“Evil Cats” and “Jelly Floods”: Young Children’s Collective Constructions of Digital Art Making in the Early Years Classroom

Abstract

Digital technologies have the potential to offer new opportunities for children's expressive arts practices. While adult expectations surround and shape children's visual art-making on paper in the early years classroom, such expectations are not so established in relation to digital art-making. So how do children make sense of digital art-making when it is newly introduced into the classroom and adult input is minimal? Drawing on a social semiotic ethnographic perspective, this paper explores this question by examining instances of 4-5 year olds' spoken dialogue around the computer during a week in which digital artmaking was first introduced into the classroom. Analysis focused on interactions where children proposed, reinforced or challenged conceptions of digital artmaking. These interactions demonstrated that children's digital art-making was negotiated and constructed through particular processes. Three such processes are presented here: the use of collective motifs and metaphors; attributing 'expert' status; and polarizing conflicts. Understanding these processes offers a starting point for thinking about how a new activity like digital art-making can be integrated into the early years classroom and supported by practitioners. Young children's collective constructions of digital art-making

Stretchy time or screen time: how early years practitioners conceptualise time in relation to children’s digital play

“…Fleer, 2018). Researchers who have focused closely through observations on children's digital play as it unfolds have come away with a stronger sense of its potential (Marsh, 2010;Marsh et al, 2016;Marsh, 2017;Kucirkova & Sakr, 2015;Sakr, 2016Sakr, , 2018Sakr, , 2019Wohlwend, 2015;Wohlwend, 2017a;Wohlwend, 2017b, and so on), and the same process is available to practitioners.…”

The screen and the sand-timer: The integration of the interactive whiteboard into an early years free-flow learning environment

“…The significance of the audience in this study resonates with the earlier research findings of Labbo (1996) who carried out observations of classroom computer text-making and found that children often constructed the activity as a public performance, rather than seeing the computer screen as a personal canvas. Similarly, research on children's collective art-making using a laptop computer placed in the classroom shows how motifs and narratives can reappear across children's digital art-making in the same class environment (Sakr et al, 2016); these recurring details were taken up not just by members of an immediate audience, but passed across times and spaces outside of the immediate environment surrounding the computer. For example, children at the start of the week developed a metaphor of 'flooding' ('jelly floods' and 'mud floods') to explain the action of filling the screen with a new colour.…”

‘We’re just gonna scribble it’: The affective and social work of destruction in children’s art-making with different semiotic resources

“…For example, it is insightful to return to the classic study of Labbo (1996), which, more than 20 years ago, demonstrated that when kindergarteners engage in art-making on a computer (as opposed to on paper), they show greater flexibility in their approach to the art-making, and are just as likely to use the computer screen as a ‘playground’ or ‘stage’ as they are to use the screen as a basic ‘canvas’. My own research in this area (Sakr, 2016; Sakr et al, 2016a, 2016b) has suggested that children’s digital art-making is often characterised by a quicker pace and a more relaxed sense of ownership.…”