Barns multimediala berättande. En länk mellan mediakultur och pedagogisk praktik

Children s digital story telling and cultural meaning: A link between educational practice and mass media

The overall aim of the studies was to describe, analyse and problemize how the encounter between institution and media culture is shaped in the interaction between children and pedagogues. Questions asked in the studies were directed towards the interactive processes that arise when children and pedagogues meet in the educational practice to create stories with digital technology. A particular focus was on how the verbal and gestured interaction between children, pedagogues and technology appeared when they created stories in words and pictures. Furthermore, the question about what children communicate in their multimedia productions and how this communication links within and between different practices was asked. In order to aid understanding of the empirical studies centred on stories, an overview of how narratives have been regarded through history is given.

The studies take their point of departure from sociocultural perspectives. How people understand each other s meaning making processes is analysed. To construct data about these processes and products tools from educational ethnography and ethnomethodology have been used. About 300 children and their pedagogues from 17 educational practices were followed over a period of two years. Initially an extensive set of methods was used for descriptive observation. These were followed by focused observation, video-documentation of 34 children and 17 pedagogues close interaction at the computer through verbal conversations and gestures. Finally, selective observation of the children s pictorial stories were carried out. Different methods for analysis were used.

The studies show how children and pedagogues bridge the gap between the educational institution and media culture through their interactive processes and through their pictorial stories. The pedagogues employ different strategies to give the children opportunities to use their experiences of media culture in the educational practice. This result shows how pedagogues can change their position in those situations which arise when the conditions which frame the activities in an educational setting change due to the use of new tools. The interactional analyses show how the pedagogues used indexical gestures and words for technical instructions, referential gestures for referring and combining resources in the context, and metaphorical, pretended, and representational gestures and words in a verbally rich dialogue. The narrative analyses show that the children act as brokers and their multimedia stories function as boundary objects . They unite different cultures, they shape dialogues through time and space and they mediate common significances of semiotic system. In this way children are afforded the possibility of achieving competence to act as active constructors of culture.