Young children’s ICT experiences in the home: Some parental perspectives

Abstract

This small-scale study focuses on young children’s reported information and communication technology (ICT) experiences in the home and the role of parents in providing technological opportunities, recognition and support. The children of the parents involved were all enrolled in nursery and reception classes (4—5 years of age) in two settings (referred to hereafter as Stafford School and Hill School). The term home is used here to denote any context in children’s lives beyond the school/nursery environs whilst the interpretation of ICT is equally broad and inclusive in nature and encompasses any technology associated with the handling and electronic transmission of information and/or its use in controlling the operations of machines and other devices (HMI, 1989). In this context therefore ICT would include such things as telephones, televisions, video, audio recorders, CD and DVD players, CD-ROMs, programmable toys, games consoles, radios and, of course, computers. The study found that differences in the incidence and availability of ICT in the children’s homes could be subtle on occasion and were the result of a number of factors. Children might have ‘access’ to certain technologies in that they were present in their home environments but this did not necessarily mean that children were always able and/or allowed to ‘use’ those technologies. It supports the arguments made by Marsh and others elsewhere (Marsh, 2004; Marsh et al., 2005) that young children are already in possession of ICT knowledge and competences when they arrive in nursery and reception classes partly as a result of varying levels of parental intervention and modelling as well as being in the process of acquiring new knowledge, skills and attitudes. The study also argues that parents’ involvement with ICT was often characterized by conscious but sometimes uncertain efforts to limit opportunities and access to ICT in the perceived best interests of the children (Clarke, 2006).