Situated collaboration and problem solving in young children's digital gameplay

Abstract

Collaboration is an important aspect of social activity associated with young children's digital gameplay. Children organise their participation as they communicate with and support one another, through sharing knowledge and problem‐solving strategies, displaying their expertise, encouraging others and creatively exploring possibilities for collaborative game moves. Drawing on a social interactional perspective, we explore the situated and embodied practices of the young players aged 3–8 years. We present three video ethnographic case studies of young children's everyday peer interactions from three different settings and age groups: Australia (home), Norway (pre‐school) and Sweden (afterschool). Across these settings, the findings identify how children collaborate with one another to progress the game by using multiple strategies, including instructing each other, monitoring each other's actions and problem solving. In the process, collaborative peer culture was maintained and built as the players worked towards problem solutions that require taking each other's perspectives, and sharing digital devices and skills. This focus on children's situated language use and assemblage of multimodal resources shows their moment‐by‐moment collaborative action. These multimodal interactions create opportunities for peer and sibling learning without the presence of an adult. The collaborative activity was a strategic resource used by the children in their digital game playing. In capturing young children's own strategies, we highlight their agency in learning occurring through social interaction and gameplay.

Categorization Activities in Norwegian Preschools: Digital Tools in Identifying, Articulating, and Assessing

“…Collaboration and social interaction were an important part of solving the task they faced. While this is not a new finding (e.g., Björk-Willén and Aronsson, 2014; Danby et al, 2018), the present paper’s findings show how digital tools are integrated in the creation of knowing and socially organized ways of seeing and understanding, and that digital tools are not neutral and non-ideological mediators in these processes.…”

“…They also found that these competencies are accessible for learning in the interaction between adults and children by serving as norms and guidelines for what constitutes knowledgeable participation in media literacy activities. A study of Australian, Norwegian, and Swedish children’s digital game playing at home, preschool, and afterschool (Danby et al, 2018) found that children collaborated with their peers to advance the game by using multiple strategies such as instructing each other, monitoring each other’s action and problem solving (cf. Björk-Willén and Aronsson, 2014).…”

“…Peer interaction was part of the digital literacy activities that involved such mobile technologies as smartphones and tablets (cf. Danby et al, 2018), while when using non-mobile technologies, like smartboards, it is shown that the activities were structured more as ‘classic’ classroom activities, primarily guided by the teacher and the didactic material presented through the smartboard.…”

A systematic review of physical–digital play technology and developmentally relevant child behaviour

“…documented (e.g. : [148,168]). On the other hand, physical activity refers to "any bodily movement produced by skeletal muscles that results in energy expenditure" (p.126) [169].…”

Beyond Binaries

“…A key point from ANT is to follow the actors in an assemblage to see what happens when they entangle (Latour, 2005). Using video cameras to create data from the everyday life of children in kindergarten is an established research practice in the social sciences (e.g Bevemyr & Björk-Willén, 2016;Danby, Evaldsson, Melander, & Aarsand, 2018;Schanke, 2019). With visual technologies such as video cameras, still and moving images have become a significant research device and analytical tool in the social sciences (Carusi, Hoel, Webmoor, & Woolgar, 2014).…”