TY - JOUR

T1 - Percolating spaces

T2 - creative ways of using digital technologies to connect young children’s school and home lives

AU - Gillen, J

AU - Kucirkova, Natalia

N1 - This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Gillen, J. and Kucirkova, N. (2018), Percolating spaces: Creative ways of using digital technologies to connect young children's school and home lives. Br J Educ Technol, 49: 834-846. doi:10.1111/bjet.12666 which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/bjet.12666/abstract This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance With Wiley Terms and Conditions for self-archiving.

PY - 2018/9

Y1 - 2018/9

N2 - Contemporary research suggests there are many missed opportunities for home and school to work together to define and promote effective practices with digital technologies, especially in early years. This study outlines ways in which one Early Years classroom creatively promoted bidirectional connections between children’s learning with technologies at home and in school. Nested in a posthumanist perspective on space and classroomness (Burnett, 2014), the study illuminates the complex spatial entanglement among home, school and technologies in the form of enhanced vignettes. As a space-based interpretive case study that emerged from a larger project, the data collection methods revolved around a set of two visits by each researcher, one year apart, plus analyses of school documentation and online interactions. We integrate diverse data sources to argue that innovative, multimodal practices of teaching, learning and assessment can be designed and implemented imaginatively, deploying a range of digital technologies to connect with children’s and parents’ home lives. Use of multimedia affordances of technologies, attention to children’s physical and material interactions with resources and strategic school policy made it possible for influences to percolate between home and school, to the enhancement of children’s learning in the moment.

AB - Contemporary research suggests there are many missed opportunities for home and school to work together to define and promote effective practices with digital technologies, especially in early years. This study outlines ways in which one Early Years classroom creatively promoted bidirectional connections between children’s learning with technologies at home and in school. Nested in a posthumanist perspective on space and classroomness (Burnett, 2014), the study illuminates the complex spatial entanglement among home, school and technologies in the form of enhanced vignettes. As a space-based interpretive case study that emerged from a larger project, the data collection methods revolved around a set of two visits by each researcher, one year apart, plus analyses of school documentation and online interactions. We integrate diverse data sources to argue that innovative, multimodal practices of teaching, learning and assessment can be designed and implemented imaginatively, deploying a range of digital technologies to connect with children’s and parents’ home lives. Use of multimedia affordances of technologies, attention to children’s physical and material interactions with resources and strategic school policy made it possible for influences to percolate between home and school, to the enhancement of children’s learning in the moment.

KW - digital technologies

KW - literacies

KW - CLASSROOM DISCOURSE

KW - Spatial

U2 - 10.1111/bjet.12666

DO - 10.1111/bjet.12666

M3 - Journal article

VL - 49

SP - 834

EP - 846

JO - British Journal of Educational Technology

JF - British Journal of Educational Technology

SN - 0007-1013

IS - 5

ER -