scholarly journals Book Review: The Power of Play: Designing Early Learning Spaces

2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Jenny Foster Stenis
Keyword(s):  
Early Literacy ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Early Learning ◽  
Learning Spaces ◽  
Hands On

The Power of Play: Designing Early Learning Spaces is a discussion of how libraries are reinventing space to offer “play and learn opportunities” (xiii) to families. Predicated on the idea that play and interaction with caregivers enhances literacy learning, this book is designed as a hands-on guide in developing a library plan to implement early literacy play spaces in libraries of all sizes and budgets.

scholarly journals The Storied Lives Children Play: Multimodal Approaches Using Storytelling

2014 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-20
Author(s):  
Marni Binder
Keyword(s):  
Early Literacy ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Acting Out ◽  
Learning Spaces ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Children's Narratives ◽  
The World ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Kindergarten Class

This paper explores a qualitative research project that drew on the work of Vivian Gussin Paley’s (1991) storytelling curriculum, where the following concepts were explored: children’s narratives through stories told, acted, and visually represented; how children construct meaning in their world; and the empowerment of voice. The study focused on the processes and growth that a diverse junior and senior kindergarten class underwent over eight weeks. The study has important implications for pedagogy and offers an innovative approach to a storytelling curriculum that engages multimodal frameworks for early literacy learning. Presenting opportunities for children to voice their storied lives orally, in image and text, and nonverbally through acting out stories enables them to explore and connect their identity texts to self, others, and the world. By engaging in, with, and through story, children reveal the complexity of their meaning-making processes, interconnecting imaginative and real experiences. By opening up learning spaces for socially constructed experiences, children’s storied lives are made visible.

Incorporating Digital Literacy Materials in Early Childhood Programs

2022 ◽  
pp. 671-696
Author(s):  
Barbara Ellen Culatta ◽  
Lee Ann Setzer ◽  
Kendra M. Hall-Kenyon
Keyword(s):  
Early Childhood ◽  
Early Literacy ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
Digital Literacy ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Literacy Programs ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Early Childhood Settings ◽  
Selection Of

Use of digital media in early childhood literacy programs offers significant opportunities for interaction, engagement, and meaningful practice of phonic skills—and also a few pitfalls. The purpose of this chapter is to review 1) considerations for use of digital media in early childhood settings, 2) selection of appropriate media to facilitate early literacy learning, and 3) inclusion of digital media as an integral component of early literacy instruction, rather than an add-on. With an emphasis on practical ideas and solutions for instructors, the authors draw on studies in which interactive, personalized ebooks and an early literacy learning app were used in conjunction with face-to-face, hands-on activities drawn from Project SEEL (Systematic and Engaging Early Literacy).

scholarly journals ‘From bricks to clicks’: Hybrid commercial spaces in the landscape of early literacy and learning

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 114-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen Nixon
Keyword(s):  
Early Literacy ◽  
School Readiness ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Early Learning ◽  
Shopping Mall ◽  
Online Environment ◽  
Learning And Development ◽  
Parents And Children ◽  
Online Spaces ◽  
Commercial Spaces

In their quest for resources to support children’s early literacy learning and development, parents encounter and traverse different spaces in which discourses and artifacts are produced and circulated. This paper uses conceptual tools from the field of geosemiotics to examine some commercial spaces designed for parents and children that foreground preschool learning and development. Drawing on data generated in a wider study, I discuss some of the ways in which the material and virtual commercial spaces of a transnational shopping mall company and an educational toy company operate as sites of encounter between discourses and artifacts about children’s early learning and parents of preschoolers. I consider how companies connect with and ‘situate’ people as parents and customers, and then offer pathways designed for parents to follow as they attempt to meet their very young children’s learning and development needs. I argue that these pathways are both material and ideological, and that they are increasingly tending to lead parents to the online commercial spaces of the World Wide Web. I show how companies are using the online environment and hybrid offline and online spaces and flows to reinforce an image of themselves as authoritative brokers of childhood resources for parents, which is highly valuable in a policy climate that foregrounds lifelong learning and school readiness.

scholarly journals ‘It is a different type of learning’. A survey-based study on how simulation educators see and construct observer roles

2020 ◽  
pp. bmjstel-2020-000634
Author(s):  
Stephanie O’Regan ◽  
Elizabeth Molloy ◽  
Leonie Watterson ◽  
Debra Nestel
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Small Sample ◽  
Learning Objectives ◽  
Learning Spaces ◽  
Scenario Design ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Exploratory Survey ◽  
Chi Squared ◽  
Frequency Counts

BackgroundSimulation is reported as an appropriate replacement for a significant number of clinical hours in pregraduate programmes. To increase access for learners, educators have looked to understanding and improving learning in observer roles. Studies report equivalent learning outcomes and less stress in observer roles. However, reports on the prevalence, use and perceived value of observer roles from the educator’s perspective are lacking.MethodsAn exploratory survey for Australian and New Zealand (ANZ) simulation educators based on literature findings was developed and piloted with a small sample (n=10) of like subjects for language, clarity, skip logic and completion time. The final survey comprised 36 questions. Quantitative data were analysed using Pearson’s chi-squared test, Welch’s ANOVA and exploratory factor analysis. Select qualitative data were analysed using content analysis and summarised with frequency counts and categorisation.ResultsTwo hundred and sixty-seven surveys were completed, with 221 meeting criteria for analysis. The observer role is widely used in ANZ and most learners experience both hands-on and observer roles. The location of observers is dependent upon several factors including facility design, learner immersion, scenario design and observer involvement. Verbal briefings and/or other guides are provided to 89% of observers to direct their focus and 98% participate in the debrief. Educators value observer roles but tend to believe the best learning is hands-on.ConclusionsThe learning in observer roles is less valued by educators than hands-on roles. Focused observation provides opportunities for noticing and attributing meaning, an essential skill for clinical practice. Learning spaces require consideration of scenario design and learning objectives. Scenario design should include objectives for observer roles and incorporate the observer into all phases of simulation. Attention to these areas will help promote the value of the different type of learning available in observer roles.

Book Review: Mullen Scales of Early Learning: AGS Edition

2000 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 381-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ron Dumont ◽  
Carole L. Cruse ◽  
Vincent Alfonso ◽  
Caryn Levine
Keyword(s):  
Early Learning

scholarly journals Telling apart motor noise from exploratory behaviour, in early development

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teodora Gliga
Keyword(s):  
Motor Activity ◽  
Motor System ◽  
Environmental Variability ◽  
Early Learning ◽  
Movement Variability ◽  
Contextual Modulation ◽  
New Information ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Increase Motor Activity ◽  
Active Exploration

Infant’s minutes long babbling bouts or energetic reaching for or mouthing of whatever they can get their hands on gives very much the impression of active exploration, a building block for early learning. But how can we tell active exploration from the activity of an immature motor system, attempting but failing to achieve goal directed behaviour? I will focus here on evidence that infants actively increase motor activity and variability when faced with opportunities to gather new information. I will discuss mechanisms generating movement variability, and suggests that, in the various forms it takes, from deliberate hypothesis testing to increasing environmental variability, it could be exploited for learning. However, understanding how infant exploratory behavior contributes to learning will require more in-depth investigations of both the nature of and the contextual modulation of behavioural variability.

scholarly journals Notions of agency in early literacy classrooms: Assemblages and productive intersections

2019 ◽  
pp. 146879841986648 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Daniels
Keyword(s):  
Early Literacy ◽  
Literacy Learning ◽  
Classroom Culture ◽  
Three Dimensions ◽  
Power Dynamics ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Common Notion ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Moving Bodies

Agency and its role in the early literacy classroom has long been a topic for debate. While sociocultural accounts often portray the child as a cultural agent who negotiates their own participation in classroom culture and literacy learning, more recent framings draw attention from the individual subject, instead seeing agency as dispersed across people and materials. In this article, I draw on my experiences of following children as they followed their interests in an early literacy classroom, drawing on the concepts of assemblage and people yet to come, as defined by Deleuze and Guattari and Spinoza’s common notion. I provide one illustrative account of moment-by-moment activity and suggest that in education settings it is useful to see activity as a direct and ongoing interplay of three dimensions: children’s moving bodies; the classroom; and its materials. I propose that children’s ongoing movements create possibilities for ‘doing’ and ‘being’ that flow across and between children. I argue that thinking with assemblages can draw attention to both the potentiality and the power dynamics inherent in the ongoing present and also counter preconceived notions of individual child agency and linear trajectories of literacy development, and the inequalities that these concepts can perpetuate within early education settings.

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