Categorization Activities in Norwegian Preschools: Digital Tools in Identifying, Articulating, and Assessing.

Pål Aarsand

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00973

Abstract

The article explores digital literacy practices in children’s everyday lives at Norwegian preschools and some of the ways in which young children appropriate basic digital literacy skills through guided participation in situated activities. Building on an ethnomethodological perspective, the analyses are based on 70 h of video recordings documenting the activities in which 45 children, aged 5 and 6, and 8 preschool teachers participated. Through the detailed analysis of two categorization activities – identifying geometrical shapes and identifying feelings/thoughts – the use of digital tools in the social organization of the activities is examined. The article finds that children’s digital literacy activities encompass visual, verbal, audio and embodied competencies that become relevant, and thus accessible for learning, in the interaction between the children and between the adults and children by serving as norms and guidelines for what constitutes correct categorizations (geometrical shapes and green and red feelings) in the situated activities, and that are appropriated and actualized by the children in interaction with their peers. The findings also show how the categorization practices in preschools deal with symbols and labels in ways that create and sustain socially organized ways of knowing, seeing, and acting upon the world. Digital media are embedded in routines, procedures, and socialites that are part of these categorization practices; they are part of how children are instructed to experience, interpret, understand, and act in the world. Moreover, the different technologies created different conditions for the children’s participation. It was found that peer interaction was part of the digital literacy activities that involved such mobile technologies as smartphones and tablets, while when using non-mobile technologies, e.g., smartboards, the activities were structured more as ‘classic’ classroom activities, primarily guided by the teacher and the didactic material presented through the smartboard.

Highlights

Digital literacy practices have become an intrinsic part of Norwegian children’s life in preschool
Identifying, Articulating, and Assessing tools have become part of Norwegian preschools, they have generated digital literacy practices that include a range of activities such as reading, listening, touching, adjusting, curating and producing symbols and signs
Question: how do children participate in categorization practices in preschool where digital tools are used?

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Digital literacy practices have become an intrinsic part of Norwegian children’s life in preschool. These studies mainly focus on what children are able to do at a certain stage in their motoric development (Nacher et al, 2015; Price et al, 2015), they tend to approach touch as a question of individual and psychological development, not as a social activity (Aarsand and Bowden, 2019) Interfaces such as the touchscreen require that the user has a visual competence in terms of interpreting, understanding and producing signs and symbols within a socio-cultural setting, a tactile competence in terms of touching, swiping and tapping, and an audio competence in terms of understanding and acting on verbal instructions and cues. Question: how do children participate in categorization practices in preschool where digital tools are used?

METHODOLOGY

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