What do they do digitally? Identifying the home digital literacy practices of young children in Turkey
Publication details
| Year: | 2019 |
| DOI: | 10.1080/09575146.2019.1702925 |
| Issued: | 2019 |
| Language: | English |
| Start Page: | 1 |
| End Page: | 16 |
| Editors: | |
| Authors: | Özturk G.; Ohi S. |
| Type: | Journal article |
| Journal: | Early Years |
| Publisher: | Informa UK Limited |
| Topics: | Literacy and skills |
| Sample: | This study was conducted with families in the Atakoy region of Istanbul, which is of middle-to-upper socio-economic status where families were considered as having the potential to access digital technology in their homes. Primary school principals from local public schools were informed about the research, resulting in two principals volunteering their school’s involvement. Seven Year 1 classes and four Kindergarten1 classes were involved. In total, 350 children gave consent forms and questionnaires to their parents and 105 parents agreed to participate. The children’s ages ranged from 5 years, 1 month, to 7 years, 2 months, with a median of 6 years, 7 months. In all, 91 mothers and 14 fathers completed the Parents Digital Literacy Questionnaire (PDLQ). The main language spoken by the families was Turkish and they spoke English as a second or additional language. |
| Implications For Stakeholders About: | Researchers |
Abstract
Young children develop understandings about literacy from birth through experiences of print in their home environments. Today, written text is often present in children’s homes in both print and digital forms. What kind of technologies are young children accessing at home and for what purposes? This paper discusses research findings from questionnaires completed by parents about the home digital literacy practices of 105 Turkish children aged 5–7 years and the nature of parental support for digital technology use at home. Parent interviews with five families further identified the technologies used, the children’s repertoire of digital literacy practices and issues confronting parents about children’s use of technology. The study revealed that children were actively engaged in multimodal practices through the use of digital technologies in play and learning in their homes. The main implications of this study are that it is important that educators be aware of children’s existing digital home literacy practices as a foundation for further literacy learning and that parents may need support in understanding how technology use can contribute to children’s literacy learning. Further research is warranted in this area.
Outcome
"the most common activities children did on their own included watching programs and videos online (81.9%), listening to music with a digital device (77%), mark-making and drawing pictures on a digital device (76.3) and using the internet for surfing the web at home (76%)." (Ozturk & Ohi, 2018, p.6)
"A number of parents (68.6%) recognised the value of digital educational materials in children’s learning. However, a relatively large number of parents (75.2%) reported that they believed that traditional educational materials are better than digital educational materials." (Ozturk & Ohi, 2018, p.6)