Disembodied Voice and Embodied Affect: e-Reading in Early Childhood Education
Publication details
| Year: | 2017 |
| DOI: | 10.23865/njlr.v3.467 |
| Issued: | 2017 |
| Language: | English |
| Volume: | 3 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Start Page: | 12 |
| End Page: | 25 |
| Editors: | |
| Authors: | Hermansson C. |
| Type: | Journal article |
| Journal: | Nordic Journal of Literacy Research |
| Publisher: | Cappelen Damm AS - Cappelen Damm Akademisk |
| Topics: | Learning; Internet usage, practices and engagement |
| Sample: | "Three preschool classes at two different schools in the south of Sweden were involved. Two preschool classes comprising 27 children and two teachers, at an inner city primary school, the Seaside, took part in the study from September 2013 until May 2014. Thirteen children and one teacher from a primary school, the Woodland, in a rural village took part from January until May 2015. The three classes were diverse in terms of social and cultural background, and were equally divided in terms of gender." (Author, 16) |
| Implications For Educators About: | Professional development |
| Implications For Stakeholders About: | Researchers |
Abstract
This article is based on observations made in a Swedish digital early childhood classroom during reading time. The question of ‘what is happening’ in the digital classroom when six-year-olds read a fictional electronic book is explored through video observations focusing on children learning to read by engaging in e-books. Informed by affect, as described by Baruch de Spinoza and interpreted by Gilles Deleuze, this article provides a way to attend to the highly dynamic encounters between bodies, ideas and materiality that characterize the children’s engagement in e-reading. The analysis suggests that the digital voice is a vital component for activating engagement in and a drive for reading through the moments and movements of embodied reading when children co-read a fictional e-book on their own. Focusing on how e-book reading is enacted in the educational everyday reading practices, this article is an empirically grounded contribution to the understanding of how e-reading is constituted in contemporary digital classroom in all its complexity.
Outcome
"The accounts and analyses in this article point to the highly diverse, immediate and indeterminate aspirational strategies that children adopt when reading electronic books. The analysis shows how multiple and diverse moments and movements of e-reading emerge and develop in specific ways through the interaction of bodies, ideas and materiality. Regarding what and how elements become more or less forceful, the analysis shows that the disembodied digital voice is a vital component providing potential for activating engagement in and a drive for reading through the mo(ve)ments of embodied reading when children co-read on their own." (Author, 22)