Abstract:

Gender segregation is a long-standing phenomenon is early childhood classrooms. Preschool children seldom elect to play with peers across gender lines, and when they do, opportunities for participation and resources are often unequal. Yet, less is known about how male and female children interact during play, nor the outcomes of the play, when classrooms include digital technologies.The proposed presentation reports the findings of a recent study of digital play processes and play outcomes of 4- and 5-year-olds interacting in mixed-gender pairs with open-content iPad apps.

The research was informed by literature on socio-cultural perspectives on children and their environments, gendered peer play, pretense, improvisation, and the material features of digital technologies used by young children.The theoretical underpinnings of these areas of study were instrumental in conducting close examinations of the interactions of 13 mixed-gender dyadic sessions of young children (a subset of a larger study of 45 dyadic digital play sessions) engaging in digital play with a scene creation app - Puppet Pals HD.

Transcribed field notes of observations of children’s social interactions, teacher interviews, and recorded videos from mixed-gender dyadic digital play sessions were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory approaches. Constant comparisons of data from rounds of initial coding, focused coding, categorization, clustering and formations of theoretical understandings revealed that children displayed a range of behaviors as they explored app features and created dramas with a variety of characters and scenes. Overall, the sessions progressed smoothly with few instances of play conflict, even though the mixed-gender pairs had no previous play histories. Children collaborated to solve problems, improvised stories with actions and language, and cooperated to help each other with technical and affective support. And they had fun - giggling, laughing, waving their arms, and sometimes wiggling off their seats.

Not only did the children enjoy the play, but they used their imaginations while improvising and creating digital dramas. As they moved characters with their fingers around the screen, they engaged in animation by talking with and to app characters as if they (themselves) were participants in their own productions. During their co-creations involving attack-and-chase scenes, hide-and-seek scenarios, and various renditions of daily life, children orchestrated app characters’ moves and gave them voices using tonal variations, sound effects and response cries.

Findings also revealed unexpected outcomes of digital play across gender lines. Some of mixed-gender pairs, for example, continued to play games and pretend with their dyad partner after the iPad sessions ended. Digital play also seemed to positively influence some children who previously were onlookers as their peers played, but during iPad play seemed eager to engage, converse, and explore with their partners.

For educators contemplating digital technologies in play-based settings with young children, the study suggests digital play structures and conditions that may foster young children’s imaginative thinking and creative productions while also enhancing social interactions among peers - even in the presence of gender segregation in other activity centers in the classroom.

Keywords:

Digital play, early childhood, open-content apps.