Early Literacy Practices go Digital

Abstract

The aim of this study is to contribute to an understanding of how digitalization affects early literacy practices in terms of literacy teaching (methods, materials, routinized activities, etc.) and the use of literacy genres in digitalized writing. The study has an overall ethnographical design, where we as researchers, over the course of two years, follow a group of first grade teachers when they “go digital” in their literacy teaching. The study is theoretically influenced by New Literacy Studies, genre theory and multimodality. “Going digital” here includes both the new digital tools that the classrooms have been equipped with (e.g. computers, smart boards, projectors, etc.) and the use of a specific early literacy method, learning to read through writing on computers – without using a pencil. The method involves a change from children learning to read and write by using textbooks for reading and pencils for writing to using computers from the start. The children’s own texts are used as important reading material. When children use digital writing tools their texts become longer and they also use a wider range of literacy genres, specifically more factual genres.