Search

The COVID-19 pandemic has had an enormous impact on many aspects of children���s day-to-day lives, including their play. Measures such as lockdowns, school and playground closures, quarantine, isolation and social distancing introduced to curb transmission have resulted in major consequences for where, when, how and with whom children can play. This article reports on interim findings from ���The Play Observatory���, a 15-month project researching children���s play experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. Collecting data through an online survey and online case studies, the research offers insights into ways in which children���s play has endured, adapted and responded to restrictions brought about by the pandemic. This article focuses on children���s digital play throughout this period, including examples of digital gaming, online play, social media, playful creation of digital media texts and hybrid online-offline play. Drawing on theories relating to dynamic literacies, multimodal perspectives and the Reggio Emilia concept of the ���hundred languages���, this article examines the role of the digital in children���s contemporary play practices and the specific affordances of digital play during times of stress, uncertainty and physical distancing. The findings highlight ways in which digital play continued, adapted, evolved and reflected children���s experiences and understandings of the pandemic. The study reveals the complexity of digital play and its place within contemporary digital childhoods, troubling simplistic notions of ���screen time��� and highlighting the increasingly blurred boundaries around digital and non-digital practices, calling for educational approaches that value digital play as significant meaning-making., Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society, Vol 17 No 3 (2021): Journal of e-Learning and Knowledge Society - Special Issue on "Children and the Digital"

Children and young people are very often the forgotten demographic in the design of the digital world. Early adopters and enthusiastic participants, they still remain marginalised in the imaginations of those that are building the future. The Digital Futures Commission was set up to ensure an exciting research collaboration of unique organisations that invites innovators, policy makers, regulators, academics and civil society to unlock digital innovation in the best interests of children and young people.

In early childhood education, observations of play have typically been documented in paper-based formats (e.g. scrapbooks, written notes, printed photographs) as part of assessment practices. However, there is a growing trend towards the use of commercial software to record learning in digital formats, where video, audio, photographs and writing can be combined. These multi-media forms of ‘digital documentation’ are significantly different to traditional paper-based practices. They offer the potential to create multimodal narratives that represent children’s multiple signs of learning in new ways, and the possibility to share these narratives with parents and children themselves. Yet the current lack of research-based guidance regarding digital documentation risks practices being shaped by commercial drivers rather than by child-centred learning theories. Framework Drawing upon a multimodal social semiotic perspective on learning (Bezemer & Kress, 2016; Kress 2010;), this presentation will report the findings of a one-year project funded by the Froebel Trust. The research worked with educators to develop an early childhood pedagogy of observation, documentation and assessment that brings Froebelian principles of the ‘uniqueness of every child’s capacity and potential’ and ‘holistic nature of development’ to documentation practices in contemporary kindergartens (Lilley, 1967). Fieldwork included case studies of children aged 3-5 years living with disadvantage and/or in the early stages of learning English in three diverse multicultural kindergartens in London. The study was reviewed and approved by the university ethics committee at the outset. A multimodal methodology (Jewitt 2014), underpinned by elements of ethnography (Kress 2011), was used to offer multiple perspectives on the day-to-day lived experiences of observation and documentation. Video recordings, examples of documentation, interviews with educators, parent questionnaires and video-prompted discussions with children provided diverse insights into observation and digital documentation in practice. Thematic analysis across the dataset and fine-grained multimodal analysis of video extracts have resulted in rich findings regarding the opportunities and constraints of different approaches to the observation and documentation of young children’s learning. Recognising that children’s learning through play is often expressed in subtle ways, through silent actions and interactions as well as through language, this research highlights the potentials and constraints of practitioners’ diverse approaches to observing and documenting play in contemporary kindergartens. The findings draw attention to which signs of learning are typically privileged in early childhood education, and which aspects of children’s learning often/may pass unnoticed and undocumented. Significance The study highlights the insights multimodal narratives can offer into children’s lived experiences, whilst recognising a number of challenges presented by digital documentation. The study argues for respectful use of observation and digital documentation which values all children’s subtle signs of learning, at a time when early years assessment worldwide is under particular debate.

There is a growing trend in early childhood education towards using commercial software to record learning in digital formats, where video, audio, photographs and writing can be combined. These multi-media forms of ‘digital documentation’ offer new possibilities to recognise, represent and value children’s multiple signs of learning in new ways, and to share these narratives with parents and children. Yet there is little research-based guidance on digital documentation, so early education assessment practices run the risk of being guided by commercial drivers rather than by child-centred learning theories. In this study, we worked with educators to develop an early childhood pedagogy of observation, documentation and assessment that brings Froebelian principles of the ‘uniqueness of every child’s capacity and potential’ and ‘holistic nature of development’ to documentation practices in contemporary early years settings. Fieldwork included case studies of children aged 3-5 years living with disadvantage and/or in the early stages of learning English in three diverse multicultural early years settings in London. The study design was framed by a multimodal social semiotic perspective on learning (Kress 2010) and an ethnographic approach to social science enquiry. Data generation included video recordings, examples of documentation of children’s learning, interviews with educators, parent questionnaires and video-prompted discussions with children. Fine-grained multimodal analysis of video extracts resulted in rich findings regarding the opportunities and constraints of different approaches used by the participating settings in their observation and documentation of young children’s learning.

The 2017 DigiLitEY training event was aimed at postgraduate students and emergent researchers who are interested in understanding children’s digital practices through participatory/qualitative/ethnographic research and hoped to help participants develop further their understanding of how to design/carry out feasible and ethicallygrounded research with young children around their digital literacies, practices and experiences. The Summer School also was an opportunity for the COST Action, particularly in connection to the interests of WG5 (focused on research methods and ethics) to take stock of emergent methodological and ethical concerns among researchers and professionals working with young children and digital technologies. The organization of the summer school in a residential facility allowed for many moments of informal discussion among all participants and we hope was a first step in an emergent network among a heterogeneous group of early career researchers in Europe.

Within that corpus of literature, the role and significance of youths in the Nationalist movement, especially during the 1910s and early 1920s, is an important theme that has to date been afforded little attention. This lacuna in Irish historiography is surprising given the substantial number of surviving accounts by minors involved in well–known militant organisations, notably Fianna Éireann and the Irish Volunteers (later the Irish Republican Army). As this study will demonstrate, the unprecedented involvement of an emerging generation of boys and girls in the political and militant activities associated with the Revolution increased and diversified significantly during the 1910s and early 1920s. The aim of this thesis is, therefore, to explore and evaluate both the evolving nature and the significance of their involvement that left a lasting impact on the campaign for independence.