Reading From the Screen: Making Reading Salient During Young Children's Use of Digital Technologies

• In Event: 70.065 - Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: 70.065-5 - Rethinking Normative Literacy, Literacy Practices, and Research on Literacy

Abstract

While research establishes that parents play an important role in supporting young children’s use of digital technology, less attention is given to how interactions between parents and their young children enable reading from the screen during naturally occurring activity. This paper employs conversation analysis of a corpus of interactions drawn from recordings of young children’s everyday use of digital technologies in homes. Analysis examines talk between parents and young children about what letters, words, or more extended texts “say” and delineates interactional methods used to make reading relevant. Interactional methods are shown to be methodically employed to occasion reading during use of digital technology, particularly when accessing unfamiliar sites, programs or games.

Authors

• Christina R. Davidson, Charles Sturt University

• Susan J. Danby, Queensland University of Technology

• Karen Thorpe, Queensland University of Technology