Action IS1410 The Digital Literacy and Multimodal Practices of Young Children (DigiLitEY) Professor Jackie Marsh, Action Chair LLL Week, EU Parliament, Expert Debate: Media Literacy, XX1 Century Challenge Brussels, 3/12/2015

2 Why is a focus on this age group important? Many children have access to a range of technologies from birth (e.g. in the UK, 69% of 5-7 year olds and 53% of 3-4s olds use tablets) The digital divide will widen further if pre-school settings do not prepare children for a digital world Parents of pre-school children are seeking additional guidance on how to support their children’s digital literacy

3 Digital Literacy CriticalCultural Operational (Green, 1998)

4 Operational Is able to do unassisted: Is Marsh et al.,

5 Cultural More cross-national similarities than differences in young children’s practices. However, culture shapes digital use in specific ways. Children engage in family digital literacy practices from a young age (e.g. Skype). Children develop a repertoire of practices in digital environments that are shaped by parental practices and beliefs as well as sibling/ peer practices. JRC pilot study of 70 families in 6 EU countries and Russia (Chaudron et al., 2015)

6 Critical Marsh et al., Top 10 favourite apps of pre-schoolers

7 Recommendations There is a paucity of research on the digital literacy practices of 0-8 year olds and future funding should address this gap as a matter of urgency. Family digital literacy programmes should be developed, implemented and evaluated in order to enable parents to support young children’s digital literacy development and ehnance parents’ understanding of matters such as online safety. There needs to be further work undertaken on drawing together good practice in initial and continuing professional development for early years practitioners in this field.