Theorizing digital literacy practices in early childhood

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors propose that there are many conceptualizations of digital literacies in early childhood that are theoretically rich and fruitful. They introduce highly influential attitudes in defining literacy in early childhood leading up to the more diverse orientations that relate to the new constellations offered by digital media. The authors offer something useful in considering some of the productive tensions that have brought them to the identification of the orientations. Key understandings were built around developmental aspects of the child for language and literacy learning from an early age. The child is conceived as both a consumer of multimodal texts and a producer of such texts. And technological developments represent new possibilities for both practices, in what has been termed ‘multimodal literacy’. Such socio-spatial, socio-material, and other allied approaches seek to work from a stance grounded in social justice, to offer richer cultural educational contexts in which young children may develop to their full potential.