Media as a Catalyst for Learning at Home and Across Setting

• In Event: Learning From Educational Media at Home: Principles and Practices for Working With Families

Abstract

Objectives
In this presentation we examine how parents conceptualize the presence of media in their children’s lives, how specific child-oriented media come to be used in ways that support learning, and the role of both child and parent interests as contributors to the media practices that emerge.

Theoretical framework
Sociocultural and ecological perspectives guide the analyses on development generally (e.g., Bronfenbrenner 1979; Cole 1996). More specifically, our work uses a learning ecology framework (Barron, 2006) that conceptualizes learners’ activities, practices, and relationships within and across their multiple life settings as the appropriate unit of analysis for understanding learning across time. We build on our prior work that documented parents’ practices as learning partners to advance their child’s interest-driven technological activity (Barron, Martin, Takeuchi, & Fithian, 2009) as well as other research currently documenting “joint media engagement” (Stevens & Penuel, 2010).

Methods
We worked with 15 families living in Northern California that varied in their educational, language, and occupational backgrounds. Seven of the families were primarily Spanish-speaking and the parents were recent immigrants to the US. These families were the focus of a dissertation study. The remaining eight families were English-speaking and longtime US residents; they were the focus of another collaborative study. All families had focal children between the ages of 4-8 years. Both studies used mixed methods, including ethnographic interviews, observations, and surveys.

Results
We highlight four ways that media came to be a learning resource. These include 1) curation of interactive and traditional resources; 2) interest-driven searches linked to projects; 3) media production activity; and 4) “conversational anchoring”, when technology was used intentionally to helped ground learning conversations or when media led to unplanned teaching-learning interactions. The focus of learning varied widely. For example, we learned about collaborative exploration of astronomy through the NASA website, using the Internet to show a young child a painting being described in a poem, and discussing stereotypes portrayed in media. Among the families who were acquiring English, these practices supported efforts to learn English and understand English-language materials from children’s schools. Parents’ beliefs about media - rooted in their own experiences and expertise - influenced choices and strategies for capitalizing on child oriented digital media. Though the families differed substantially in their financial resources, all worked to advance valued learning outcomes using the tools they had access to. We discuss how parents’ framing of technology with respect to its usefulness as a learning resource influenced patterns of uptake and management.

Significance
The increasing prevalence of digital technology in homes of diverse backgrounds and income levels make it vital to understand family media practices and how these can support learning and development. Whereas many studies of media use focuses on devices owned, quantifications of screen time, or the presence of internet access, the types of rich and detailed data shared in this presentation move beyond simple measures and inventories to shed light on how families use media, and what role these resources might play in family learning.

Authors

• Amber Maria Levinson, Stanford University

• Brigid J.S. Barron, Stanford University