Across Textual Landscapes: The Role of Affect During Digital Reading Encounters

Abstract

This article addresses questions related to how the change in the textual landscape, from paper-based books to electronic books, has an effect on the teaching of reading in early childhood classrooms as well as how the digital devices relate to different aspects of reading instruction. Drawing on the theoretical concept of affect, the purpose is to expand knowledge about processes of experiencing literary digital texts that are enacted and produced in a Swedish classroom when the teacher and the six-year-old students encounter digital narrative texts. The study draws on ethnographical methods to collect empirical material using video recording, field notes, and small interviews with children. The documentation includes both individual and collaborative reading of digital narratives. Discussed in the intersection between envisionment and affect, the results show that e-book activities create multiple and differing processes of reading. The metacognitive processes initiated by the teacher’s instruction of reading strategies create a distance between the student and the text, while processes of embodied sense-making create a closeness to the text that seems to be vital when the students encounter digital narratives and text worlds. These findings may contribute to educational as well as edu-political discussions about pedagogical rationales for e-book activities in which the dynamic and essential relation between body, space, and reading is made prominent.