Children’s collaborative technology-mediated storymaking. Instructional challenges in early childhood education

The thesis investigates how narrative activities are shaped when children in a pre-school class create stories using digital technology. In particular, the study focuses on the interaction between the children, the teacher and the digital tools used in the activities. The researcher investigates how digital tools change children’s literacy activities in kindergartens, and the challenges they present regarding children’s reading and writing education. The research questions are: 1) In what way do digital technologies, other cultural tools and support provided by the teacher mediate children’s stories? 2) What type of teaching challenges occur in technology-mediated activities in the pre-school class?

The results show that the children, in addition to practicing together to create an understandable story, must simultaneously learn how to use the digital technology. This proved a challenge for many, while the story process itself received less focus. At the same time, the inherent qualities of the digital technology help the children gain aesthetic experience in creating the stories, where they can use spoken language, writing, images, colours and shapes.

Three Swedish pre-school groups, with a total of 16 children, were observed while they created digital stories in pairs using different types of technology. All the children had previously worked with narrative construction in various ways. The children were video recorded while they created the stories, and the data was then transcribed and analysed using interaction analysis. In addition, the researcher collected and analysed 15 digital stories that the children had created.

Åberg, E. S. (2018). “Children’s collaborative technology-mediated storymaking. Instructional challenges in early childhood education”. Akademisk avhandling. Göteborgs universitet.