Unruly Literacies: Young Children's Digital Documentation as Meaning-Making and Resistance

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 11:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Connecting the past, present, and future: Reclaiming play and literacy for all children

Abstract

This study explores how young children make meaning through digital documentation practices in a public kindergarten classroom. Drawing on post-qualitative inquiry and critical posthumanist theory, 14 child co-researchers used iPads to document moments, materials, and relationships that mattered to them. Data engagement followed a "thinking with" approach, attuned to affective, material, and embodied entanglements. Findings highlight three central movements emerging from the assemblage: documentation as unruly placemaking, resistance to institutional logics, and a practice of embodied literacies. This study challenges normative constructions of childhood and literacy by centering children's epistemological contributions and multimodal meaning-making. It offers methodological and pedagogical insights for reimagining research and early education as sites of relational, creative, and justice-oriented possibility.

Author

• Andrea Sanchez, Kent State University