Digital Manipulatives as Scaffolds for Preschoolers’ Language Development

C Sylla,C P Coutinho,I S P Pereira,P Branco

doi:10.1109/tetc.2015.2500099

C Sylla, C P Coutinho + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1109/tetc.2015.2500099

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Abstract

The study reported here aims at contributing to a deeper understanding of the educational possibilities offered by digital manipulatives in preschool contexts. It presents a study carried with a digital manipulative to enhance the development of lexical knowledge and language awareness, which are relevant language abilities for formal literacy learning. The study took place in a Portuguese preschool, with a class of 20 five-year-olds in collaboration with the teacher. The digital manipulative supported the construction of multiple fictional worlds, motivating children's verbal interactions, and the playing of words and sound games, thus contextualizing the learning of an extensive collection of vocabulary and language awareness abilities. The degree of engagement and involvement that the manipulative provided in supporting children's imaginative play as well as the imitation, in their own play, of the playful pedagogical interventions that the teacher had designed, shows the importance of well-designed materials that support a child-centered learning model. As such, it sustains a discussion on the potential of digital manipulatives to enhance fundamental language development in the preschool years. Furthermore, this paper highlights the importance of multidisciplinary teams in the creation of innovative pedagogical materials.

Highlights

Well-designed technology has the potential to scaffold learning when it meets children’s needs, promotes playfulness, supports open-ended and active exploration, offering opportunities for social interaction, and supporting scaffolding from more skilled peers [1]–[3]
From all papers presented at the Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC) between 2002-2010 merely 8% focused on technology that supports literacy development [33]
To the high scores obtained in the tests this is explained by the fact that when it comes to testing preschool children, commonly teachers evaluate their skills through direct observation, the tests merely evaluate competencies and do not intend to evaluate children’s knowledge, instead they allow teachers to check whether a particular behavior / action / competence occurs or does not occur

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Well-designed technology has the potential to scaffold learning when it meets children’s needs, promotes playfulness, supports open-ended and active exploration, offering opportunities for social interaction, and supporting scaffolding from more skilled peers [1]–[3]. In order to create educational relevant products researchers and designers need to ensure that teachers can use these materials to design childcentered activities This is important for children as poor opportunities may hinder their subsequent learning, as MacGregor affirms: ‘‘the effects of reduced opportunities for learning established in the preschool years are long-lasting’’ [11:305]. Aiming at developing a tool that meets children’s and teachers’ needs, TOK (Touch, Organize, Create), the digital manipulative used in this intervention, was designed, developed and evaluated in collaboration with various groups of preschool children and their teachers in a Portuguese. We gladly accepted the proposal, as this was a unique opportunity for us researchers and designers to assess in loco the use of digital manipulatives in an educational setting, to support children’s imaginative play and specific learning in child-centered (rather than instructional) pedagogical interventions. Section six presents the results of the tests that were applied after the intervention, and we finish with the discussion of the results and the conclusion

THE RELEVANCE OF LEXICAL KNOWLEDGE AND PHONOLOGICAL AWARENESS

BACKGROUND

DISCUSSION

Findings

VIII. CONCLUSIONS