Pots and Pans, Books and Stories, Apps and Tablets - The Power of Digital in Young Children's Pre-school Settings

Abstract

This work in progress builds on the work on ‘Small CCI’ working with children below the age of 5. The purpose of this study was to compare children's engagement and experience with three classroom activities over a three-week period. Eight children aged three and four years old took part in each activity (learning on tablet devices, free play in the home corner, and story time with their teacher) each week and were asked to complete a pre and post-test Smileyometer to rate each activity for fun, followed by a ‘This or That’ at the end of each session. The children's engagement was also measured by the research team using the Leuven scale. The results indicate that children of this age range can complete these evaluation tools. The children indicated that for all weeks they found the learning on the tablet devices the most fun and every child ranked the tablet activity as the best each week using the ‘This or That’ method. The researchers marked engagement the highest on the tablet devices for two of the three weeks. We note these results as unsurprising but suggest that they help us to understand the power of digital when considered in such settings and propose that researchers need to adjust for this when evaluating digital products with children of this age.