Early literacy going digital: Interweaving formal and informal literacy learning through digital media

Abstract

The proliferation and strong presence of new media in young children’s' lives have oriented early childhood research and practice towards the concept of digital literacy, now being an important part of ECE policy and practice worldwide. Children join formal education with a rich repertoire of multimedia, multimodal and digital practices, shaped outside schools, at their home and broader social milieu. Related literature acknowledges a strong relationship between digital media and children’s literacy development. However, little is known about the actual experiences when this relationship is forged. During the interplay with digital and non-digital media and resources, it is interesting to illustrate the connections in literacy gained through different contexts. The DIGILIT Kids project aimed at exploring the literacy practices of preschool children in digital environments. To this end, our research team conducted qualitative research, interviewing parents, preschool educators and children, while, in parallel, observing children's media use with different digital devices, during their school time and collecting their written and electronic works, before and during the research process. The research context was a public kindergarten classroom in Thessaloniki, Greece, with 20 children. Our findings are summarized in this paper through three children’s cases, presented as profiles, representing, to a satisfactory degree, recurrent themes from our whole dataset. The three profiles depict different levels of digital and traditional literacy manifested through children’s practices. Our discussion highlights aspects of the complex relationship of digital media and literacy, as well as the need to bridge the gap between formal and informal ways of literacy learning.