, McNeill, B, and Gillon, G (2023)

Is the screen time duration affecting children’s language development? – A scoping review – ScienceDirect Bhutani, P et al (2024)

Screen Time and Parent-Child Talk When Children Are Aged 12 to 36 Months | Media and Youth | Brushe.M, Haag.D, Melhuish. E, et all (2024)

Froebel-Trust-Research-Highlight_Tech.pdf Flewitt and Gemayel (2023)

Digital Play (ed.ac.uk) Plowman (2020)

Screen time for babies and toddlers: the evidence | Baby & toddler articles & support | NCT NCT (2019)

Why not all screen time is the same for children – BBC Future Hoggenboom,M (2022)

Babies need humans, not screens | UNICEF Parenting Nelson, C (2023)

Please feel free to share your thoughts via this Microsoft Form

October 16, 2024

Recommended reading: Tackling Digital Exclusion – Audit Scotland

This blog post is a summary of key points in Audit Scotland’s report that might be useful for educational settings, such as schools, nurseries and local authorities to consider.

Read the full report with this link Tackling digital exclusion (audit.scot).

“Digital exclusion is strongly associated with poverty and people with certain protected characteristics.”

Anyone working with groups that may be at-risk of digital exclusion should consider the potential barriers in place to them accessing and using such technology. If there are analogue alternatives, these should be as effective and readily available, along with support, training and access provision for people to engage with them.

Where this is not the case, the Royal Society (2022) talk about the double loop of poverty where analogue factors are entrenched by digital ones to doubly affect those at risk of exclusion.

Some of the impacts of digital exclusion that are more likely to surface in education are:

making it harder to access services and information

making it more difficult for parents to engage with children’s education

incurring debts or being unable to make payments if they lack the skills and confidence to use online payment methods.

Some of these, more than others, relate directly to rights of individuals, including:

Right to receive and impart information

Right to education

Many schools and local authorities already have digital leaders or champions, and I imagine that ensuring these families are not digitally excluded is high on the list of school improvement actions anywhere digital is included.

The report also calls for a Scottish minimum digital living standard (MDLS) which “includes, but is more than, having accessible internet, adequate equipment, and the skills, knowledge and support people need. It is about being able to communicate, connect and engage with opportunities safely and with confidence.”

This is an aspect we have tried to factor in our recent guidance on digital skills for learners and teachers. Ideally, this guidance will support local authorities and educational settings to develop such a set of skills and knowledge in learners with the aim of reducing digital exclusion from not having them.

The last point that really resonated for education was ‘how poorly designed digital services without useable alternatives can lead to barriers to accessing services and have a negative impact on vulnerable people.’

Where apps are used to communicate learning to families on a regular basis – how effective are the non-app alternatives? How does a paper copy compare to video or verbal media shared on apps? Does the school or nursery make this feedback more equitable for families that need it? Perhaps in-person sharing on a regular basis?

If they don’t factor and mitigate this effectively, we risk having a ‘part of the population … unseen or unheard [as] the pace of technological change continues’.

September 24, 2024

Digital Play and Technologies in The Early Years

I am currently reading my way through Digital Play Technologies in The Early Years (Stephen, C., Brooker, L., Oberhuemer, P. and Parker-Rees, R. (2020) Digital Play and Technologies in the Early Years. Paperback. Published: 30 September 2020.) and have selected a chapter to share with you. Chapter 5: Digital Play as a means to develop children’s literacy and power in the Swedish preschool. Marklund, Leif & Dunkels, Elza. (2016). Digital play as a means to develop children’s literacy and power in the Swedish preschool. Early Years. 36. 10.1080/09575146.2016.1181608.

(PDF) Digital play as a means to develop children’s literacy and power in the Swedish preschool (researchgate.net)

Abstract.

This paper presents different angles on the subject of digital play as a means to develop children’s literacy and power, using an online ethnographical study of Swedish preschool teachers’ discussions in informal online forums. Question posts (n = 239) were analysed using the Technological Pedagogical Knowledge framework and the Caring, Nurturing and Teaching framework, with the aim of understanding how teachers intended to support children’s literacy development with tablets. Literacy development can be understood as a social practice that needs to develop along with changes in society’s demands on citizens. The results presented indicate that school subject oriented skills are predominantly present in the mind-set of these preschool teachers. When digital play is increasingly used for pedagogical purposes in preschools, that also means that preschools have expanded their opportunities to work with children’s literacy development. For preschool teachers, it is important to discuss how literacy development can be supported in a contemporary media landscape.

This study examines Swedish preschool teachers online discussions about how they use digital play to support children’s literacy development.

The paper highlights that literacy is defined as a social practice that needs to develop alongside changes in society (societies demands on literacy), therefore children should have exposure to traditional print literacy and multimodal types of literacy via digital formats.

The report recognises some educators are not yet positioning themselves and their practice alongside the changes in society and explains that media panic may be the reason preventing involvement in digital play.

Another barrier educators may face is conflict between the balance of stepping back and stepping in to support children’s learning. Children are considered as competent, requiring little adult intervention, however when technology is present educators feel a need to supervise and support.

The paper suggests that perhaps what educators perceive as a decline in play due to changes in society and increased engagement with digital technologies is in fact

“a new way of playing, aligned with contemporary society but misaligned with our current conceptions on play and learning.” (Edwards 2014)

Like many other current studies on the digital play in early childhood, this report unpicks the consumer/creator discourse and the difference between open and closed apps and most importantly the role of the adult in supporting children’s literacy development;

“Thus, preschool teachers may help improve literacy development among children who engage in digital play, if they decide to engage in dialogues with these children, instead of treating games as the children’s own arena for actions.” (Gee 201; Lafton 2012).

What are your thoughts? Do you agree literacy development can be understood as a social practice and needs to develop along with changes in society’s demands on citizens.
What might the “media panic” be in regards to? Children’s wellbeing; screen time, lack of physical play, internet safety and cyber security?
Do you know the difference between closed apps and open (ended) apps?
How do you use digital play to support language development and what is your role, do you step in or step back?

Feel free to share your thoughts via this Microsoft Form