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Digital literacy games can be beneficial for children with reading difficulties as a supplement to classroom instruction and an important feature of these games are the instructional supports, such as feedback. To be effective, feedback needs to build on prior instruction and match a learner's level of prior knowledge. However, there is limited research around the relationship between prior knowledge, instruction and feedback in the context of learning games. This paper presents an empirical study exploring the influence of prior knowledge on response to feedback, in two conditions: with or without instruction. Thirty-six primary children (age 8-11) with reading difficulties participated: each child was assessed for their prior knowledge of two suffix types--noun and adjective suffixes. They subsequently received additional instruction for one suffix type and then played two rounds of a literacy game--one round for each suffix type. Our analysis shows that prior knowledge predicted initial success rates and performance after a verbal hint differently, depending on whether instruction was provided. These results are discussed with regards to learning game feedback design and the impact on different types of knowledge involved in gameplay, as well as other game design elements that might support knowledge building during gameplay.

This paper examines how primary aged children with reading difficulties attend to, understand and act upon different types of feedback within a digital literacy game. A systematic and structured video analysis of twenty-six children's game play was carried out focussing on moments where children made an error and were followed by in-game feedback. Our findings show that children benefited from outcome feedback, which supported an accurate interpretation of their game performance and prompted children to try again. In contrast, though the elaborative feedback attracted similar levels of attention, children struggled to understand the content, resulting in a reliance on implicit knowledge to correct their next response. Alongside identifying a set of new questions for future research, the study contributes a number of intrinsic and extrinsic recommendations for ensuring children with reading difficulties attend to and comprehend games-based feedback.

Children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) are multimodal communicators. However, in classroom interactions involving children and staff, achieving mutual understanding and accomplishing task-oriented goals by attending to the child's unaided AAC can be challenging. This study draws on excerpts of video recordings of interactions in a classroom for 6–9-year-old children who used AAC to explore how three child participants used the range of multimodal resources available to them – vocal, movement-based, and gestural, technological, temporal – to shape (and to some degree, co-control) classroom interactions. Our research was concerned with examining achievements and problems in establishing a sense of common ground and the realization of child agency. Through detailed multimodal analysis, this paper renders visible different types of practices rejecting a request for clarification, drawing new parties into a conversation, disrupting whole-class teacher talk-through which the children in the study voiced themselves in persuasive ways. It concludes by suggesting that multimodal accounts paint a more nuanced picture of children's resourcefulness and conversational asymmetry that highlights children's agency amidst material, semiotic, and institutional constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating voice in research that involves children with disabilities is highly challenging. Very few studies have problematised voice for the purposes of designing new technologies for and with children who have disabilities. We embarked on qualitative fieldwork with children who have severe speech and physical impairments with the view to motivate designers to consider new child-centred perspectives for conceptualising new communication technologies. In this article, we use reflexivity as a tool to critically examine how empowering our methodological decisions were for children with disabilities, in advancing child-centred accounts of their communication experiences. We propose four considerations that can be useful for researchers and practitioners when undertaking participatory work involving children with disabilities. These are: 1.Theoretical lenses guiding data collection, analysis and interpretation; 2. Developing credible accounts through strong and prominent ideas; 3. Children's ways of participating evidencing their voices, and; 4. Methods hindering the promotion of child centred accounts. Children with severe speech and physical impairments are rarely involved in designing new technologies for supporting communication. It can be challenging to study what children with severe speech and physical impairments express as important about their communication. This article examines the ways in which researchers made decisions about how they worked with children. We studied communication by focusing on the child during their interactions. Our goal was to understand what children expressed as important for communication. We found that researcher beliefs, the use of different methods, and observing children's ways of participating all influenced the findings. The findings identify that it is important for researchers to be clear to others about the perspectives and different data sources that influence their decisions. Some data collection methods, such as taking photos, can be less empowering for children as they can focus on how the researcher sees the situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]