Tinkering, Play-Based Learning and Children’s Funds of Knowledge in the Post-Digital : Responding to the Problem of Technology Integration in ECEC

This thesis addresses the well documented and ongoing problem of integrating digital technologies in Early Childhood Education and Care [ECEC] pedagogy, a problem which has been complicated in recent times by young children’s immersion in the digital as mode of social practice, a phenomenon increasingly referred to as the ‘post-digital’. Current understandings of the post-digital are sometimes described as messy, where it is claimed that borders between the digital and non-digital have now become so blurred that it is difficult to distinguish between where children’s digital and non-digital activities begin and end (Apperley et al., 2016; Jandrić et al., 2019; Pettersen, Arnseth, et al., 2022).
The aim of this research was to examine the capacity of tinkering with unplugged technologies as a form of play-based learning to support children’s lived experiences in the post-digital in response to the problem of digital technology integration. This aim recognises that play-based learning is a significant pedagogy in ECEC and that tinkering affords opportunities for such play. The term unplugged technologies in this thesis refers to formerly working digital artefacts which no longer function such as decommissioned computer keyboards, computer mice, computer cases, as well as video gaming controllers. Unplugged technologies offer opportunities for children to engage with technologies that educators may view as more appropriate for learning because they can be hands-on rather than relying only on working digital technologies for learning.
This thesis employed Actor-Network Theory [ANT] (Latour, 2005) as a model of social constructivism to work within an ontology that considers the material, non-material and humans equal in terms of capacity to exert agency. This theoretical perspective enabled the constitutive actants of the problem of digital integration to be examined through a methodology of participatory co-design where three educators collaborated with myself-as-researcher to design and implement stages of play-based learning in the form of tinkering with unplugged technologies.
The findings suggest that educators identified a number of Learning Outcomes as per Australian national and state curricula arising from children’s tinkering with unplugged technologies. Through data analysis informed by ANT (Latour, 2005), children’s Learning Outcomes were traced to a range of actants which jointly co-constituted manifestations of children’s lived experiences in the post-digital. Manifestations were represented by children creating their own versions of technologies in the form of ‘iPad’, ‘computer’ and ‘gamer’.
Manifestations of children’s lived experiences in the post-digital were examined in terms of their composite actants to illustrate how a variety of actants operate within a network of activity to shape a response to the problem of integration of digital learning opportunities into ECEC. Two actants were found to be more influential than others in the three manifestations of children’s lived experiences in the post-digital, these being play-based learning and children’s own funds of knowledge. Understanding the various actants in tinkering networks with unplugged technologies can alert educators to entry points for technology integration in ECEC, thereby providing a more helpful and stable starting point for educators than descriptions of children’s post-digital play as entangled and messy.

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