Abstract:

The theme of digital literacy of today’s children is not only actual and important but its conceptualization and reconceptualization is necessary to happen suddenly. If the researchers and pedagogues (and parents, of course) want to understand the child of today they should investigate his/her common ‘digital’ life.

The article presents the results of survey among parents of primary school age children. The survey is a part of fundamental research, funded by the Bulgarian Science Fund – Digital Competencies and Media Education at Pre-school and Primary School Age (DN 05/8 14.12.2016) with coordinator Prof. Dr Rumyana Papancheva from the University “Prof. Dr Asen Zlatarov”, Bourgas. The author is a leader of the Working Group “Research of the connection between Reading and Digital literacy” as part of the project. Based on preliminary done investigations and on an acquainting with literature about this problem in Bulgarian and English languages it has been developed a toolkit that is integrated in the questionnaires. In the first stage of the project there are made three types of surveys – for students (priority from fourth grade), for parents and for teachers.

The survey of parents’ toolbox contains a questionnaire with 41 questions for parents. The design of the study was divided in three parts – section “Reading” (18 questions), section “Digital literacy” (13 questions – 5 of them open questions) and section that tried to analyze the parents’ opinions about a connection between reading literacy and reading habits and the formation of digital literacies of children up to 11 years old. There was also a demographic part.

The accent in this article is on the results of parents’ survey – there are analyzed parents’ attitudes towards a formation of digital literacy of their children.

In 2018 there were interviewed 144 parents from different Bulgarian towns – capital, a very big city /over 200 000 population/, a big city / up to 200 000 population /, middle towns – up to 100 000 population, small towns up to 30 000 population and very small towns – under 10 000 and villages.

In the research it was used Europass’ Self-Assessment Grid for Digital competence and parents should do self-assessment of their abilities for Information processing; Content creation; Communication; Problem solving and Safety.

It is also shown at what ages children start using digital technologies. It is interesting to understand that some kids (9%) have started an usage of devices before they had turned one year. Relatively equal is the distribution in other aged groups. Only one parent said that his/her child doesn’t use digital technology.

The survey describes children’s habits of digital technology usage – how many hours per day they use smartphones or other devices; what kinds of activities (playing games, reading e-books, watch YouTube, study with) children carry out with digital technologies, etc.

The article also presents the demographic profile of respondents and some interconnections found between the parents’ profiles and the children’s attitudes towards an usage of digital technologies.

Keywords:

Survey, parents' viewpoints, children, digital technology, usage, digital literacy.