This rapid evidence assessment (REA) of literature was conducted to aggregate knowledge about you... more This rapid evidence assessment (REA) of literature was conducted to aggregate knowledge about young children's engagement with objects in science museums. The review focuses on empirical studies published between 2000 and 2020 reporting on children in the age range from birth to eight years. Scrutiny of a final sample of 48 peer‐reviewed papers indicated that certain museum object characteristics may arouse children's curiosity more than others. Children's interest in museum objects is enhanced and sustained by dialogical and collaborative activity with peers and adults, by sensory, emotional and cognitive engagement with objects, and by children having choice and freedom to explore museum spaces on their own terms. The review identifies there is limited evidence pertaining to children's visits to STEM museums and a need for theoretically robust empirical research with children, museum educators, teachers and parents from diverse communities.
Parents as pedagogues for 0-3-year-olds' literacy learning in digitally networked homes 'Day in t... more Parents as pedagogues for 0-3-year-olds' literacy learning in digitally networked homes 'Day in the life' methodology 3 home visits 1) Familiarization, consent & parent interview 2) whole-day visit (minimum 6 hours' filming) 3) Follow-up consultation visit & co-view 30-minute compilation video See Gillen et al. (2018) for wider research with 13 children in England, Finland, Israel, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Also see
While children’s reading experience is being transformed with digital reading formats, personalis... more While children’s reading experience is being transformed with digital reading formats, personalised and interactive books allowing for more personalisation, there are risks around the data this releases. Natalia Kucirkova and Rosie Flewitt identify four main areas of concern and call for regulation. Natalia is Senior Research Associate, and Rosie is Reader in Early Communication and Learning, both at University College London, Institute of Education. [Header image credit: B. Flickinger, CC BY 2.0_08].
From Crib Talk to YouTube: narrative and performance in childhood and youth
From very early childhood oral, written and enacted stories weave through all our lives and form ... more From very early childhood oral, written and enacted stories weave through all our lives and form part of how we come to understand the social and cultural worlds we experience. In this chapter we reflect on young people?s telling and enactment of stories, focussing on the significance of their narrative activity and the creativity it entails. In particular, we ask: -why is narrative so pervasive in young people?s lives? -what role do narratives play in their intellectual, emotional and social development? -how do young people creatively combine words, images and other semiotic modes in their narrative texts and performances? We start by looking at some examples of children?s earliest imaginative language activity. The chapter then follows an approximately chronological development and reflects on the potential value of young people?s narrative language and creativity (using the term ?young people? to encompass all ages up to around 20 years and ?children? where there is a focus on a...
Equity and diversity through story: A multimodal perspective
With the politically and economically motivated migration of peoples around the globe, many presc... more With the politically and economically motivated migration of peoples around the globe, many preschool and primary schools in England are enrolling an increasing number of young children who speak languages other than English. Whilst this phenomenon adds rich diversity to the classroom, it also presents challenges for teachers about how to create inclusive communicative and social spaces for individual children from ethnic and linguistic minority backgrounds, particularly when working within the constraints of national curricula that assume ‘homogeneity and stability represent the norm’ (Creese and Blackledge, 2015, p.20). Through the lens of two young boys in the early stages of learning English, this chapter explores how Vivian Gussin Paley’s storytelling and story-acting pedagogy (Paley, 1990; 1992; 2004) has creative and enabling potential for children to express themselves through multiple modes, such as actions and gaze as well as words, and how valuing multimodal narrating and...
Over the past 20 years, a considerable body of research by applied linguists, educationalists, an... more Over the past 20 years, a considerable body of research by applied linguists, educationalists, and child psychologists has established the developmental significance of storytelling and imaginary play during early childhood. This book foregrounds the power of children’s own stories and their dictation and dramatisation in the early years classroom. It provides empirical evidence that storytelling and story acting, a pedagogic approach pioneered by Vivian Gussin Paley (1990), affords rich opportunities to foster learning within a play-based and language rich curriculum. Narrative and imaginary play are widely recognised as valuable strategies for the development of spoken language and literacy within early years and elementary classrooms. Nonetheless in accountability cultures, where early years educators are pressured by the ‘drive to literacy’ and policy expectations regarding contested concepts such as ‘reading readiness’ (Whitebread and Bingham, 2012), practitioners often find it hard to make space for children’s own stories. Drawing on studies in the USA and the UK, this edited collection illustrates and explores the multiple dimensions of Paley’s storytelling and story-acting approach and shows how these interrelated practices enhance language and literacy learning, and contribute to an inclusive classroom culture that embraces young children’s diverse interests and learning needs.
This session explores how multimodal narratives allow for complex, nuanced representations of liv... more This session explores how multimodal narratives allow for complex, nuanced representations of lived experiences. The papers illustrate how composing and sharing multimodal, digital media texts provide opportunities for students and teachers to explore connections between large, often abstract concepts, such as play, climate change, and mathematical concepts, and more grounded, intimate daily experiences. The participants in this international and multidisciplinary session demonstrate how the use of video, image, sound, and print together affords researchers and participants more complex representations of lived experience and culture by putting into conversation, and sometimes conflict, a range of human expression and experiences that to move beyond "discrete and disconnected facts" to narratives that are empowering and inclusive.
International Journal of Early Years Education, 2021
Recent years have seen a growing shift in Early Childhood Education from paper-based observation ... more Recent years have seen a growing shift in Early Childhood Education from paper-based observation and documentation practices to digital documentation systems such as 'e-portfolios' and 'online learning journeys'. Here, we bring a multimodal lens to these new practices and consider the potential of digital documentation for democratic assessment practices that recognise and value all children's learning, particularly children who are living with disadvantage or in the early stages of learning English. Reporting on participatory ethnographic case studies of three diverse multicultural early years settings in London, we illustrate how digital documentation opens new possibilities for capturing the dynamic and embodied vibrancy of young children's learning and can make children's documentation more accessible to children and their parents. However, many digital documentation systems are currently designed primarily for adults, rather than for children to access and contribute to their own documentation. We suggest that adult-oriented design risks marginalising the child's voice as documentation moves from paper-based to digital formats. Our findings call for collaboration between researchers, educators and digital documentation systems designers to ensure that these relatively new tools support democratic and inclusive assessment practices, where all children's meaning-making, in whatever form, is recognised, celebrated and shared.
Educators are experienced in documenting children’s play using pen and paper, often co-creating c... more Educators are experienced in documenting children’s play using pen and paper, often co-creating collections of observations that can be shared with parents. These ‘learning journals’ or ‘portfolios’ usually feature examples of a child’s drawing and early writing, photographs of a child playing and things a child has made, as well as written comments noted by practitioners. However, while young children carry on playing as they always have, the tools, practices and contexts for observation and documentation have changed significantly over recent years. In this short paper, we suggest ways that practitioners might use digital documentation systems in ways that celebrate young children’s playfulness, excitement and inventiveness, and that place the uniqueness of every child’s capacity and potential at the heart of their early years assessment practices. Our recommendations are designed to support and develop practitioners' digital documentation practice through reflective questions...
How can practitioners use digital documentation systems in a way that recognises every child'... more How can practitioners use digital documentation systems in a way that recognises every child's capacity and potential, ask Dr Rosie Flewitt and Dr Kate Cowan
The multimodal mediation of semiotic resources in an online conversation
In their Introduction to this volume the editors look at a macro-question which could be summed u... more In their Introduction to this volume the editors look at a macro-question which could be summed up as: “What have we learnt since 1999 about conversations and ways to describe them?” In this chapter, by contrast, we address the question at a micro-level: “What does the literature tell us about our particular object of study and how do insights from multimodality and research on computer-mediated conversations help us to structure the way we approach the analysis?” The object of study in this chapter is a video capture of a technology mediated multimodal conversation between two native speakers of different languages who have been charged with discussing a set cultural topic and with reporting their conclusions in writing. Finding ways to describe and analyse webcam-enhanced one-to-one audio and textual conversations is an interesting aim for language and culture teachers, as this mode of communication offers a potential arena for structured, semi-structured and unstructured interact...
This chapter serves as an anchor for the book by presenting a focused examination of one of Vivia... more This chapter serves as an anchor for the book by presenting a focused examination of one of Vivian Gussin Paley’s advocated practices in the early childhood classroom: teachers scribing children’s stories (storytelling) and children enacting these later on the same day (story acting). We begin by tracing the approach back to its origins in the 1970s, where as an early childhood teacher in Chicago, Paley was seeking to offer routes into early education that appealed to children from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds, and with different learning needs. We discuss the affinity of her story-based practice with sociocultural theory, and consider key themes that have emerged from research evidence regarding the contribution of storytelling and story acting to young children’s narrative competence, cognitive and oral language development, and their preparedness for school. We also summarise research findings regarding how children share story elements reworked from popular culture and ...
This rapid evidence assessment (REA) of literature was conducted to aggregate knowledge about you... more This rapid evidence assessment (REA) of literature was conducted to aggregate knowledge about young children's engagement with objects in science museums. The review focuses on empirical studies published between 2000 and 2020 reporting on children in the age range from birth to eight years. Scrutiny of a final sample of 48 peer‐reviewed papers indicated that certain museum object characteristics may arouse children's curiosity more than others. Children's interest in museum objects is enhanced and sustained by dialogical and collaborative activity with peers and adults, by sensory, emotional and cognitive engagement with objects, and by children having choice and freedom to explore museum spaces on their own terms. The review identifies there is limited evidence pertaining to children's visits to STEM museums and a need for theoretically robust empirical research with children, museum educators, teachers and parents from diverse communities.
Parents as pedagogues for 0-3-year-olds' literacy learning in digitally networked homes 'Day in t... more Parents as pedagogues for 0-3-year-olds' literacy learning in digitally networked homes 'Day in the life' methodology 3 home visits 1) Familiarization, consent & parent interview 2) whole-day visit (minimum 6 hours' filming) 3) Follow-up consultation visit & co-view 30-minute compilation video See Gillen et al. (2018) for wider research with 13 children in England, Finland, Israel, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden. Also see
While children’s reading experience is being transformed with digital reading formats, personalis... more While children’s reading experience is being transformed with digital reading formats, personalised and interactive books allowing for more personalisation, there are risks around the data this releases. Natalia Kucirkova and Rosie Flewitt identify four main areas of concern and call for regulation. Natalia is Senior Research Associate, and Rosie is Reader in Early Communication and Learning, both at University College London, Institute of Education. [Header image credit: B. Flickinger, CC BY 2.0_08].
From Crib Talk to YouTube: narrative and performance in childhood and youth
From very early childhood oral, written and enacted stories weave through all our lives and form ... more From very early childhood oral, written and enacted stories weave through all our lives and form part of how we come to understand the social and cultural worlds we experience. In this chapter we reflect on young people?s telling and enactment of stories, focussing on the significance of their narrative activity and the creativity it entails. In particular, we ask: -why is narrative so pervasive in young people?s lives? -what role do narratives play in their intellectual, emotional and social development? -how do young people creatively combine words, images and other semiotic modes in their narrative texts and performances? We start by looking at some examples of children?s earliest imaginative language activity. The chapter then follows an approximately chronological development and reflects on the potential value of young people?s narrative language and creativity (using the term ?young people? to encompass all ages up to around 20 years and ?children? where there is a focus on a...
Equity and diversity through story: A multimodal perspective
With the politically and economically motivated migration of peoples around the globe, many presc... more With the politically and economically motivated migration of peoples around the globe, many preschool and primary schools in England are enrolling an increasing number of young children who speak languages other than English. Whilst this phenomenon adds rich diversity to the classroom, it also presents challenges for teachers about how to create inclusive communicative and social spaces for individual children from ethnic and linguistic minority backgrounds, particularly when working within the constraints of national curricula that assume ‘homogeneity and stability represent the norm’ (Creese and Blackledge, 2015, p.20). Through the lens of two young boys in the early stages of learning English, this chapter explores how Vivian Gussin Paley’s storytelling and story-acting pedagogy (Paley, 1990; 1992; 2004) has creative and enabling potential for children to express themselves through multiple modes, such as actions and gaze as well as words, and how valuing multimodal narrating and...
Over the past 20 years, a considerable body of research by applied linguists, educationalists, an... more Over the past 20 years, a considerable body of research by applied linguists, educationalists, and child psychologists has established the developmental significance of storytelling and imaginary play during early childhood. This book foregrounds the power of children’s own stories and their dictation and dramatisation in the early years classroom. It provides empirical evidence that storytelling and story acting, a pedagogic approach pioneered by Vivian Gussin Paley (1990), affords rich opportunities to foster learning within a play-based and language rich curriculum. Narrative and imaginary play are widely recognised as valuable strategies for the development of spoken language and literacy within early years and elementary classrooms. Nonetheless in accountability cultures, where early years educators are pressured by the ‘drive to literacy’ and policy expectations regarding contested concepts such as ‘reading readiness’ (Whitebread and Bingham, 2012), practitioners often find it hard to make space for children’s own stories. Drawing on studies in the USA and the UK, this edited collection illustrates and explores the multiple dimensions of Paley’s storytelling and story-acting approach and shows how these interrelated practices enhance language and literacy learning, and contribute to an inclusive classroom culture that embraces young children’s diverse interests and learning needs.
This session explores how multimodal narratives allow for complex, nuanced representations of liv... more This session explores how multimodal narratives allow for complex, nuanced representations of lived experiences. The papers illustrate how composing and sharing multimodal, digital media texts provide opportunities for students and teachers to explore connections between large, often abstract concepts, such as play, climate change, and mathematical concepts, and more grounded, intimate daily experiences. The participants in this international and multidisciplinary session demonstrate how the use of video, image, sound, and print together affords researchers and participants more complex representations of lived experience and culture by putting into conversation, and sometimes conflict, a range of human expression and experiences that to move beyond "discrete and disconnected facts" to narratives that are empowering and inclusive.
International Journal of Early Years Education, 2021
Recent years have seen a growing shift in Early Childhood Education from paper-based observation ... more Recent years have seen a growing shift in Early Childhood Education from paper-based observation and documentation practices to digital documentation systems such as 'e-portfolios' and 'online learning journeys'. Here, we bring a multimodal lens to these new practices and consider the potential of digital documentation for democratic assessment practices that recognise and value all children's learning, particularly children who are living with disadvantage or in the early stages of learning English. Reporting on participatory ethnographic case studies of three diverse multicultural early years settings in London, we illustrate how digital documentation opens new possibilities for capturing the dynamic and embodied vibrancy of young children's learning and can make children's documentation more accessible to children and their parents. However, many digital documentation systems are currently designed primarily for adults, rather than for children to access and contribute to their own documentation. We suggest that adult-oriented design risks marginalising the child's voice as documentation moves from paper-based to digital formats. Our findings call for collaboration between researchers, educators and digital documentation systems designers to ensure that these relatively new tools support democratic and inclusive assessment practices, where all children's meaning-making, in whatever form, is recognised, celebrated and shared.
Educators are experienced in documenting children’s play using pen and paper, often co-creating c... more Educators are experienced in documenting children’s play using pen and paper, often co-creating collections of observations that can be shared with parents. These ‘learning journals’ or ‘portfolios’ usually feature examples of a child’s drawing and early writing, photographs of a child playing and things a child has made, as well as written comments noted by practitioners. However, while young children carry on playing as they always have, the tools, practices and contexts for observation and documentation have changed significantly over recent years. In this short paper, we suggest ways that practitioners might use digital documentation systems in ways that celebrate young children’s playfulness, excitement and inventiveness, and that place the uniqueness of every child’s capacity and potential at the heart of their early years assessment practices. Our recommendations are designed to support and develop practitioners' digital documentation practice through reflective questions...
How can practitioners use digital documentation systems in a way that recognises every child'... more How can practitioners use digital documentation systems in a way that recognises every child's capacity and potential, ask Dr Rosie Flewitt and Dr Kate Cowan
The multimodal mediation of semiotic resources in an online conversation
In their Introduction to this volume the editors look at a macro-question which could be summed u... more In their Introduction to this volume the editors look at a macro-question which could be summed up as: “What have we learnt since 1999 about conversations and ways to describe them?” In this chapter, by contrast, we address the question at a micro-level: “What does the literature tell us about our particular object of study and how do insights from multimodality and research on computer-mediated conversations help us to structure the way we approach the analysis?” The object of study in this chapter is a video capture of a technology mediated multimodal conversation between two native speakers of different languages who have been charged with discussing a set cultural topic and with reporting their conclusions in writing. Finding ways to describe and analyse webcam-enhanced one-to-one audio and textual conversations is an interesting aim for language and culture teachers, as this mode of communication offers a potential arena for structured, semi-structured and unstructured interact...
This chapter serves as an anchor for the book by presenting a focused examination of one of Vivia... more This chapter serves as an anchor for the book by presenting a focused examination of one of Vivian Gussin Paley’s advocated practices in the early childhood classroom: teachers scribing children’s stories (storytelling) and children enacting these later on the same day (story acting). We begin by tracing the approach back to its origins in the 1970s, where as an early childhood teacher in Chicago, Paley was seeking to offer routes into early education that appealed to children from diverse social and ethnic backgrounds, and with different learning needs. We discuss the affinity of her story-based practice with sociocultural theory, and consider key themes that have emerged from research evidence regarding the contribution of storytelling and story acting to young children’s narrative competence, cognitive and oral language development, and their preparedness for school. We also summarise research findings regarding how children share story elements reworked from popular culture and ...
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