Jackie Marsh | The University of Sheffield (original) (raw)
Papers by Jackie Marsh
In this paper, a comparison is made between the media consumption, play and literacy practices o... more In this paper, a comparison is made between the media consumption, play and literacy practices of children made in response to the films Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier (Disney, 1955) and Frozen (Disney, 2013) in order to identify the continuities and discontinuities in these practices over time. The paper draws on a range of secondary sources, including the work of Iona and Peter Opie [(1959). The lore and language of schoolchildren. Oxford: Oxford University Press], to consider how media consumption, play and literacy are differently framed in the twenty-first century compared to the mid-twentieth century. It is argued that the commercial and technological contexts for these practices have changed considerably over the past 60 years, but what endures is the creativity and innovation of children, so well documented in the work of the Opies [1959; (1969). Children’s games in street and playground. Oxford: Clarendon Press].
This paper draws on data from a study of a four-year-old child, Gareth, in his first year of form... more This paper draws on data from a study of a four-year-old child, Gareth, in his first year of formal schooling in England. The aim of the study was to identify the nature of Gareth's literacy practices across home and school spaces. The focus for this paper is an analysis of one aspect of Gareth's home digital literacy practices: his repeated viewings at home of 'unboxing' videos on YouTube. These include videos that feature the unpacking of commercial products. It is argued that the child viewer/reader is co-constructed in these practices as cyberflâneur and that this mode of cultural transmission is a growing feature of online practices for this age group in the twenty-first century. The paper addresses issues concerning young children's online practices and their relationship to material culture before analysing the growth of interest in peer-to-peer textual production and consumption in the digital age. The online lives of children This paper draws on data from a study of a four-year-old child, Gareth, in his first year of formal schooling in England. The aim of the study was to identify the nature of Gareth's literacy practices across home and school spaces in the digital age. Young children's lives are increasingly played out in online as well as offline spaces. Ofcom (2014) reports that 38% of three-and four-year-olds and 69% of five-to seven-year-olds access the Internet from home. In a recent study that was part of a European project undertaken across seven countries, Livingstone, Marsh, Plowman, Ottovordem-gentschenfelde, and Fletcher-Watson (2014) undertook interviews with children aged under eight years and their parents in 10 families across the UK. The data indicated that the children regularly accessed a range of online sites, but the most popular site across families was YouTube, which is of little surprise, given that YouTube is 1 of the 10 most popular sites globally (Burgess & Green, 2009, p. 2). YouTube provides a range of textual
International Journal of Play, 2012
ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider the way in which television's impact on children&... more ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider the way in which television's impact on children's play has changed over the past 60 years. The UK has unique collections of children's playground games and rhymes. The folklorists Iona and Peter Opie collected children's playground games and rhymes in the 1950s–1980s and their collection is deposited at the Bodleian Library. A recent study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Beyond Text programme, ‘Children's playground games and songs in the new media age’ involved an ethnographic study of two primary school playgrounds in England over a 2-year period (2009–2011). This was followed by a project which involved interviewing some of the Opies' child contributors, now adults aged 50–70, and their contemporaries, about their memories of play and its relationship to media and commercial markets. In this paper, data from both projects are compared in order to trace changes over time in the influence of media and the market on children's play. This paper considers the data on television and play and outlines the way in which there are both continuities and discontinuities in this play. Key continuities relate to the way in which television is drawn upon in children's imaginative play, as children today continue to draw on characters, narratives and language from television in their play episodes in ways that were similar to those of the past. Differences include the way in which new genres of television programmes now inform play, such as reality television.
Reading Research Quarterly, 2011
ABSTRACT This study examined the literacy practices of children ages 5-11 as they engaged in out-... more ABSTRACT This study examined the literacy practices of children ages 5-11 as they engaged in out-of-school use of virtual worlds. The purpose of the study was to explore the nature, purpose, and role of literacy in children's use of a virtual world. In this article, I reflect on how children's use of literacy practices in the virtual world constructed and maintained an online social order. One hundred seventy-five children in an English primary school completed an online survey from which their use of virtual worlds was examined. Individual and group interviews were then conducted with 26 children across the year. The interviews established that children used the virtual worlds to extend contact with peers they had regular interaction with in the offline world. Further, three 11-year-old children were filmed at home as they used the virtual world Club Penguin. Additional interviews were conducted with the three children and their parents. Data analysis focused on the ways in which children drew on specific literacy practices to construct and maintain an interaction order. A key finding is that literacy operates as a means of developing online social cohesion, but the literacy practices that serve this function are located within the social, material, and cultural structures in which the children operate in the offline world and thus cannot be viewed in isolation from these wider discourses.
Language and Education, 2006
... age group in that it included familiar characters drawn from her experiences of family life. ... more ... age group in that it included familiar characters drawn from her experiences of family life. ... incorporated the clapping and crashing soundtracks she had heard others use into her narrative. ... of the scaffolding and adult support children need as they create multimodal, digital texts. ...
Journal of Research in Reading, 2009
A special issue focused on research relating to literacy and technology is necessarily one that e... more A special issue focused on research relating to literacy and technology is necessarily one that examines the relationship between the two. We therefore begin this introduction with an acknowledgement that literacy and technology are integral to one another. Technology has always been an ...
Journal of Research in Reading, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study of the purposes for literacy discernible in young children... more ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study of the purposes for literacy discernible in young children's use of the virtual world, Club Penguin. Twenty-six children aged between 5 and 11 took part in semi-structured interviews in which their use of virtual worlds was explored. Further, three 11-year-old children were filmed using Club Penguin four times each over the period of 1 month in their own homes and they and their parents took part in interviews regarding their use of this virtual world. Findings indicate that the purposes for literacy in virtual worlds such as these are varied and have much in common with purposes for literacy in the off ine world. The virtual world Club Penguin provided a motivating and enjoyable context for reading and writing and enabled the construction and maintenance of online social networks. The implications for research, policy and practice are discussed.
Journal of Research in Reading, 2001
This paper reports on a small-scale project which aimed to build upon the existing home literacy ... more This paper reports on a small-scale project which aimed to build upon the existing home literacy practices of a group of three-and four-year-old children living in the UK. The purpose of the project was to develop literacy materials and resources which could be borrowed from nursery ...
Journal of Early Childhood Research, 2004
International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper reports on a number of challenges faced in tracing contributors to research p... more ABSTRACT This paper reports on a number of challenges faced in tracing contributors to research projects that were originally conducted many decades previously. The need to trace contributors in this way arises in projects which focus on involving research participants in previous studies who have not been maintained on a database, or with whom the research team has lost contact since the initial study. The paper focuses, in particular, on the use of social networking sites to trace contributors and reflects on the issues raised when using these tools for this purpose. It reports on a study which attempted to trace, using the social networking sites Facebook and Friends Reunited, contributors to surveys of childhood play conducted by Iona and Peter Opie in the 1950s and 1960s. Success in using the sites for this purpose was limited and it is suggested that in cohorts which include generations and communities that might use new technologies less frequently than others, additional methods to track down participants may be required.
International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2007
Despite a growing awareness of the implications of the changing nature of literacy due to the imp... more Despite a growing awareness of the implications of the changing nature of literacy due to the impact of technological innovations, literacy pedagogies in educational institutions across the world continue to be predicated on a performative model, in which emphasis is placed on transmitting narrow concepts of literacy that privilege the alphabetic principle. However, an examination of recent developments in England indicate that there is, increasingly, a disconcerting relationship between new literacy practices as experienced by children and young people outside of schools and the development of literacy curricula and pedagogy by policy-makers. This paper draws on conceptualization of the 'recontextualizing field' in order to explore how national literacy policy in England is selectively appropriating aspects of new literacy practices and reformulating them in ways which dissipate their potential for innovation and transformation. Berstein's 'Official Recontextualizing Field' (ORF) and 'Pedagogic Recontextualizing Field' (PRF) in which these developments are taking place are analysed in order to determine how the out-ofschool discourses of children and young people are being ideologically transformed as they start to inform national policy. Instead, it is suggested that account needs to be taken of the way in which children and young people are engaged in innovative literacy practices, drawing from current uses of social software on 'Web 2.0' as an illustrative example. In taking account of these developments, schools can adopt 'productive pedagogies' (Lingard, B., Ladwig, J., Luke, A., Mills, M., Hayes, D. & Gore, J. The Queensland school reform longitudinal study, Vols 1 and 2 (Brisbane, Education Queensland)) in order to ensure that all pupils become successful literacy learners.
English in Education, 1998
It is obvious that children have clear perceptions about gender roles and identities by the time ... more It is obvious that children have clear perceptions about gender roles and identities by the time they are in primary school. It is inevitable that these gender differences permeate children's writing. Girls and boys differ in the use of genre (Browne, 1996) and subject matter of ...
English in Education, 2003
Abstract This article outlines a four-year-old child's multi-modal e... more Abstract This article outlines a four-year-old child's multi-modal encounters with texts and analyses one of those encounters in the light of a framework for the analysis of such events. It is argued that this analysis leads to the conclusion that the experiences with texts that permeate ...
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2004
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education has been the leading international journ... more Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education has been the leading international journal in the cultural politics of education for almost two decades. Thematic issues have become a vital ingredient in the journal's engagement with current educational debates, ...
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2005
This journal has long engaged with the cultural politics of education, interrogating the intersec... more This journal has long engaged with the cultural politics of education, interrogating the intersections between cultural forms and movements and the hegemonic frameworks and institutions of education. In this special edition we focus the interrogatory lens on the production and ...
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper focuses on an episode of play in a primary school playground in England, whic... more ABSTRACT This paper focuses on an episode of play in a primary school playground in England, which featured a group of children re-enacting elements of the television talk show The Jeremy Kyle Show. The episode is analysed in the light of work that has identified the key elements of the talk show genre and the children's play is examined in relation to conceptualisations of talk shows as cruelty-verité, carnivalesque spectacle and vehicles of social class anxiety. The paper explores the children's playful re-enactment not only as a parody of adult worlds, but also as a confirmation of the ‘ordinariness’ of everyday life. It is argued that in episodes such as these, the functions of play are multiple and complex, but include a desire to construct collective moral sensibilities and reinforce normative discourses relating to sexuality and what it means to be a ‘good citizen’. The paper identifies spaces of continuity and discontinuity in such traditions and suggests that in play which draws from contemporary media we see the reconstruction of traditional play themes, but can also trace newer elements that are closely related to the generic conventions of reality television.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2005
accepted claim that access and use are not synonymous and Haddon moves on to present a strong cha... more accepted claim that access and use are not synonymous and Haddon moves on to present a strong challenge to those who make simplistic assumptions about adoption and use. The nature of disadvantage in relation to the lack of access to particular ICTs is also analysed, ...
Childhood, 2012
ABSTRACT This article draws on data from a project on children’s playground games and rhymes in t... more ABSTRACT This article draws on data from a project on children’s playground games and rhymes in the new media age. One objective of the project was to examine the relationship between traditional playground games and children’s media cultures. As part of the project, two ethnographic studies of primary playgrounds took place in two schools, one in the north and one in the south of England, over a two-year period. Children in both schools were active participants in the research process. They informed the research design and ongoing data collection through children’s panels and children were involved in data collection through the use of video cameras, interviews and diaries. This article reflects on a number of critical issues that are raised when considering the nature of the cultural knowledge constructed by the children as they identify the signifying practices of their play and its relationship with media culture. The concept of knowledge brokering is used as a heuristic device to analyse the nature of children’s contribution in participatory research studies.
Jackie Marsh directed the project, planned and conducted the project days for practitioners at th... more Jackie Marsh directed the project, planned and conducted the project days for practitioners at the University of Sheffield, developed the research tools (questionnaires, the interview schedules, inventory), carried out the literature review, analysed the data and wrote this ...
Despite the growing number of very young children who go online and who are using a wide range of... more Despite the growing number of very young children who go online and who are using a wide range of technologies, little is known about children’s interactions with those technologies. This report presents a pilot qualitative study designed and implemented in collaboration with a selected group of academic partners in different European countries that aims at pioneering in Europe the exploration of young children and their families` experiences with new technologies. It presents its results and discuss the findings at cross-national level on how children between zero and eight engage with digital technologies such as smartphones, tablets, computers and games; how far parents mediate this engagement and their awareness on the risks-opportunities balance. The report concludes on recommendations to parents, industries and policymakers.
In this paper, a comparison is made between the media consumption, play and literacy practices o... more In this paper, a comparison is made between the media consumption, play and literacy practices of children made in response to the films Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier (Disney, 1955) and Frozen (Disney, 2013) in order to identify the continuities and discontinuities in these practices over time. The paper draws on a range of secondary sources, including the work of Iona and Peter Opie [(1959). The lore and language of schoolchildren. Oxford: Oxford University Press], to consider how media consumption, play and literacy are differently framed in the twenty-first century compared to the mid-twentieth century. It is argued that the commercial and technological contexts for these practices have changed considerably over the past 60 years, but what endures is the creativity and innovation of children, so well documented in the work of the Opies [1959; (1969). Children’s games in street and playground. Oxford: Clarendon Press].
This paper draws on data from a study of a four-year-old child, Gareth, in his first year of form... more This paper draws on data from a study of a four-year-old child, Gareth, in his first year of formal schooling in England. The aim of the study was to identify the nature of Gareth's literacy practices across home and school spaces. The focus for this paper is an analysis of one aspect of Gareth's home digital literacy practices: his repeated viewings at home of 'unboxing' videos on YouTube. These include videos that feature the unpacking of commercial products. It is argued that the child viewer/reader is co-constructed in these practices as cyberflâneur and that this mode of cultural transmission is a growing feature of online practices for this age group in the twenty-first century. The paper addresses issues concerning young children's online practices and their relationship to material culture before analysing the growth of interest in peer-to-peer textual production and consumption in the digital age. The online lives of children This paper draws on data from a study of a four-year-old child, Gareth, in his first year of formal schooling in England. The aim of the study was to identify the nature of Gareth's literacy practices across home and school spaces in the digital age. Young children's lives are increasingly played out in online as well as offline spaces. Ofcom (2014) reports that 38% of three-and four-year-olds and 69% of five-to seven-year-olds access the Internet from home. In a recent study that was part of a European project undertaken across seven countries, Livingstone, Marsh, Plowman, Ottovordem-gentschenfelde, and Fletcher-Watson (2014) undertook interviews with children aged under eight years and their parents in 10 families across the UK. The data indicated that the children regularly accessed a range of online sites, but the most popular site across families was YouTube, which is of little surprise, given that YouTube is 1 of the 10 most popular sites globally (Burgess & Green, 2009, p. 2). YouTube provides a range of textual
International Journal of Play, 2012
ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider the way in which television's impact on children&... more ABSTRACT In this paper, we consider the way in which television's impact on children's play has changed over the past 60 years. The UK has unique collections of children's playground games and rhymes. The folklorists Iona and Peter Opie collected children's playground games and rhymes in the 1950s–1980s and their collection is deposited at the Bodleian Library. A recent study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Beyond Text programme, ‘Children's playground games and songs in the new media age’ involved an ethnographic study of two primary school playgrounds in England over a 2-year period (2009–2011). This was followed by a project which involved interviewing some of the Opies' child contributors, now adults aged 50–70, and their contemporaries, about their memories of play and its relationship to media and commercial markets. In this paper, data from both projects are compared in order to trace changes over time in the influence of media and the market on children's play. This paper considers the data on television and play and outlines the way in which there are both continuities and discontinuities in this play. Key continuities relate to the way in which television is drawn upon in children's imaginative play, as children today continue to draw on characters, narratives and language from television in their play episodes in ways that were similar to those of the past. Differences include the way in which new genres of television programmes now inform play, such as reality television.
Reading Research Quarterly, 2011
ABSTRACT This study examined the literacy practices of children ages 5-11 as they engaged in out-... more ABSTRACT This study examined the literacy practices of children ages 5-11 as they engaged in out-of-school use of virtual worlds. The purpose of the study was to explore the nature, purpose, and role of literacy in children's use of a virtual world. In this article, I reflect on how children's use of literacy practices in the virtual world constructed and maintained an online social order. One hundred seventy-five children in an English primary school completed an online survey from which their use of virtual worlds was examined. Individual and group interviews were then conducted with 26 children across the year. The interviews established that children used the virtual worlds to extend contact with peers they had regular interaction with in the offline world. Further, three 11-year-old children were filmed at home as they used the virtual world Club Penguin. Additional interviews were conducted with the three children and their parents. Data analysis focused on the ways in which children drew on specific literacy practices to construct and maintain an interaction order. A key finding is that literacy operates as a means of developing online social cohesion, but the literacy practices that serve this function are located within the social, material, and cultural structures in which the children operate in the offline world and thus cannot be viewed in isolation from these wider discourses.
Language and Education, 2006
... age group in that it included familiar characters drawn from her experiences of family life. ... more ... age group in that it included familiar characters drawn from her experiences of family life. ... incorporated the clapping and crashing soundtracks she had heard others use into her narrative. ... of the scaffolding and adult support children need as they create multimodal, digital texts. ...
Journal of Research in Reading, 2009
A special issue focused on research relating to literacy and technology is necessarily one that e... more A special issue focused on research relating to literacy and technology is necessarily one that examines the relationship between the two. We therefore begin this introduction with an acknowledgement that literacy and technology are integral to one another. Technology has always been an ...
Journal of Research in Reading, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study of the purposes for literacy discernible in young children... more ABSTRACT This paper reports on a study of the purposes for literacy discernible in young children's use of the virtual world, Club Penguin. Twenty-six children aged between 5 and 11 took part in semi-structured interviews in which their use of virtual worlds was explored. Further, three 11-year-old children were filmed using Club Penguin four times each over the period of 1 month in their own homes and they and their parents took part in interviews regarding their use of this virtual world. Findings indicate that the purposes for literacy in virtual worlds such as these are varied and have much in common with purposes for literacy in the off ine world. The virtual world Club Penguin provided a motivating and enjoyable context for reading and writing and enabled the construction and maintenance of online social networks. The implications for research, policy and practice are discussed.
Journal of Research in Reading, 2001
This paper reports on a small-scale project which aimed to build upon the existing home literacy ... more This paper reports on a small-scale project which aimed to build upon the existing home literacy practices of a group of three-and four-year-old children living in the UK. The purpose of the project was to develop literacy materials and resources which could be borrowed from nursery ...
Journal of Early Childhood Research, 2004
International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper reports on a number of challenges faced in tracing contributors to research p... more ABSTRACT This paper reports on a number of challenges faced in tracing contributors to research projects that were originally conducted many decades previously. The need to trace contributors in this way arises in projects which focus on involving research participants in previous studies who have not been maintained on a database, or with whom the research team has lost contact since the initial study. The paper focuses, in particular, on the use of social networking sites to trace contributors and reflects on the issues raised when using these tools for this purpose. It reports on a study which attempted to trace, using the social networking sites Facebook and Friends Reunited, contributors to surveys of childhood play conducted by Iona and Peter Opie in the 1950s and 1960s. Success in using the sites for this purpose was limited and it is suggested that in cohorts which include generations and communities that might use new technologies less frequently than others, additional methods to track down participants may be required.
International Journal of Inclusive Education, 2007
Despite a growing awareness of the implications of the changing nature of literacy due to the imp... more Despite a growing awareness of the implications of the changing nature of literacy due to the impact of technological innovations, literacy pedagogies in educational institutions across the world continue to be predicated on a performative model, in which emphasis is placed on transmitting narrow concepts of literacy that privilege the alphabetic principle. However, an examination of recent developments in England indicate that there is, increasingly, a disconcerting relationship between new literacy practices as experienced by children and young people outside of schools and the development of literacy curricula and pedagogy by policy-makers. This paper draws on conceptualization of the 'recontextualizing field' in order to explore how national literacy policy in England is selectively appropriating aspects of new literacy practices and reformulating them in ways which dissipate their potential for innovation and transformation. Berstein's 'Official Recontextualizing Field' (ORF) and 'Pedagogic Recontextualizing Field' (PRF) in which these developments are taking place are analysed in order to determine how the out-ofschool discourses of children and young people are being ideologically transformed as they start to inform national policy. Instead, it is suggested that account needs to be taken of the way in which children and young people are engaged in innovative literacy practices, drawing from current uses of social software on 'Web 2.0' as an illustrative example. In taking account of these developments, schools can adopt 'productive pedagogies' (Lingard, B., Ladwig, J., Luke, A., Mills, M., Hayes, D. & Gore, J. The Queensland school reform longitudinal study, Vols 1 and 2 (Brisbane, Education Queensland)) in order to ensure that all pupils become successful literacy learners.
English in Education, 1998
It is obvious that children have clear perceptions about gender roles and identities by the time ... more It is obvious that children have clear perceptions about gender roles and identities by the time they are in primary school. It is inevitable that these gender differences permeate children's writing. Girls and boys differ in the use of genre (Browne, 1996) and subject matter of ...
English in Education, 2003
Abstract This article outlines a four-year-old child's multi-modal e... more Abstract This article outlines a four-year-old child's multi-modal encounters with texts and analyses one of those encounters in the light of a framework for the analysis of such events. It is argued that this analysis leads to the conclusion that the experiences with texts that permeate ...
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2004
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education has been the leading international journ... more Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education has been the leading international journal in the cultural politics of education for almost two decades. Thematic issues have become a vital ingredient in the journal's engagement with current educational debates, ...
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2005
This journal has long engaged with the cultural politics of education, interrogating the intersec... more This journal has long engaged with the cultural politics of education, interrogating the intersections between cultural forms and movements and the hegemonic frameworks and institutions of education. In this special edition we focus the interrogatory lens on the production and ...
Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 2014
ABSTRACT This paper focuses on an episode of play in a primary school playground in England, whic... more ABSTRACT This paper focuses on an episode of play in a primary school playground in England, which featured a group of children re-enacting elements of the television talk show The Jeremy Kyle Show. The episode is analysed in the light of work that has identified the key elements of the talk show genre and the children's play is examined in relation to conceptualisations of talk shows as cruelty-verité, carnivalesque spectacle and vehicles of social class anxiety. The paper explores the children's playful re-enactment not only as a parody of adult worlds, but also as a confirmation of the ‘ordinariness’ of everyday life. It is argued that in episodes such as these, the functions of play are multiple and complex, but include a desire to construct collective moral sensibilities and reinforce normative discourses relating to sexuality and what it means to be a ‘good citizen’. The paper identifies spaces of continuity and discontinuity in such traditions and suggests that in play which draws from contemporary media we see the reconstruction of traditional play themes, but can also trace newer elements that are closely related to the generic conventions of reality television.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2005
accepted claim that access and use are not synonymous and Haddon moves on to present a strong cha... more accepted claim that access and use are not synonymous and Haddon moves on to present a strong challenge to those who make simplistic assumptions about adoption and use. The nature of disadvantage in relation to the lack of access to particular ICTs is also analysed, ...
Childhood, 2012
ABSTRACT This article draws on data from a project on children’s playground games and rhymes in t... more ABSTRACT This article draws on data from a project on children’s playground games and rhymes in the new media age. One objective of the project was to examine the relationship between traditional playground games and children’s media cultures. As part of the project, two ethnographic studies of primary playgrounds took place in two schools, one in the north and one in the south of England, over a two-year period. Children in both schools were active participants in the research process. They informed the research design and ongoing data collection through children’s panels and children were involved in data collection through the use of video cameras, interviews and diaries. This article reflects on a number of critical issues that are raised when considering the nature of the cultural knowledge constructed by the children as they identify the signifying practices of their play and its relationship with media culture. The concept of knowledge brokering is used as a heuristic device to analyse the nature of children’s contribution in participatory research studies.
Jackie Marsh directed the project, planned and conducted the project days for practitioners at th... more Jackie Marsh directed the project, planned and conducted the project days for practitioners at the University of Sheffield, developed the research tools (questionnaires, the interview schedules, inventory), carried out the literature review, analysed the data and wrote this ...
Despite the growing number of very young children who go online and who are using a wide range of... more Despite the growing number of very young children who go online and who are using a wide range of technologies, little is known about children’s interactions with those technologies. This report presents a pilot qualitative study designed and implemented in collaboration with a selected group of academic partners in different European countries that aims at pioneering in Europe the exploration of young children and their families` experiences with new technologies. It presents its results and discuss the findings at cross-national level on how children between zero and eight engage with digital technologies such as smartphones, tablets, computers and games; how far parents mediate this engagement and their awareness on the risks-opportunities balance. The report concludes on recommendations to parents, industries and policymakers.
Ten families from London, Sheffield and Edinburgh with at least one child aged 6 to 7 were recrui... more Ten families from London, Sheffield and Edinburgh with at least one child aged 6 to 7 were recruited to examine children’s digital technology use, including engagement with tablets, computers, gaming consoles and other devices. Interviews took place in October 2014 and were transcribed and analysed according to an agreed coding protocol.
This 22pp report describes the results of a survey of 2000 parents undertaken in early 2015. Base... more This 22pp report describes the results of a survey of 2000 parents undertaken in early 2015. Based on case-study data it lists design features of apps that both hinder and support play and creativity. The study is the result of a collaboration between the Universities of Sheffield and Edinburgh, CBeebies, Dubit, the children's television production company Foundling Bird and Monteney Primary School, Sheffield. The project was funded by the ESRC Knowledge Exchange Opportunities programme (ES/M006409/1). More information at www.techandplay.org.
This 17pp report provides a summary of findings and then discusses the implications for professio... more This 17pp report provides a summary of findings and then discusses the implications for professionals working in preschool settings with children 0 to 5. This includes how to provide guidance for parents as well as a discussion of using tablets in classrooms and pre-school settings, including examples of apps seen in use. More information at www.techandplay.org.
Citation for the report: Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J., Davenport, A., Davis, S., Robinson, P. and Piras, M. (2015) Exploring Play and Creativity in Pre-Schoolers' Use of Apps: A report for early years practitioners. Sheffield: University of Sheffield.
This 203pp report describes the results of a survey of 2000 parents (47% families including a chi... more This 203pp report describes the results of a survey of 2000 parents (47% families including a child aged 0 to 2 and 52% families including a child aged 3 to 5) who had access to a tablet device. The survey was undertaken in early 2015. The report provides detailed information on the background to the study, main findings and appendices with details of the survey questions and analyses of responses. The study is the result of a collaboration between the Universities of Sheffield and Edinburgh, CBeebies, Dubit, the children's television production company Foundling Bird and Monteney Primary School, Sheffield. The project was funded by the ESRC Knowledge Exchange Opportunities programme (ES/M006409/1). More information at www.techandplay.org.
Citation for the report: Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J., Davenport, A., Davis, S., Robinson, P. and Piras, M. (2015) Exploring Play and Creativity in Pre-Schoolers' Use of Apps: Final project report. Sheffield: University of Sheffield.
This 12pp report describes how parents can get the most out of apps with their pre-school childre... more This 12pp report describes how parents can get the most out of apps with their pre-school children. This is based on a research project conducted by the Universities of Sheffield and Edinburgh, CBeebies, Dubit, the children's television production company Foundling Bird and Monteney Primary School, Sheffield. The project was funded by the ESRC Knowledge Exchange Opportunities programme. It invites parents to compare how long their own child spends with apps by comparison with the average as revealed by the survey and to think about the skills their child may have developed. It provides some advice on choosing apps and identifying those that encourage play and creativity. More information at www.techandplay.org.
Citation for the report: Marsh, J., Plowman, L., Yamada-Rice, D., Bishop, J., Davenport, A., Davis, S., Robinson, P. and Piras, M. (2015) Exploring Play and Creativity in Pre-Schoolers' Use of Apps: A guide for parents. Sheffield: University of Sheffield.