Reading and Meaning-Construction Approaches: Kindergartners' Buddy Reading With iPad App Books

• In Event: 14.034 - Exploring Young Children's Experiences With Multimodal Text

Abstract

Increasingly, children engage with digital text, such as iPad app books (Schuler, 2012; Vandewater, et al., 2006). These texts require use and interpretation of multiple modes of information that occur across diverse pathways that differ from the patterns used to read traditional (paper) text (Kress, 2010; Wolfe & Flewitt, 2010). However, we know very little about these reading approaches. Therefore, this study examined these approaches, depth of meaning constructed using these various approach, and changes across the school-year for 29 diverse 5-6 year-old kindergarteners.

Rooted in a sociocultural perspective (Cole & Wertsch, 1996; Vygotsky, 1978), we chose the social context of buddy reading (two kindergarteners reading an iPad app book on one iPad together) to explore these issues. We used emergent coding and constant comparative analysis to (1) identify approaches used by kindergarteners to read iPad-app-books, and (2) what kind of meaning children make with text. Next, we applied all these codes across 70 video-recorded buddy reading events. Then, we examined changes in codes across events in time sequence to identify (3) changes over time

Our findings revealed three approaches to reading and the kinds of meaning constructed using each approach. First, in hotspot-centric reading children mostly attended to information through hotspots, not text. This often led to disjointed meaning making by commenting on hotspots or creating dialogue to accompany hotspots, but without attention to storyline cohesion across the book or deep thinking about its content. Second, in text-centric reading they mostly listened to the text and paid attention to the words. This led to children having basic understanding of storyline, but they missed opportunities to enrich their understanding through additional information offered via hotspots; thus, typically les deep thinking was observed through children’s comments. Third, in integrated reading children listened to the text read first, then used the hotspots, and often commented on the meaning constructed, such as relating events to the storyline as a whole, or deep expressing deep thinking. Most children used a hotspot-centric reading at the beginning of the school year. Those children who read collaboratively with their buddy moved to an integrated approach across the school year. Those who did not read collaboratively typically maintained the hotspot-centric approach. Additionally, text design mediated children’s engagement. First, hotspot design mediated the type of literacy development that was facilitated. Second, other digital features available in text also mediated how children approached reading the text.

Based on our findings, providing opportunities for social reading and fostering collaboration is important for supporting emergent readers’ development of an integrated approach to multimodal reading that results in deeper constructions of meaning. Additionally, since text design mediates engagement, it is important to select books that facilitate a variety of different emergent literacy skills—not one genre, publisher, author, etc. so that the hotspots across texts would all be similar. Further, this diversity in text selection will provide more opportunities to expand repertoires and flexibility for using a variety of digital features.

Authors

• Tanya M. Christ, Oakland University

• X. Christine Wang, University at Buffalo - SUNY