Jackie Marsh

young children’s play in online virtual worlds

Virtual worlds for children are becoming increasingly popular, and yet there are few accounts of children’s use of these worlds. Young children are spending increasing amounts of time online as technology continues to create significant changes in social and cultural practices in the 21st century. Some of childrens online interactions can be categorized as playful in nature; however, play and technology are frequently positioned as oppositional. In this article, I explore the tensions surrounding the relationship between play and technology and relate it to similar discourses concerning the concepts of ‘real’ and ‘virtual’. I then move on to consider the growing popularity of virtual worlds with young children and examine the way in which the worlds have been marketed to children and parents/carers on the basis of their propensity to offer online play in a safe environment. The article provides an overview of two virtual worlds currently targeted at young children and draws on a survey of primary children’s use of virtual worlds in order to identify the nature of play in these environments. One hundred and seventy-five children aged 5—11 completed an online survey and 15 took part in group interviews in which their use of virtual worlds was explored. This article focuses on the data relating to 17 children aged from five to seven years who used virtual worlds. Findings indicate that virtual worlds offered these young children a wide range of opportunities for play and that the types of play in which they engaged relate closely to ‘offline’ play. The implications for early years educators are considered.

The Techno-Literacy Practices of Young Children.

In many analyses of children’s ‘emergent literacy’ (Clay, 1966) practices, there is little acknowledgement of children’s engagement in techno-literacy practices. This article discusses findings from a survey undertaken in a working-class community in the north of England which aimed to identify the ‘emergent techno-literacy’ practices of a group of 44 children aged between two and a half and four years of age. It is argued that the multimodal textual competencies and semiotic choices of these ‘toddler netizens’ (Luke, 1999) should be more widely acknowledged within current curriculum frameworks for the early years.

One-way Traffic? Connections between Literacy Practices at Home and in the Nursery

This article reports on a small-scale study which examined the home literacy practices of a group of 3 and 4 year-old children in a working-class community in the north of England and explored how far these practices were reflected in the curriculum of the nursery the children attended. The data illustrate that there was a dissonance between out-of-school and schooled literacy practices and that there was more evidence of nursery literacy practices infiltrating the home than vice versa. Childrens literacy practices in the home were focused on media and popular cultural texts and the article argues for greater recognition of these contemporary cultural practices in early years policy documentation and curriculum guidance.

Parental involvement in literacy development: using media texts

This paper reports on a small-scale project which aimed to build upon the existing home literacy practices of a group of three- and four-year-old children living in the UK. The purpose of the project was to develop literacy materials and resources which could be borrowed from nursery and used within the home to promote children’s literacy development. Children’s informal literacy practices at home were identified using literacy diaries, which 18 families completed over a four-week period. These documented children’s reading of both printed and televisual texts. In addition, interviews were conducted with 15 parents and carers. The paper reports on the findings from this stage of the project, which indicate that much of children’s reading was focused on popular cultural and media texts. Media boxes were developed as a literacy resource for use by parents and children in the home. The use of these media boxes by three families was documented and the initial findings, which suggest that the use of such resources draws on families’ cultural capital, discussed.

But I want to fly too!: Girls and superhero play in the infant classroom

This article describes a study which was conducted in an inner-city school in the north of England, in a base which contained 57 children aged 6 and 7 years old. The purpose of the study was to explore the potential role of popular culture in the literacy curriculum. During the project, a socio-dramatic role-play area which was related to a popular superhero icon was set up in the classroom. Childrens play in the area was recorded using a variety of methods, including field notes, video recording and photographs. Some of the previous research on superhero play has focused on the attraction the discourse has for boys or suggested that girls take on a non-female persona in such a play. The findings from this study suggest that superhero play is strongly attractive to girls, who explore agency and autonomy through such play and actively position themselves as females within a heroic discourse.

Teletubby Tales: Popular Culture in the Early Years Language and Literacy Curriculum

The aim of the study reported in this article was to explore the potential that popular culture has for motivating young children to engage in literacy and oracy practices in the early years. Pre-school settings and schools regularly fail to take account of childrens popular cultural interests in their development of curriculum content. Literacy practices in most nurseries and schools are located within dominant cultural discourses and in the case of many industrialised societies, this means that the curriculum usually reflects the cultural norms of white middle-class communities. In an attempt to disrupt these dominant discourses, literacy activities related to the television programme Teletubbies were introduced into two nurseries in England. Data were gathered using field notes, photographs and interviews. The article discusses how the incorporation of popular cultural texts into the curriculum provided motivation and excitement for many children, some of whom were not usually willing members of the ‘literacy club’.

Emergent Media Literacy: Digital Animation in Early Childhood

This paper outlines a research project in which three- and four-year-old children in one nursery engaged with editing software to create short animated films. Research questions were related to the knowledge and understanding of multimodal texts that the children developed in the activity, the skills they demonstrated in undertaking the animation work and the implications for curriculum development. Qualitative data were collected over the period of an academic year as children were observed (using fieldnotes and video camera) planning and producing the films. This paper analyses some of the knowledge and understanding of multimodal texts developed throughout the project and suggests that early childhood educators need to understand the nature of new authorial practices if they are to provide appropriate scaffolding for children’s learning in the new media age.

New literacies and old pedagogies : recontextualizing rules and practices

Despite a growing awareness of the implications of the changing nature of literacy due to the impact of technological innovations, literacy pedagogies in educational institutions across the world continue to be predicated on a performative model, in which emphasis is placed on transmitting narrow concepts of literacy that privilege the alphabetic principle. However, an examination of recent developments in England indicate that there is, increasingly, a disconcerting relationship between new literacy practices as experienced by children and young people outside of schools and the development of literacy curricula and pedagogy by policy‐makers. This paper draws on Bernsteins (2000) conceptualization of the ‘recontextualizing field’ in order to explore how national literacy policy in England is selectively appropriating aspects of new literacy practices and reformulating them in ways which dissipate their potential for innovation and transformation. Bersteins ‘Official Recontextualizing Field’ (ORF) and ‘Pedagogic Recontextualizing Field’ (PRF) in which these developments are taking place are analysed in order to determine how the out‐of‐school discourses of children and young people are being ideologically transformed as they start to inform national policy. Instead, it is suggested that account needs to be taken of the way in which children and young people are engaged in innovative literacy practices, drawing from current uses of social software on ‘Web 2.0’ as an illustrative example. In taking account of these developments, schools can adopt ‘productive pedagogies’ (Lingard, B., Ladwig, J., Luke, A., Mills, M., Hayes, D. & Gore, J. (2001) The Queensland school reform longitudinal study, Vols 1 and 2 (Brisbane, Education Queensland)) in order to ensure that all pupils become successful literacy learners.

Words with Pictures: The Role of Visual Literacy in Writing and its Implication for Schooling

This paper reports on two studies undertaken independently by the authors, both of which provide indicative evidence that the system of target setting in writing is exerting an influence on children’s perception of what is involved in authoring meaningful texts. In particular, the current emphasis on technical accuracy and neatness in handwriting has worked to limit the role of drawing in children’s construction of text. The authors suggest that this tendency has adverse consequences for the development of pupil confidence as the authors of their own meanings, particularly marked in boys. They argue that teachers and educators need to be more understanding of differences in the modes in which pupils choose to make sense of their social and cultural contexts.

Young children’s initiation into family literacy practices in the digital age

This article reports a study that explored young children’s digital literacy in the home. The aim of the study was to identify the range of digital literacy practices in which children are engaged in the home and to explore how these are embedded into family life and involve family members. Four children, two girls and two boys aged between 2 and 4 years, were the focus for study. Parents were co-researchers in the study in that they made written observations on children’s activities and captured practices using a digital camera and a digital camcorder over the period of 1 month. They took part in a series of interviews during the study in which they reflected on this data and were asked about related practices. Findings suggest that children were immersed in a range of multimedia, multimodal practices which involved extensive engagement with other family members who scaffolded their learning and delighted in the children’s technological capabilities. The article suggests that, in the light of socio-cultural developments in the new media age, a change in focus from ‘family literacy’ to ‘family digital literacy’ is required.