1st Edition

Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood

Edited By Jackie Marsh Copyright 2005
    260 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    260 Pages 12 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    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.

    1. Introduction: Children of the Digital Age Part 1: Changing Childhood Cultures 2. New textual landscapes, information and early literacy 3. Ritual, performance and identity construction: Young children's engagement with popular cultural and media texts 4. Veronica: An asset model of becoming literate 5. Bilingual children's uses of popular culture in text-making Part 2 Children and Technologies 6. Watching Teletubbies : Television and its very young audience 7. The CD-ROM game: A toddler engaged in computer-based dramatic play 8. Narrative spaces and multiple identities: Children's textual explorations of console games in home settings 9. 'Pronto, chi parla? (Hello, who is it?'): Telephones as artefacts and communication media in children's discourses Part 3: Transformative Pedagogies 10. Popular culture: Views of parents and educators 11. Barbie meets Bob the Builder at the Workstation: The word on screen/ E-mergent literacies in the early years 12. Resistance, power-tricky, and colourless energy: What engagement with everyday popular culture texts can teach us about learning, and literacy 13. Behind the scenes: Making movies in early years classrooms.

    Biography

    Jackie Marsh

    'A timely addition to the field of new media literacies, the focus on early childhood fills a crucial gap in the research. The book offers an excellent range of chapters covering various disciplines, media forms and methodologies with an international team of authors.' - Rebekah Willett, Journal of Early Childhood Research, 2006

    'Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood offers theoretical as well as practical approaches to new forms of literacy emerging from children's engagement with popular culture and new media texts. A timely addition to the field of new media literacies, the focus on early childhood fills a gap in the research. The book offers an excellent range of chapters covering various disciplines, media forms and methodologies with an international team of authors.'

    - ECR Book Reviews

    'The breadth of this book makes it a useful reader for many audiences. Researchers and academics in the areas of early childhood, literacy and media  studies will find many of the studies useful and informative.'

    - Rebekah Willett, Institute of Education, University of London