Exploring enactments of the big screen and the small screen in a Norwegian early childhood education and care setting

Abstract

While much has been written about how to implement digital tools for learning and play in early childhood education and care, using a sociomaterial perspective this article seeks to explore what types of activities can be the outcome of appropriating different digital tools, and who or what defines these activities. Employing a sociomaterial perspective traditionally means a move from seeing the world merely as socially constructed to including the material artefacts in the construction of that world. However, herein there is a danger of overemphasizing what things do to humans and forgetting what humans do in the relationship. Through a sociomaterial lens, digital tools, children and adults all equally exist – but do they exist equally? In the case of digital tools in early childhood education and care, it is not merely a case of how digital tools are inscribed that defines what these activities may look like. Rather, it is necessary to account for how these activities are enacted by adults and/or children as free play or as part of a more institutionalized agenda, in addition to the objects themselves. Drawing on actor-network theory and using video ethnographic data from an early childhood education and care facility that has a strong information and communications technology profile, the focus is on how the digital tools, tablets and interactive whiteboards are enacted as different types of activities depending on the actors in the assemblage. Nuancing between different types of digital tools, as well as being sensitive to how both human and non-human actors influence an activity, can be useful for researchers and practitioners alike.

Keywords

actor-network theory digital tools early childhood education and care interactive whiteboard sociomaterial tablet use

Digital tools in early childhood education and care

In Norway's Framework Plan for Kindergartens (Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training, 2017), digital tools are to be implemented for learning, play and creativity. However, there is no set curriculum or specific guidelines that follow this Framework Plan. In addition, the term ‘digital tools’ is used as a vague label, and the Framework Plan does not distinguish between, for example, tablets, interactive whiteboards (IWBs), computers and smartphones. This prompts the following questions: Are there differences in how different types of digital tools are enacted? Who or what defines how digital tools are enacted – is it the adult or child users, how the digital tools are inscribed in the software, or the actual physicality of the digital tools? And who or what defines the types of activity digital tools are enacted as? Based on video ethnographic data from an early childhood education and care (ECEC) institution that has a strong information and communications technology (ICT) profile where different types of digital tools are used, I explore these questions.

Studies of ICT in ECEC settings often focus on the role that technologies have in influencing learning and play (Aarsand, 2019; Flewitt et al., 2015; Henward, 2018; Lafton, 2015). Other studies focus on social positioning and what types of activity can be seen in digital encounters in ECEC (Aarsand and Sørenssen, 2021; Arnott, 2013; Lawrence, 2018; Ljung-Djärf, 2008; Wohlwend, 2015). With regard to pedagogical opportunities and challenges, digital tools are seen either as the key to educate children and prepare them for the information society or as a potential threat to children's development (Bourbour, 2020). A main challenge in incorporating digital tools in ECEC settings seems to be ECEC professionals’ attitudes towards digital tools (Aldhafeeri et al., 2016; Zabatiero et al., 2018). Palaiologou (2016), for example, found that even though ECEC practitioners were digitally competent in their home life, they were still reluctant to integrate digital tools, and Fenty and Anderson (2014) found that ECEC practitioners did not feel adequately prepared to use digital technology, although they believed it to be important to integrate technology into ECEC.

When studies mainly focus on one actor in an ensemble, such as children, adults or digital tools, it is difficult to see how these actors work together – it is like ‘watching half the court during a tennis game’ (Latour, 1992: 247). To nuance our understanding and enable us to see the forest for the trees, making use of a sociomaterial perspective can be beneficial. Burnett (2017), for example, shows how tablets are enacted in multiple ways in one ECEC setting depending on the assemblage. Building on Burnett and others and keeping true to the sociomaterial idea that we need to include how non-humans impact the construction of meaning, we also need to be nuanced and careful not to overstate, or indeed understate, the role of non-humans in interactions.

When analysing video recordings in the project ‘Digital Tools in Early Childhood Education and Care’, the goal was to explore how different actors were mutually enacted (Law and Mol, 2008) – that is, humans and non-humans (like digital tools) were seen as brought into being in the meeting between them. However, to state that both humans and non-humans are mutually enacted does not mean that they equally impose on one another. Previous work in this project has sought to explore how humans and non-humans – namely, children, adults, tablets, video cameras and smartphones – make each other be in the meeting between them. In Aarsand and Sørenssen (2021) we explore the social positioning of children during tablet activity in ECEC. The focus here is on how application (app) scripts can play a part in how ownership, multiple activities and moral order can be enacted, and how the participants were positioned and worked at positioning themselves in the interaction. In Sørenssen et al. (2019) our focus is on how the camera as an actor made a difference in the research setting. And in Sørenssen and Bergschöld’s (2021), we see how the smartphone became enacted in an ECEC setting seemingly as a purely administrative tool; however, the outcome of the practices rendered the smartphone an undeclared pedagogical tool. In these articles, although attempting to hone in on practices by employing a flat ontological lens, the analysis still tends to make a distinction between the entities with regard to what they do in the assemblage. The focus becomes one-sided, giving voice to how technology, like tablets, defines and is active in framing how adults and children interact with the technology and how the technology frames social interaction, but also silencing how the tablets themselves are enacted. The goal here is to undertake a fine-grained exploration of what activities that include digital tools in an ECEC setting can be. I explore these questions using video ethnographic data from an ECEC setting that makes use of several digital tools, and argue for the importance of being more specific when using the label ‘digital tools’. In addition, I highlight that rethinking possible uses of digital tools and how the activities obtain meaning, both intended and unintended, can benefit researchers and practitioners alike.

How to explore human and non-human assemblages: actor-network theory more method than theory

To explore how digital activities are enacted in an ECEC setting, I make use of a sociomaterial perspective to illuminate how adults, children, digital tools and apps constitute each other. According to Pinch (2008), sociology has traditionally left the material unexamined and merely focused on what the material does to the social and not how the social is co-constitutive of the material. Drawing on actor-network theory (ANT), I perceive both humans and non-humans as actors. From this perspective, every thing and every human that somehow make a difference in the assemblage are actors (Latour, 2005). ANT is not a theory in the traditional sense, as it does not aid in giving an explanation for anything; rather, it could be called an onto-methodology (Nimmo, 2016). Methodologically, ANT is a way for the social scientist to access a site by following the (human and non-human) actors (Latour, 1999). However, there is not a set of specific methods or practical approaches to collecting data. Ontologically speaking, Latour (1990) argues that the division between the human domain and the domain of objects, or non-humans, has been fundamental to the idea of knowledge in modern times, and that this division is a fallacy – there is no divide. As such, at the core of ANT lies an anti-essentialist notion that disregards any a priori ideas about what humans and non-humans are; rather, it sees what unfolds and what becomes in specific encounters – how humans and non-humans make each other be (Mol and Mesman, 1996) and how they are mutually enacted (Law and Mol, 2008).

To be anti-essentialist here means striving for a symmetrical approach in a relational ontology. In an ANT way of thinking, there are no independently existing entities; humans and non-humans come to be and attain different qualities through their particular relations and configurations (Bhatt and De Roock, 2014: 6). ANT urges us to explore the meeting between actors, and not have a priori notions about human and non-human actors. Bogost (2012: 11) suggests that ‘all things equally exist, yet they do not exist equally’. This means that humans and non-humans are equally real. However, the differences are not ontological but specific, depending on the specific assemblages – what or who impacts and influences the actors and constitutes the activities. Conway and Trevillian (2015) use football as an example: it is not only those who play, but the rain, wind and potholes are actors that also have an impact on the activity. In the past few years, scholars within childhood studies have argued for an anti-essentialist stance and to avoid reduction. Sparrman (2020), for example, urges us to engage with multiplicity, suggesting that non-closure is an asset, and Spyrou (2018) suggests a move from singularity to multiplicity to nuance our knowledge production in childhood studies. By avoiding essentializing the child as a subject in ready-made, rigid categories, we not only open up to what childhood can be, but also open our studies to other academic fields (Sørenssen and Franck, 2021).

What I present here is how different material entities, all bearing the label ‘digital tools’, can differ due to both their materiality and how human actors stage the activity. ‘Activity’ is understood as what happens in the meeting between, in this case, apps, technology, adults and/or children. I find it beneficial to draw on the concept of a ‘script’: ‘like a film script, technical objects define a framework of action together with the actors and the space in which they are supposed to act’ (Akrich, 1992: 208 ). I explore how the hardware (IWB and tablets) as well as the software (apps) take part in framing the activity. What is possible when engaging with the different types of script? There is a difference between how ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ a script is: ‘a strong script suggests a certain kind of use, a weaker script suggests a larger degree of flexibility’ (Aune, 2002: 390). By looking at the outcomes of the types of activity the children, adults and different screens were part of, and by exploring the screen activity in a symmetrical fashion, we can better understand how the different actors – both human and non-human – take part in the enactment.

ANT as a methodology: video ethnography and a relational ontological approach to digital activities in an ECEC setting

For two weeks, I visited an ‘ICT-dense’ ECEC institution with a video camera on a monopod. In addition, field notes were written at the end of each day. By ‘ICT-dense’, I mean that the ECEC institution has an ICT profile where it actively uses tablets and IWBs as part of its pedagogical practices. This ECEC centre has 48 children – four groups of 12 children. There are two groups of children aged one to three and two groups of children aged four to six. I was following one of the four-to-six-year-old groups. Each group has a ‘home base’ where they spend most of the day, and eat, play and have story time. There is also a large outside area that is shared by the four groups, and they often go on walks in the vicinity. Written informed consent was obtained from the ECEC teachers and the children's parents for the purposes of research participation and publication of the data. Children who told me or in other ways signalled that they did not want to be recorded were respected and have not been included in the data. The project has been approved by the Norwegian Centre for Research Data with respect to research ethics. Pseudonyms have been used for all of the participants.

Ethnographic methods are considered optimal for researching children's everyday lives (Gulløv and Højlund, 2003). This study has been inspired by what Knoblauch (2005) calls ‘focused ethnography’, which is to say that the data is focused in scope and in time. Focused ethnographies require a shorter period of fieldwork and a predetermined focus. Video ethnography can be used as a tool in focused ethnography as ‘[v]ideo, in short, offers a “microscope” for an in-depth study of the on-going production of situated social order’ (Knoblauch and Schnettler, 2012: 335). Here, I especially focus on how activities with digital tools were enacted in the meeting between the human and non-human actors. The analysis contains what Halkier (2011) terms ‘context-bound typicalities’ – that is, what was typical in the enactment of the digital tools across a multitude of observations made during the fieldwork.

Aiming for a relational ontology is not easy. How do we give voice to non-human actors without it overshadowing how humans also impose on non-humans? How can we explore the relations in a symmetrical fashion? I attempt to do so by scrutinizing the IWB and the tablet, and seeing how these things, and these humans, do not exist equally even though they all equally exist. The goal in the analysis is to be sensitive, nuanced and open without predefined categories for either the actors or the activities. Making use of a flat ontological perspective, I examine what type of activity is produced in the meeting between the actors and not what types of actors (human or non-human) are involved to explore how they come into being in the meeting between them. Making use of a sociomaterial perspective as a relational, flat ontological endeavour, I argue that we can move beyond a falsely constructed division between a human (social) domain and a non-human (material) domain, and explore how human and non-human actors mutually enact each other and how the activity unfolds.

One of the objectives here is to shed light on the importance of being analytically sensitive to both human and non-human actors and their influence in the enactment of the activities at hand, which can give new insights for researchers and practitioners alike. I now turn to the data and look at how digital activities with a big screen and a small screen were enacted in this ECEC setting.

The big screen: a communal solo activity

The ECEC centre is a long one-storey building with a large playground adjacent to it. In the building there is a room that the ECEC teachers can book where there is an IWB. The IWB is primarily used for interactive school-preparation programmes such as learning numbers and letters. In addition, during my time there, the IWB was used to show the children's digital photographs taken from a trip in the neighbourhood.

Activity: a pacifying screen – looking at photographs taken by the children

On the day before this episode, the group had been out walking in the neighbourhood. The adults had taken along a digital camera, which the children used to take pictures. Each child had a turn holding the camera and taking photographs:

We are in the room with the IWB. The children are sitting while Cathy and June (adults) are clicking through the photos taken the day before. It is February and cold, and the children all wear one-piece snow gear and, as they are on a trip, they also have reflective vests with the name of the kindergarten on them. The children laugh at the pictures shown, shouting ‘Butt’ as there are a lot of pictures of children’s backsides, however, fully clothed. As I walked with them on this trip, I recall the children saying, ‘Take a picture of my butt!’ and turning their backsides to the child with the camera. If I had not been there the day before, by merely looking at the pictures of the children from behind, I would not have guessed that the subject of the photography was indeed buttocks. When showing the pictures, the children laugh loudly while the adults are telling them to be quiet. And while some are on the edge of their seats, Peter, a five-year-old, jumps out of his seat when pointing to the screen, shouting, ‘Butt!’ June physically sits Peter down on his seat again. Some of the pictures are blurry and Cathy tells the children that if someone moves quickly when taking a photograph this happens. Peter slides off his chair and ends up on the floor. June tells him to get back in his chair. Peter then bumps into John, who is sitting by Peter’s side. June sits between Peter and John to keep them still. Melissa asks, ‘How long are we watching this?’ Cathy says, ‘We have to see all the photos you took, so it depends on how many you took’. The children start guessing how many photos they took. Cathy tells them 285 photos.

When the adults told me about this activity, the intention was for the children to learn how to use a camera and that the children could experience ownership of the different photographs they took. This, however, does not seem to have been the case in this episode. Things might have been different if the children had taken only a couple of photographs each. As the children were both the photographers and the subjects of the photographs, they seemed more occupied with who was in the photograph rather than who took the photograph. In addition, as there were 285 photographs, the children quickly lost interest and started sliding off their chairs. The children were told to be quiet and focus on the screen several times. The episode lasted for approximately 30 minutes. The adults were in control, which, together with the reel of 285 pictures and the notion that all of the pictures needed to be seen, meant that the children did not exist equally with the adults or the big screen.

Activity: the IWB – but for how many and whom?

The next episode took place in the same room and the video recording was 30 minutes in duration. In addition to myself and my camera, the oldest children in the group of five-to-six-year-olds – the ‘school starters’ – and two adults (June and April) were present . The plan, according to the adults, was to use the Green Thoughts – Happy Children app, which is described as a ‘psychological first-aid kit’ and claims to train and stimulate children in how to talk about their thoughts and feelings (Raknes, 2014). The children seemed excited to be in the room and to be watching the big screen. June and April were struggling with logging into the account to access the app and two minutes passed while the children waited. When the adults succeeded in logging in, the volume was too loud and half a minute was spent trying to figure out the sound control. After three minutes, the app finally started and the children seemed eager to watch the IWB. The app began with child characters introducing themselves, and the children in the room looked at the characters with great interest:

Simon gets called to come to the front of the room where the IWB is located to solve a virtual puzzle with nine pieces. He tries to move a puzzle piece by dragging his finger across the screen. However, it does not move. June helps him by holding his finger on the screen, not letting go, making him able to drag the piece to where he wants it. Simon keeps ‘dropping’ the puzzle pieces while moving them as he lifts his finger from the screen. The children watching are starting to get antsy in their seats. After five minutes, it is Ella’s turn. She also struggles with the puzzle as her hands do not reach the top of the picture. June scrolls the screen so that the puzzle is moved down and Ella can reach it. Samuel attempts to help, but the adults brush him off as he is deemed too fidgety, and both June and April seem to become irritated.

After 18 minutes, there is some turmoil. The children move in their seats; June shushes the children and asks them to be still. It is now Melissa’s turn on a new game in the app. June tells Melissa that ‘They’ll say something and then we’re supposed to find the right picture to what they are saying’. In this game, the children are to match the words defining feelings with the expression Roald (the character on the screen) is depicted as having. The narrator of the game tells us that Roald is worried and there are two drawings of Roald with different facial expressions. Melissa points to and presses her finger on the one where supposedly Roald looks worried. A green teddy bear appears on the screen to indicate that this is correct. Lisa is then called up to the IWB as Melissa goes back to her seat. Lisa is told by the screen that Roald is afraid. Lisa correctly identifies the drawing but pushes too lightly and too quickly. The screen does not acknowledge her touch. Lisa looks at June, seemingly unsure of what to do. June repeats what the narrator said.

There are several interesting issues in this 30-minute video. It appears that the adults had not had a lot of experience with this app prior to using it with the children. They seemed unsure about how to use the app and relied on the app to guide them on what to do. Thus, in this case, it was the digital tool (the software), not the physical hardware of the IWB, that was given the power by the adults to define how the activity played out. However, the script of the app was one that invited users to choose different activities. It seems as if the adults were experiencing this simultaneously with the children. If the adults had had more knowledge of how the app worked, it might have been a smoother transition between the different activities, less time would have been spent on administering the app and the app could have been used as intended.

The assemblage of Simon, Lisa, the IWB and the app did not work as intended. The IWB did not register Lisa's touch and Simon could not move the puzzle piece. Lisa and Simon were not equal with the IWB and needed the assistance of adults. The episode where Ella could not reach the top of the picture on the IWB, is also interesting and highlights the importance of seeing how different actors are mutually enacted. Here, the assemblage of where the IWB was placed on the wall, the size of the child’s body, in addition to the IWB’s possibility to scroll, and June’s competence to scroll all contributed to the production of this activity. Ella was enacted as short here, but she was not enacted as short in the home base, where the chairs and tables were smaller and suitable for young children's bodies. In ECEC settings, public libraries and other places where children are seen as relevant users, there are restrooms that are designed specifically for smaller bodies and, in these cases, the child's body is enacted as ‘just the right size’. Using the story of ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’ works as an example here, where the non-human actors – the beds and the chairs – do something in the assemblages and the enactment of Goldilocks is either small or just the right size, although she does not change in size; rather, it depends on the assemblage of actors involved in the activity. So, it is not a case of being too small for the screen, but how large the screen is in relation to Ella’s body, and where the screen is placed.

The enactment of big screens

In both of the examples above, the big screen was given priority over the children as they were shushed and told to pay attention. This is paradoxical as the activity was scripted as being child-oriented – but it was not child-initiated and was under the control of the adults. In both cases, the notion of being interactive could only be afforded to one individual at any given point in time. When Simon lost his puzzle piece and June assisted him, the screen, together with the app, only allowed for one finger at a time to move the piece. In addition, as the children were asked up one by one, it became a semi-public endeavour. In the case of identifying Roald's emotions, this became a public assessment where one could potentially choose the ‘wrong’ facial expressions. However, if the scripts had been used in a different fashion, the activity could have been enacted as something more communal. Bourbour (2020) found that an IWB offered multimodality and interactivity to mediate teaching when the adult was the one standing at the front touching the screen after the group of children had decided together what the adult needed to do to execute the task. This moves the focus from the actual physical interaction between the human and the IWB, which is what we see here in the case of the Green Thoughts – Happy Children app, and gives room for discussion on what to do and what not to do, focusing on the interaction of possible things to do. In such a case, the IWB and the software used are not at the forefront but the interactive potential in the app and hardware is drawn on, making it a communal activity.

Paradoxically, what the adults seemed to be trying to do – make interacting with the IWB and the projector a joint focus and joint activity – did not engage the children. A reason for this could be that it was not child-initiated. In addition, as the adults chose to only let one child at a time use the Green Thoughts – Happy Children app, and made the children sit still when looking at the 285 photographs, they pacified the children. So, it was not only the screen and the adult actors who imposed rigid rules, but also the structure around the screen.

The small screen: single and joint activity

At the home base, there was one tablet per group that could be used by the children at allotted times. These times were usually after lunch when the group had free play indoors. The structure for the use of the tablet was well known to the children. The children would raise their hands to be put on a list, which functioned as a queue. When their turn came, they officially had 10 minutes at their disposal, which was controlled by the teacher. There was an array of apps available on the tablet. The child whose turn it was would be in control of the tablet and could use it as they wanted, either distribute tablet actions to other children or use it alone. How the tablet activity was enacted would depend on the child, whether other children were sitting next to the child whose turn it was and were taking an interest in what that child was doing, the apps and the tablet itself.

A solo activity and arbitrary clicking

Although use of the tablet was very popular and all the children would raise their hands to get a turn on the tablet, when it was enacted as a solo activity – meaning that there was one child sitting with the tablet and no one was watching or in any way taking part in the tablet activity – it seemed to consist of arbitrary clicking. I saw this time and time again in the data. By ‘arbitrary clicking’, I mean going in and out of different apps without engaging with the apps’ scripts. Often, when a child was left alone with the tablet, there was seldom what appeared to be meaningful use of the tablet (see Sørenssen et al., 2019):

It is Tara’s turn with the tablet. She has been sitting beside the tablet while six other children have had their turn. Through the six turn-takers, there have been children sitting round the tablet, engaged in the tablet use, cheering, helping the turn-taker and suggesting actions. When Tara, who is the last on the list this day, is given the tablet, no one is sitting round her. She smiles as June, the adult, hands her the tablet. Tara flicks through the apps, back and forth, for a while before she clicks on a Ludo app, the Albert Åberg app, the Math-train app. She moves in and out of the apps, seemingly clicking arbitrarily, and does not spend more than 30 seconds in the different apps. After seven minutes, Aaron comes by as Tara has clicked on the Math-train app again; Tara does not know how to play. Aaron tells Tara what she has to do in the app. ‘Yeah, that’s right’, Aaron cheers Tara on. Peter comes to sit with them and the three of them co-talk through the game. Tara has a big grin on her face, then June tells her that her time is up.

In this episode, it was only when Aaron joined the activity that Tara seemed to become engaged. Two possible explanations for Tara's seemingly unengaged arbitrary clicking for the first seven minutes could be her lack of knowledge of the different apps, and that Aaron, with his guidance, helped her master and enjoy the Math-train app, or the fact that, in the previous hour, Tara had sat next to other turn-takers and there had been, to varying degrees, joint activity between the tablet, the turn-taker and at least one other child. As such, one could argue that the tablet was rendered more important, and more fun, if other children were taking part in the activity.

The collective tablet – what brings children together?

Although framed by the adults as a solo endeavour, with one child being in possession of the tablet for a given time, often the tablet activity would be enacted as a joint activity, with several hands being able to touch the screen or bystanders cheering on the child whose turn it was. There were several actors that influenced how the tablet activity was enacted. One was the sound from the tablet. A sound is a non-human actor that can produce effects on listeners and their surroundings (Wong, 2013: 207). On several occasions, the sound from the tablet when a child opened an app or an app’s jingle would trigger responses from the children around the room, who either physically moved towards the tablet and its user or sang along from where they were in the room. Lafton (2015) has also made this point and shows how banjo music unexpectedly coming from a laptop did something to the humans in the assemblage. In my data , the Pizza Baker app serves as an example. Here, the objective is to make pizzas as customers order them. In this app, if the sound is on, there is constant accordion music, in addition to a male voice with a strong Italian accent shouting ‘Pizza, pizza’:

Ella is given the tablet. She sits in the listening corner in the room with the tablet on her knees. She starts the Pizza Baker app and the known accordion music starts playing. Across the room, David shouts ‘Pizza, pizza’ from a table where he is drawing with three other children. The three children chime in and hum along with the music.

In addition to sound, another non-human actor that makes a difference is the app's script and whether it is weak or strong. Albert Åberg is an open-ended app with a weak script, meaning that there is flexibility and it does not suggest one particular type of use (Aune, 2002). Here, timing and precision are not part of the game. Children can choose what rooms in Albert's apartment to go into and take part in various activities in no particular order: in the living room, you can vacuum dust bunnies; in the kitchen, you can make stew. This app allows several fingers to touch the screen simultaneously and, as argued elsewhere (Aarsand and Sørenssen, 2021), promotes what Wohlwend (2015: 160) terms ‘collaborative play’ as it is open-ended and encourages ‘shared decision-making and negotiation among players’. In addition to having a weak script, the combination of the hardware, which allows several fingers to touch the screen simultaneously, and the social norms of sharing (Sørenssen and Franck, 2021) that are prevalent in ECEC institutions facilitates the activity as a joint activity.

Another type of joint activity was found when the children used apps with stronger and more ridged scripts, such as a LEGO Batman app where the goal was to drive the Batmobile and capture the bad guys:

It is Peter’s turn. He sits with Tara and Sandra on either side of him. Excitedly, he shouts, ‘Chris! They have Batman here’ – directed towards Chris, who is on the other side of the room. Chris and three other boys flock round the screen at Peter’s outburst. Peter is driving the Batmobile. Chris and the others cheer him on: ‘Good job, Peter!’ Peter makes a driving noise, ‘Vroom vroom’.

Even though this game did not allow several hands to touch the screen simultaneously, it became a joint activity as the bystanders were cheering the player on and aiding him with their knowledge of the game. This is thus an example of something that may be inscribed as a one-person game but is engaging for several spectators.

The enactment of small screens

It is interesting that the use of the tablet was staged as a solo activity by the adults. However, in all of the data collected, there was seldom an instance where the children would engage in what could be deemed meaningful play alone with the tablet. Regarding the tablet, we can see that, as a joint activity, it did not entail one type of activity. One could argue that both the Albert Åberg and Batman examples were a joint activity. However, in the Albert Åberg app, several hands could make an impact on the game simultaneously, whereas in the Batman app, the impact the other human actors was in the form of cheering Peter on. One could speculate that if the bystanders had not taken such an interest in his endeavour, Peter might not have been too keen on playing. This, of course, is only speculation. However, as the data shows, when a child was alone with the tablet, tapping seemingly arbitrarily on it, they would often lose interest.

This material is by no means exhaustive regarding the different types of activity. However, I was struck by the communal attention that was paid to the tablet activity. If a child was playing alone with the tablet, it resulted in arbitrary clicking and, observing this, although not knowing how it was experienced, it did not seem to generate a meaningful activity. By contrast, when there were several children engaged in using the tablet – either by cheering on the child whose turn it was, guiding the player, singing the songs or physically taking part in the Albert Åberg or Pizza Baker apps – the activities seemed to generate more engagement and joy for the turn-taker.

Concluding thoughts

Drawing on ANT, the goal here was to move beyond an ontological divide between humans and non-humans through a symmetrical, flat ontological lens, without overemphasizing what things do to humans or what humans do to materials, to explore without any a priori notions how these digital activities were enacted. The goal was thus to attempt to see the whole tennis court by being sensitive to several actors in the assemblages. A limitation of ANT, as with all other research, is that it is impossible to grasp the whole tennis court – we can never truly see the ‘whole picture’ as there are endless actors to follow. According to Miller (1997: 363), ‘the trick is to select the paths you wish to follow, and those you wish to ignore, and to do so according to the assemblage you wish to chart’. In this case, the focus has been on the different screens, apps, adults and children, and, in my data, it is clear that digital tools and children did not exist equally.

When the big screen was used, the children were of lesser importance and had to be monitored and shushed. By contrast, when using the small screen, the children's social relations and competence preceded both the tablet and the apps. Generally, activity with the small screen was enacted as sharable and joyful, with suspenseful spectatorship, and as an intimate practice, with children's bodies close together, while activity with the big screen was enacted as a collective but simultaneously singular activity. Regarding the tablet, the turn-taker had influence and power over the tablet activity; however, the bystanders exerted influence over the activity as well. When a child was alone with the tablet, they would often aimlessly scroll and arbitrarily click in and out of apps without engaging with them. The tablet activity could be enacted as a joint activity partially due to the affordances of the tablet, which enabled several fingers to touch the screen simultaneously, and the scripts of the apps – for example, not being time-dependent. However, these joint activities did not merely occur due to the tablet's affordances or the scripts of the apps; they were also determined by the children's social competencies and whether they recruited others to become engaged whilst they were taking their turn. Even though it was a digital tool, the tablet was like any other play object, differing only in the fact that the children needed to sign up for it; once they had it in their hands, they could do with it as they pleased. The big screen, on the other hand, commanded the room in a different way; it could not be passed around physically and was therefore more difficult to share between the children. While the adults determined that using the big screen was a joint activity, it did not result as such. The affordance of interactivity was only used one on one; the children were enacted as spectators, not participants; and the activity was adult-initiated. The actors did not exist equally and the children did not have the same possibility to exert agency as the adults.

In line with one of the slogans of ANT, ‘it could have been otherwise’ – neither tablets nor IWBs need be enacted as they were in my data. As such, the main takeaway here for both researchers and practitioners is to be sensitive not only to the different actors, but also to the different activities that are enacted. We need to rethink the possible uses of digital tools and how the activities obtain meaning, both intended and unintended. Thus, we need to approach these activities by being both open and specific. When appropriating and researching digital tools in ECEC, it is important to be specific in defining what these tools are and for what purpose they are being used. Being specific might aid ECEC teachers (Aldhafeeri et al., 2016; Fenty and Anderson, 2014; Palaiologou, 2016; Zabatiero et al., 2018), as previous research has found that ECEC teachers do not feel prepared to use ‘digital tools’. ‘Digital tools’ as a concept is too wide. Big and small screens differ in how they are inscribed, their affordances, and how they are enacted as a collective or singular activity. We also need to be open: What are the activities that unfold? How are they enacted? Big screens differ depending on how they are enacted, and small screens differ depending on the other actors involved. Critically rethinking the possible uses and considering why and for what purpose they are implemented can benefit researchers and practitioners alike, and help us explore and understand how these vastly different tools can be used and enacted.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Ingvild Kvale Sørenssen

Author biography

Ingvild Kvale Sørenssen is an associate professor at the Department of Education and life-long learning, NTNU. She has a Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture from NTNU and has previously researched and published on the age group tweens in relation to media and consumption. Theoretically her focus is on the relationality of human and non-human actors in different sociomaterial assemblages.

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