Delaktighet och digitala resurser: Barns multimodala uttryck för delaktighet i förskolan i flerspråkiga områden

Agency and Digital Resources : Children’s multimodal expressions of agency in preschools in multilingual areas

Children’s different expressions of agency when using digital tablets in preschools in multilingual areas are explored in this study. Drawing on ideas problematizing the mono-lingual norm in western education (Björk-Willén, Gruber & Puskás, 2013; García, 2009; Kultti, 2012), the understanding is broadened of children’s use of e.g. multilingual applications in ongoing projects. The use of digital resources in pedagogical documentation (c.f. Lenz Taguchi, 2013) is also in focus and children’s processes of creating their own documentation using digital tablets are discussed.

Using a social semiotic approach (Kress, 1997; Selander & Kress, 2010) where children’s multimodal communication is in focus, in combination with the notion of translanguaging (García, 2009), makes it possible to explore both multimodal and multilingual aspects of young children’s agency in day-to-day activities.

Qualitative video observations of children as well as multimodal focus groups with teachers were used to reflect multimodal interaction between peers as well as with the tablet. Wireless recordings of the tablet screen were made when possible. Consolidating formal ethical guidelines (Vetenskapsrådet, 2017), particular ethical problems concerning informed consent when filming children were addressed proactively communicating with the children before and during the video recording process and allowing them to participate in the process of data collection if they wanted to.

Incorporating other modes than verbal majority language using the affordances emerging in the use of digital tablets, children were able to express agency in both multilingual and multimodal ways. Photographical and portable modes were used by the children to create their own documentation and verbal content beyond the majority language, in applications including online and locally created resources where parents were co-producers.

The added difficulty of expressing agency as both a young child and as a speaker of a minority or non-majority language, is discussed. The use of multimodal digital resources to create translanguaging activities might serve to overcome the specific challenges these children face. In a diverse world, where multilingual children have a right to communicate in all languages, the results could propose new ways of thinking about children’s agency and translanguaging activities in preschool.