Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood

Jackie Marsh, Jackie Marsh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134308385
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

This book offers a range of perspectives on children's multimodal experiences, providing a ground-breaking account of the ways in which children engage with popular culture, media and digital literacy practices from their earliest years. Many young children have extensive experience of film, television, printed media, computer games, mobile phones and the Internet from birth, yet their reaction to media texts is rarely acknowledged in the national curricula of any country.

This seminal text focuses on children from birth to eight years, addressing issues such as:

* media and identity construction
* media literacy practices in the home
* the changing nature of literacy in technologically advanced societies
* The place of popular and media texts in children's lives and the use of such texts in the curriculum.

By exploring children's engagement with popular culture, media and digital texts in the home, community and early years settings, the contributors look at empirical studies from around the world, and draw out vital new theoretical issues relating to children's emergent techno-literacy practices.

With an unmatchable team of international experts evaluating topics from text-messaging to the Teletubbies, this book is a long-overdue, fascinating and illuminating read for policy-makers, educational researchers and practitioners, and crosses over to appeal to those in the linguistics field.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Children of the digital age

Jackie Marsh

Several of the chapters in this book are based on contributions to an international research seminar series titled Children’s Literacy and Popular Culture,¹ which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council² in the UK. One of the aims of the seminar series was to develop further the emergent work on popular culture and literacy and contribute to the development of a theoretical framework for this research. In addition to some of the participants in the seminar series, additional authors have been invited to contribute to the current volume because of their internationally renowned work in the early childhood literacy field. This book focuses on research pertaining to children aged from birth to eight years, with a predominant emphasis on children in the first five years of life. The reason for this narrow focus is simple; there is very little work in the international arena which examines the role of popular culture and new technologies in young children’s literacy lives. All of the chapters in this book report on research which illuminates the ways in which contemporary childhoods are shaped by and, in turn, shape the changing communicative practices of the twenty-first century. Much has been written about the technological transformations taking place in the new millennium and their impact on literacy education, but, as yet, there has been little empirical data to support some of the claims made, particularly within the early childhood field. One of the main purposes of this book, therefore, is to share research in this area in order to develop understanding of the paradigm shift that has taken place in relation to young children’s contemporary communicative practices. The chapters report on research studies undertaken in a number of countries including Australia, Canada, England, Italy, Mexico and the United States. In addition to the emphasis on international empirical studies, the chapters develop new theoretical models for analysing the relationship between popular culture, media and new technologies and children’s literacy development. Drawing from a range of disciplines in addition to educational studies, this theoretical work makes an important contribution to the task of developing an understanding of children’s literacy practices in a new media age and building an informed pedagogy which offers opportunities for re-appropriation (Stein, 2001) and transformation (Dyson, 1997). Before I move on to outline the content of this book, it would be appropriate to begin by exploring the terms used in the title of the text—popular culture, new media and digital literacy—given the indeterminacy of some of these concepts in the field.

Popular culture

Insofar as it would appear impossible to determine the exact meaning of the concept of ‘culture’ (Jenks, 1993), it is a fruitless task to attempt to provide a precise definition of ‘popular culture’. For some, popular culture is the culture of the ‘masses’, culture which is consumed or created (usually consumed) on a large scale and often in opposition to ‘high culture’ (Adorno and Horkenheimer, 1979 [1947]). For others (Levine, 1988), the boundaries between ‘high’ and popular culture are contested and constantly shifting— opera and the work of Shakespeare are two examples of cultural forms which have crossed such borders over time.³ The term ‘popular culture’ in relation to young children usually refers to those cultural texts, artefacts and practices which are attractive to large numbers of children and which are often mass produced on a global scale (Kenway and Bullen, 2001). These goods are frequently linked by common themes, so that ‘tie-in’ goods are related to popular television or film characters and narratives. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to identify the origins of themes, given the multiplicity of platforms on which they occur. Indeed, it is this ‘transmedia intertextuality’ (Kinder, 1991:3) which is particularly appealing to children, as meeting the same narrative in different forms can enable them to integrate varied aspects of their experiences and enhance their ‘narrative satisfaction’ (Hilton, 1996: 42).

Although it is often these meta-narratives which are seen as forming children’s popular culture, it is important to recognise that particular groups of children will adopt more localised themes and texts that are specific to their cultural practices. Some of these popular cultural narratives will be exclusive to particular cultural groups and some will be adaptations of globalised narratives. Pokémon, for example, was a worldwide phenomenon, but was adapted in different ways by children in communities across the globe so that, for example, playing with Pokémon in Aboriginal communities in Australia looked very different to Pokémon mania in Canada (Vasquez, 2003). This process also happens in relation to adolescents’ and adults’ practices. For instance, MacDougall (2003) analyses the adaptation of Barbie dolls for initiation rites in a Mexican Indian community. This revision of globalised commercial merchandise in ways which ensure that these texts and artefacts reflect localised social practices creates a popular cultural ‘third space’ (Wilson, 2000). Furthermore, children’s popular culture is often considered to be subject to the ‘McDonalidisation’ effect (Ritzer, 1998) in that it is assumed that US-based themes dominate the global market. However, this is often not the case, as the worldwide popularity of the Teletubbies (of UK origin) and Pokémon (of Japanese origin) attest. In short, this is a complex area in which assumptions made are often erroneous and the dynamic interplay between globalising and localising effects overlooked. In addition, it is important to note that culture is also produced, not simply consumed. Although children’s culture is often shaped by adults and taken up by children (or not, as the case may be) in various ways, children also create their own, child-centred cultural practices. Ultimately, definitions of children’s popular culture depend on a sensitive reading of socio-cultural practices in specific contexts, as is the case with the chapters throughout this book.

New media

In some ways, the term ‘new media’ is a little misleading because some of the media referred to by this phrase, such as television and radio, have been around for decades. What is new about these media is the impact of digitised technologies on the production and consumption of them. In addition, ‘new media’ refers to a wide range of technologies and communication media which have developed more recently. Since the 1980s, rapid developments in technology have led to a range of communicative practices which were simply not possible previously. However, the immense developments in technology should not cloud the fact that some things remain relatively unchanged; as Jewitt (2002:194) suggests, ‘old technologies always occupy new technologies (as witnessed by the running boards on cars, the keyboards on computers)’. Although it is important to acknowledge the immense changes new media have generated, over-emphasis of the impact of these technological developments should be avoided.

The use of the term ‘new media’ also provides a means of referring to a wide range of techno-cultural practices which each have specialised modes of operating, some of which may be common across media but others of which may be very specific to particular media. It is, as Lister et al. (2003) indicate, an inclusive term because:

It avoids the emphasis on a purely technical and formal definition, as in ‘digital’ or ‘electronic media’; the stress on a single, ill-defined and contentious quality as in ‘interactive media’, or the limitation to one set of machines and practices as in ‘computer-mediated communication.’

(Lister et al., 2003:11)

‘New media’, then, might benefit from a lack of specificity, but this might also limit the term’s usefulness in the long term as the proliferation of media and related practices continues at such a rapid pace. For now, however, the term is useful in signalling fundamental shifts in contemporary communicative practices, for example one of the key changes in recent years which underpins much of the analysis in this book is the move from page to screen. The new media texts and practices which are considered in the chapters here include computer games, text-messaging on mobile phones and use of interactive television, all of which signal the current emphasis on screen-based technologies and all of which demand analysis in terms of young children’s meaning-making practices. In this analysis, the terminology relating to children’s engagement with these technologies is an important consideration and so, in the next section, the concept of ‘literacy’ itself is considered.

Digital literacy

The nature of ‘literacy’ is highly contested in the new media age (Bearne, 2003; Kress, 2003; Marsh, 2003). The plural form, ‘literacies’, has become widely adopted since the ground-breaking work of the New Literacy Studies emphasised the diversity of literacy practices in contemporary lives (Barton and Hamilton, 1998; Cope and Kalantzis, 2000; Lankshear and Knobel, 2003; New London Group, 1996). In addition, the term ‘literacy’ has become synonymous with the concept of competence in the encoding and decoding of a range of semiotic discourses (e.g. computer literacy, media literacy). A clear analysis of this rather confusing field is provided by Kress (2003) who insists that ‘literacy’ refers to ‘lettered representation’ and argues that we need to find other ways of describing the encoding and decoding processes used with other media. For this, the phrase ‘communicative practices’ offered by Street (1997) appears to be the most appropriate. The adoption of the term ‘digital literacy’ (Glister, 1997) for the title of this book both acknowledges Kress’s definition of literacy and points towards the way in which lettered representation is being transformed and shaped by digitised technologies. Thus, the book examines the literacy practices which are related to digital technologies such as computer, television and mobile phone, and explores the ‘digitextual practices’ (Everett, 2003:5) of children’s everyday lives. The chapters also look at the wider range of communicative practices which are mediated through new technologies and acknowledge the multimodal nature of young children’s meaning-making. Throughout, there is a concern to explore the complex relationship between these different modes of representation and to examine the affordances of (the possibilities offered by) each of the media featured.

Such an insistence on the inter-relationship between literacy and other communicative practices is essential in the current social, economic and technological climate. Much has been written about the changing technology of literacy and the impact this has on the epistemological and ontological foundations of contemporary communicative practices (Lankshear and Knobel, 2003; Kress, 2003). However, this discourse has yet to permeate widely the field of early childhood literacy. Much of the research in the area is focused on rather traditional models in which ‘emergent literacy’ is concerned primarily with pen, paper and phonics (Whitehurst and Lonigan, 2001). In this book, such a narrow discourse is challenged by authors who explore the ways in which young children’s communicative practices are embedded in a range of technologies. Digital literacy practices share some of the features of more traditional literacy practices, but there are distinct aspects of text analysis and production using new media and these are explored throughout the chapters collected here, as outlined below.

Outline of the book

The book has three distinct parts: Changing Childhood Cultures, Children and Technologies and Transformative Pedagogies.

The first part of the book, Changing Childhood Cultures, explores the nature of children’s everyday textual practices and the ways in which recent social, political, economic and technological changes have impacted upon these practices. These are chapters which take a broad perspective on the role of literacy in contemporary childhoods. In Chapter 2, Victoria Carrington provides a complex map of the changing textual landscapes of contemporary childhoods. She describes how the term ‘Shi Jinrui’, a term coined by Japanese parents meaning ‘new humankind’, is used to depict a younger generation which is forging ahead in terms of their technological practices. Carrington outlines some of these practices, such as text-messaging and computer game-playing, and provides a textual analysis of some of the online and offline magazines which shape children’s ‘Shi Jinrui’ identities. Carrington offers a direct challenge to literacy educators who base their curriculum and pedagogy on traditional models of childhood and literacy and, in doing so, raises a number of theoretical and ideological concerns which are picked up throughout the rest of the book.

My own chapter follows and is focused on the way in which popular culture and media are deeply inscribed in the ritualised play and materiality of childhood. This chapter examines the dialectic between literacy and identities and suggests that new media texts play a central role in the construction of young children’s social identities. Drawing from data arising from two studies of the media-related literacy practices of children aged two to four in the home, the analysis draws attention to the way in which families mediate children’s communicative practices and support the development of identities which signal competency in the navigation of multimodal worlds. This scaffolding and guided participation of communicative practices is also a focus of Chapter 4. Muriel Robinson and Bernado Turnbull trace the development of Verónica in the first five years of her life and draw attention to the way in which she confidently moves across media, thus demonstrating the porosity of the texts encountered and questioning those who might try to separate out these various textual practices and examine them in isolation. Robinson and Turnbull argue for an asset model of media education, rather than the more habitual deficit model, and they analyse the affordances of a range of categories of texts in order to demonstrate how this asset model might operate.

Despite the growing attention paid to the place of popular culture and media in children’s lives, there is still relatively little analysis of the way in which young bilingual children draw on different elements of their popular cultural worlds to create hybrid textual spaces in which the various threads of their identities collide and merge. In Chapter 5, Charmian Kenner draws on two studies of multilingual children’s literacy practices to illustrate how globalised and localised popular cultural discourses inflect children’s literate identities and she presents a range of examples which demonstrate the way in which children recontextualise the stuff of home and community to create texts which bear traces of their cultural and social histories (cf. Dyson, 2002). This chapter draws the first section of the book to a close and thus, in these first four chapters, issues which underpin much of the work of the remaining chapters have been introduced. These chapters have focused on the broader social and cultural themes which emerge from any study of the changing textual landscapes of childhood; in the next part, specific aspects of these landscapes are examined in turn.

In the second part of the book, Children and Technologies, the place of specific media in children’s communicative practices is explored and the affordances of each media examined in terms of its contribution to language and literacy development. In Chapter 6, Roberts and Howard challenge the traditional deficit discourse associated with television and young children. Outlining the findings of a study in which children under two years of age were observed watching the programme Teletubbies, they suggest that these children were not ‘couch potatoes’, but were in fact active meaning-makers in relation to televisual texts. In contrast to much of the research on young children and television which has ignored the affective aspects of their experiences, Roberts and Howard detail the ways in which children delight in the characters, the music and the action, responding both verbally and physically to a rich range of stimuli. The way in which the responses of young children to media artefacts are more significant than has been acknowledged previously is also the theme of Chapter 7. Cynthia Smith conducted a longitudinal observational study of her own child, James, in the first years of his life, as he interacted with the computer in the home. She details his play, which incorporated aspects of his emergent understanding of the computer and its affordances. Smith analyses James’ responses in the light of research on children’s book-related play behaviour and concludes that there are a number of key similarities, arguing that such play is an important contributor to young children’s literacy development. In addition, computer-related dramatic play promoted symbol use related to computers which arose from James’ engagement with the technology.

Although television and computers have featured largely in the recurrent ‘moral panics’ (Cohen, 1987) with regard to young children’s media consumption, they have not met with the same level of anxiety engendered by games consoles, such as PlayStation2. Visions of zombie-like addicts who leave the consoles to engage in violent and anti-social behaviour have haunted the public imaginary for some years. In Chapter 8, Kate Pahl takes a close look at PlayStation2 and analyses the opportunities it provides for childr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Figures
• Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• Chapter 1
• Part I Changing Childhood Cultures
• Part II Children and Technologies
• Part III Transformative Pedagogies
• Afterword