“Don’t Talk to It!”: Problematizing Apprenticeship into Dialogic Reading with IPad Ebooks in Parent-Child Interactions

• In Event: iPad Apps and Early Literacy Development

Abstract

This single case study sought to understand the nature of meaning making in interactions between a five year old child and her parents around iPad ebooks. The research question was: What is the nature of meaning making in iPad ebook practices of our family during the first six months of my daughter’s use of ebooks? Participants were my daughter and my husband. I played a dual role of participant-observer. Case studies involving one’s own family are important because they provide perspectives on naturally occurring data (Dyson & Geneshi, 2005).

What the literacy field knows about interactions between children and parents around books over time comes mostly from studies on traditional print (Wells, 2009). Although studies of younger children’s interactions around ebooks extist, they concentrate mostly on the skills children gain from computerized book reading (Gong & Levy, 2009). Studies of interactions around technologies in home settings focused mainly on how technology is reflected in their non-technology activities (Pahl, 2005).

I employed activity theory to account for sociocultural conditions that shape such interactions and meaning making and an innovative approach to grounded theory. Activity theory is an analytic framework that builds on the cultural historical approach to learning developed by Vygotsky (1978). The theory allows one to explain relationships between the following concepts: subjects (participants), objects (understandings), tools (iPads), division of labor (participants doing certain tasks), rules (routines), community, and outcomes.

Data included observational notes, videos of interactions (about 15 hours), videos of the iPad screen, and informal interviews focusing on our daughter’s iPad application choices and the different nature of reading on the iPad that we as parents noticed. My approach to grounded theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) was innovative. I did not develop codes that would lead to larger themes and could result in decontextualizing an action from its explanatory context (Mercer, 2010), but, instead, I compared activities as they developed over time. I then theorized the relationships between activity system elements and changes in those relationships and asked questions about these relationships. As I continued with my analysis, I found that tensions between activity object, division of labor, and rules were evident. I then took those questions and began categorizing patterns of changes across ebook events.

The findings revealed that meaning making with ebooks was saturated with tensions around what dialogic reading on the iPad entails. As the child developed an emotional bond with the device and treated it as a living thing, she created her own dialogue with the iPad. First, she interacted with just illustrations and never allowed parents to read from the screen. Then, she engaged with a dialogue with both audio features and illustrations. Dialogic interactions that parents established during bedtime reading and strived to use in the new context were difficult to realize. Parents needed to learn their child’s new purposes for literacy and their daughter’s different approach to dialogic reading.

Author

• Barbara Maria Vokatis, Oneonta - SUNY