Kylie J Stevenson

In order to understand grandparents’ types of engagement, or lack of it, in their grandchildren’s interactions with digital technologies, it is first useful to identify three things. One is grandparents’ perspectives on the influences shaping modern parenting that were explored in the preceding chapter. These can inform grandparents’ understanding of why their children, as parents, act in certain ways, including how they try to manage their children’s technological experiences. Second, it is important to appreciate grandparents’ own understanding of their grandparenting role and its limits. These possibilities are initially outlined in the literature review and then explored further in reporting the Toddlers and Tablets findings. And third, while acknowledging the range and diversity of grandparenting, it is necessary to examine grandparents’ own perceptions of the place of touchscreens in children’s lives. In the light of these three factors, it is easier to understand any grandparent interventions. Lastly, interview material from the parents also provides some clues to how parents evaluate grandparents’ actions....

Photovoice is a qualitative research methodology of particular relevance to exploring the imaginaries of children and young adults who may be relatively disadvantaged and marginalised in other research contexts. These young people belong to an increasingly visually literate generation, with skills developed through Instagram and other social media platforms. Consequently, visual images are acquiring greater importance as a means of self-expression and communication. The value of the Photovoice methodology (Allmark et al., 2017) is that the constructed images can be further used as a site of reflection which enables the child and interviewer, working together, to explore and uncover deeper meanings around the participant’s lived experience. This chapter uses a case study approach of a Kids’ Camp for primary school aged children to ex- plore these ideas further.

In a wide-ranging research project focused on the digital media consumption of very young children (aged 0–5), and the family-based construction and support of these skills, one child’s digital competence was particularly evident. The youngest member of a dual location household spanning three generations, raised by the parents, and by grandparents who live nearby, Lavinia is bilingual. The parents use English as their working language but, along with the grandparents, use Mandarin at home. This paper draws upon an observational ethnographic case study (Holloway & Green, 2013) informed by play-based research engagement with the 2-year old Lavinia, alongside interviews with her mother. This study investigates how family practices and attitudes impact very young children’s digital engagement in Australia. Lavinia is an ardent fan of Peppa Pig, and during the observation, researchers watched her play Peppa Pig in Mandarin on an iPad while setting up the live stream of the same episode from the internet to the television. Lavinia achieved this entire system of media retrieval and replay without adult intervention and support. She effectively created a tutorial for practicing Mandarin–English bilingual comprehension using Peppa Pig. Lavinia’s clear desire to learn bilingually reflects her parents’ priorities and has also prompted her parents to enrich her play activities with supplementary media resources and experiences.

Taking a broad literature review approach, this chapter explores young children’s creativity in digital contexts, making a connection between Craft’s (2001) notion of little c creativity and young children’s possibility thinking enacted in a digital (and postdigital) world. It suggests what the concept of the posthuman possibility space may entail, and how young children’s posthuman digital play may be envisioned. Research about very young children’s play in the digital contexts of apps, the Internet of Toys, and makerspaces is briefly investigated to reveal the digital child research field as poised for the application of a posthuman lens.

Over the last 10 years very young children (0–5) are showing significantly increased patterns of internet use, due primarily to the introduction of touchscreens (Gorzig & Holloway, 2017). The widespread availability of touchscreen devices such as iPads and Android tablets means that previous technologies are being bypassed in terms of their impact upon early childhood (Merchant, 2015). Early literacy practices and modalities are changing through the use of these tablet technologies. These new socio-material practices raise matters of concern and interest for researchers, parents and educators. Research and current teaching practice emphasize the importance of scaffolding in early childhood learning (Berk & Winsler, 1995; Leong & Bodrova, 1996; Soderman et al., 1999), and this now includes children’s engagement with touchscreen technologies (Neumann, 2017; Wood et al., 2016; Yelland & Masters, 2007). New research suggests that teachers and/or parents provide children with three main types of scaffolding when they support their child’s engagement with technology – cognitive, affective and technical. This chapter is informed by posthumanist philosophy to highlight what happens when humans (children and parents) interact with a literacy learning app. While based on Vygotsky’s socio-cultural learning theory’s notion of zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) and Wood et al. (1976) closely associated notion of scaffolding, this chapter goes beyond analysis of the human interactions (parent and child) to incorporate nonhuman, digital entities within the research paradigm. We argue that new research methods are required in order to adequately describe and research the ways in which early childhood literacy, indeed all literacy learning, is now infused with digital technology. These digital technologies need to be considered as important actants in any child/technology or child/adult/technology assemblage.

Focusing on the digital lives of children aged eight and under, and paying attention to their parents and educators, this book showcases research findings from the UK, Denmark, Turkey, Indonesia and Australia. The authors’ disciplinary backgrounds are as diverse as their cultural contexts, and the volume brings together insights from education, media studies, sociology, cultural studies, physiotherapy, and communication studies. Covering both positive and negative perspectives, it contributes to existing research on young children’s online interactions. This book will be of interest to students and researchers in early years’ care and education, media, communication and cultural studies, human-computer interaction and technology studies, and the sociology of childhood and the family.