Understanding Digital Technologies and Young Children

Understanding Digital Technologies and Young Children explores the possibilities digital technology brings to enhance the learning and developmental needs of young children.

Globally, the role of technology is an increasingly important part of everyday life. In many early childhood education frameworks and curricula around the world, there is an expectation that children are developing skills to become effective communicators and are using digital technology to investigate their ideas and represent their thinking. This means that educators throughout the world are expected to actively enhance children’s learning in ways that provide learning experiences with technology that are balanced and purposeful to allow the transformation of traditional authentic learning experiences. Digital technologies can be used to explore, manipulate, discover, play and interact with real and imaginative worlds to allow active meaning making.

With a wide range of expert contributors, this book provides a comprehensive examination of the current research on technology and young children and the importance of engagement for learning. This approach encourages the reader to rethink the possibilities and potential of digital technologies for learning in the early years, especially in the years before formal schooling when children might be attending early childhood settings.

This will be a valuable reference for anyone looking for an international perspective on digital technology and young children, and is particularly aimed at current and future teachers.

Susanne Garvis is a Professor of child and youth studies at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

Narelle Lemon is a Senior Lecturer at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.