Inbetween Literacy Desirings and Following Commands: Rethinking Digitalization in Swedish Early Childhood Education

ABSTRACT

This article is an empirically grounded contribution to the understanding of how digitalization in education is interpreted and made into being by actors in everyday lives, in this case children and teachers in Swedish early childhood education. The focus is on interactions in an early childhood classroom upon and around a digital interactive floor setting. Drawing on the theoretical concept of socio-spatiality, this literacy event is understood as an enactment of policy where both teacher and children become actors and subjects. Using observations and video recordings as a methodological approach, the study shows how the literacy event in the digital setting is enacted and constituted as a relational process between literacy desirings and education policy regarding digitalization. The authors suggest that engaging with both children’s processes of literacy desirings and educational commands in ECE digital activities serves as a productive way to investigate how digitalization is enacted in contemporary ECE.

KEYWORDS:

• digitalization
• early childhood education
• socio-spatiality
• literacy
• policy enactment

Introduction

Digitalization is a contemporary key focus in Swedish early childhood education (ECE). According to the National strategy for digitalization of the school system in Sweden (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2017), preschools, as well as schools, must take into consideration and make use of the possibilities related to digitalization. The strategy, together with the national preschool curriculum (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2018), provide guidance on how to access and use digital technologies. At the same time discussions at the local and national policy levels demonstrate broad interest in the ways in which digitalization is understood and performed in ECE (Fransson et al., 2018).

As juridical documents, the policies of digitalization state and provide guidance on the expected outcomes; however, what is actually enacted, performed, and learned in the ECE classroom involves a range of complex aspects. Recently, digitalization has been studied in relation to the ways in which teachers enact policy in their everyday practice (Lund et al., 2019) with the focus often being on educational aims, showing that both pedagogical practices and research methods usually seek to reduce complexity of ECE digital practices (Hermansson et al., 2014). This has contributed to contradictions in terms of the sociology of childhood, for example in relation to the idea that young children are particularly vulnerable in digital settings (Rydin, 2010) and the idea of children as autonomous digital natives (Prensky, 2001). Another delimitation concerns the micro-macro research divide referring to the levels of analysis used in research. Research examining individuals and individual-level interactions, such as children’s use of digital tools and resources (Kjällander & Moinian, 2014; Petersen, 2015), are often separated from macro-level research that examines the national systems and regulation as a political-administrative environment.

In this study these different levels are recognized as constitutive in the complexity of ECE practices, when examining how digitalization is constituted in the encounter between children, teachers, technology and policies. It does so by studying interactions upon and around an interactive floor (IF), seen as a materialization of digitalization, and by addressing the complexity of what happens in the classroom. The question raised is: How can digitalization in ECE be understood when seen as constituted by, and experienced through, the interactions between children’s and teacher’s conceptions, bodies and materiality?

ECE in Sweden and the call for digitalization

This study is undertaken in the Swedish preschool, a public childcare service that has been given high priority as part of family policy since the beginning of the 1970s. The goal of the Swedish preschool is twofold: to help parents combine parenthood with work or studies and to support and stimulate children’s development and learning, hence contributing to good conditions for growth. Today, the Swedish Ministry of Education is responsible for public childcare, and over 85 percent of all the children in Sweden between the ages one to five are enrolled in preschool. The statistics also show that the availability of digital tools has increased significantly in preschool environments over the last decade. For example, the number of learning tablets has increased four times from 2012 to 2015, which means 13 children per tablet. Further, two thirds of the staff used a computer or tablet every day in a group of children (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2016).

In 1998, the National Curriculum for Preschool (Swedish National Agency for Education, 1998) came into effect. The curriculum states the overall goals and guidelines for ECE but does not specify the ways in which the goals are to be achieved. Instead, school leaders and personnel are responsible to translate the goals and guidelines into daily activities in the preschool.

In the 2017 revision of the national curriculum (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2017), digital technology is included as compulsory knowledge content and as an educational tool in the Swedish preschool. The entry of digital technology in the national curriculum was in line with the overall goal of the national strategy for digitalization of the (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2017) for schools and preschools. The strategy states that, ‘the Swedish school system should be a leader in using the opportunities of digital technologies in the best way to achieve a high digital competence in children and pupils and in promoting knowledge development and equality’ (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2017, p. 4). The revisions in the curricula (Swedish National Agency for Education, 2017) stated that the preschool should provide children with the conditions to develop adequate digital competence and establish a critical and responsible approach to digital technology so that children can, in the long term, see opportunities, understand risks, and possess the ability to value information. This should be done by giving children the opportunity to develop an understanding of digitalization in everyday life. Furthermore, it is stated that preschool teachers are responsible for children being able to use digital tools in ways that stimulate development and learning. The Swedish preschools are expected to take a decisive step towards introducing digital technology as a compulsory element in the curriculum. The technological determinism discourse appears strong, indicating that digital technology will bring a radical change to the daily ECE practices as well as to schools and educational systems. In Sweden, as in several other countries, investments in digital technology have assured that most Swedish preschool teachers have a set of digital tablets but also other devices such as interactive boards. The ambition has been to create a pervasive transformation and improvement of ECE, educational practices, and learning processes.

Conceptualizing literacy and enactments of policy on digitalization in ECE

In this brief review, we outline different themes in research on digitalization in relation to both practices and policy. On this basis we find that a thorough account of policy enactments requires a methodological approach that attends to the complex interplay between education policy and practice.

There has been a range of studies on the macro level on national policies concerning IT and e-Government in the Nordic countries (Johansson, 2006; Lofgren, 2007; Marklund, 2020). Findings in research articles, with titles such as ‘Old wine in new bottles’ (Ilshammar et al., 2005), ‘The emperor’s new clothes’ (Melin, 2009) and ‘Something is (not) changing in the state of Denmark’ (Persson et al., 2017), suggest that certain themes are recurrent and reinforced in e-Government policies. One of the themes relates to the belief in the possibilities of digitalization, a theme addressed not only in the Swedish or Nordic education policies. The drive towards digitalization in education seems to be a global phenomenon and during the last two decades there has been an increased concern in government policies. The policies are found at all levels of government; local, regional, and national, including the European Union. Political parties, interest groups, and tech companies are also pushing for digitalization in educational settings, from the universities to early childhood classrooms (Cuban & Jandrić, 2015; Haugsbakk & Nordkvelle, 2007; Nilsen, 2018; Player-Koro, 2016; Williamson, 2016).

An often-debated topic is the education sector’s relationship to transformations in society, especially in terms of the relationship between educational technology and the school. The last 30 years, the possibilities of digitalization have been on IT as a tool for knowledge seeking, communication, creation and learning, which has resulted in instrumental understanding of digitalization in education (Cöster & Westelius, 2016). Lately, a body of literature has emerged that makes a point of the importance of separating the concept of digitalization from digitization. Digitization is described as the process of converting analog data into digital form. It refers to a process that actually means that large parts of all our analog information is transferred to digital channels to be made searchable and partially accessible (Tilson et al., 2010). The concept of digitalization highlights another aspect; it is about the digital transformation of life in general. This transformation not only suggests an increased use of information technology (IT), it also addresses the complexity related to changes in all the processes, organizations and systems in which the use of digital technology is part as well as contributes to (Rahm, 2019).

Another theme in the scholarly literature relates to the micro level and concerns children’s strategies and use of digital devices (Kjällander & Moinian, 2014; Petersen, 2015). For example, Crescenzi et al. (2014) look at affective, sensory, and embodied aspects of technology when studying young children’s use of digital tablets as they define touch as a multimodal experience including sense and mode. Furthermore, studies have focused on specific skills involved in children’s ability to interact with and understand multimodal reading through their engagements with digital narratives via tablets (Hermansson, 2017; Hermansson & Olin-Scheller, 2019). These studies note that research exists on the roles of multimodal resources in various learning environments but that there is a research gap on the affective, sensory, and embodied nature of digital technology use for very young children.

A third theme in the literature on digitalization in ECE focuses on policy enactment. For example, studies show how policy is enacted in practice when preschool teachers teach with tablets (Otterborn et al., 2018; Sundqvist & Nilsson, 2016). Although digital technology does change educational practices, it does not seem to affect teachers’ choice of content or teaching strategies (Hermansson & Olin-Scheller, 2022). Policies do not tell what a specific practitioner should do but open up a number of different possibilities. Interpreting or putting a policy into practice is a policy enactment action, emphasizing the necessity for a practitioner to create his or her own interpretation of the policy and act on it (Ball et al., 2012). However, policies regarding digitalization present an ambiguous and often generalizing picture of children’s use of digital technology in Swedish preschool, a picture that can be connected to different ways of thinking about children and childhood (Sommer et al., 2010). On the one hand, children are viewed as competent and active digital meaning-makers and, on the other hand, they are seen, in line with notions of society today as a Risk society (Beck, 1992), seen as particularly vulnerable in digital settings (Rydin, 2010). The latter is often associated with a discourse that postulates action from society and adults in the form of care, protection, and educational commands, particularly when it comes to new digital communication technology. However, at the same time as new digital arenas are understood as places where children need guidance from policies and adults on how to use them, they are also identified as places where children have more competence than adults and as places where children’s autonomy has been strengthened (Wang et al., 2023). This contradiction points to a paradoxical tension between different ways of relating to children and digital technology.

Although policy enactment (Ball et al., 2012) is based on how policy is made, we are not investigating how teachers enact digitization policy in ECE or how children use digital technology; Instead, we see policy enactment as a combination of the themes presented in the literature review, as a complex interplay between local, spatial, and relational processes. In this study within an literacy event upon and around an interactive floor at a preschool, partly shaped by (inter)national strategies, agendas and curriculums. In the following section we argue for a theoretical approach of socio-spatiality that we see as useful for bringing together policy and practice to study the complex interplay of the local and the global and rethinking digitalization in ECE.

Theoretical framework

This study uses the theorization about the production of space by Lefebvre (1991) to focus on space as a dynamic and active process of social production, acknowledging that space is produced in the local and the global, the micro and the macro (Lefebvre, 2002). Space, in this perspective, is never just a physical place, but an ongoing process of institutional and material structuration and social relations. Hence, space is produced in the interrelations within a triad consisting of conceived, perceived and social dimensions.

This perspective helps us understand how the space is produced in the interplay between mental understandings of digitalization in ECE, conceptualized in educational policies, technological, material, and physical boundaries that enable and constrain the literacy event, and the social and cultural relations lived and experienced by the practitioners within the event. It is in the lived social dimension that relations between humans, materiality, and conceptions are operationalized as embodiment in the physical room, teacher’s enactments of policy in pedagogical acts and children’s explorations in socio-material relations.

The perspective enables us to focus on what constitutes the production of the literacy event and how the space can be dominated by physical borders and conceptual boundaries. Uncovering structures dominating the space creates possibilities to appropriating the space in new ways. In the study, we describe borders and boundaries of the literacy event, related to different types of commands such as educational policy, teacher’s leadership, and materiality. When studying how the space is produced in the teacher’s and the children’s appropriation of the space, we examine the relations between different commands and children’s literacy desirings. We use the term literacy desirings, in line with Kuby & Gutshall (2015), to highlight the explorative (not always intentional), surprising, and unexpected ways the children interact with materials, other people, modes, time, space, language, and bodies. The focus on literacy desirings lies in the relations and the processes and not (necessarily) in finishing an assignment or in a future product. From this perspective, digitalization is understood as a concept defining societal and cultural changes of the digitized formation of social spaces. Digitalization does not only refer to technology itself, but to how it affects social patterns, material terms in new technologies and changes perspectives and activities.

Data production and analysis

The study adopts a video ethnographic-inspired approach (Knoblauch & Schnettler, 2012). It was conducted in a preschool in a medium-sized town in Sweden, a preschool that has invested in implementing digital tools in the learning environment to develop the digital competence of the children and the staff. 16 children between the ages of three and six, and three teachers took part in the study. The data collection took place during October 2018. Empirical data consists of video recordings and field notes of interactions taking place in the setting of an interactive floor (IF). The IF is a media system consisting of a computer, a projector and a floor canvas controlled by two sensory pens. The computer projected on the surface of the canvas offers a large surface to the user. The system comprises various applications to choose among. The application used by the children in the sequence of our observation was a word processing program. The interactive floor system appeals to many children allowing them to gather around it as the projection creates a large space where several children are enabled to act. The system is limited to two users as there are only two pens; yet many more children participate in the event by observing and sometimes coming up with suggestions for solutions.

The total video recordings comprise 170 minutes. One of the advantages of recording interactions using a video camera is that they capture what occurred, making it possible to go back and analyse repeated occurrences (Mondada, 2007). Video observations enable a ‘fine-grained scrutiny of moments of social life’ (Heath et al., 2010, p. 3); they also make it possible for researchers to collectively analyse recorded sequences after the event and allow for interpretations from multiple perspectives (Knoblauch & Schnettler, 2012). The researchers’ experiences of the space, and changes in the activities of the event, were documented by taking field notes. The notes helped to navigate and sort out relevant sequences from the extensive video material. In this way, note-taking was a necessary complement to the video recordings (Hammersley & Atkinson, 1995).

With the ambition to understand the literacy events that take place on and around the interactive floor (IF) as productions of educational space, informed by educational policies, material aspects and the way education comes into being in the social space, we used a rhythm-analytical approach (Lefebvre, 2004). By using rhythmanalysis (cf.Christi, 2013) we could study the phenomena of the IF literacy events and analyse how different rhythms can be experienced in multiple and complex social relationships (cf. Lefebvre, 2004). This aided an interpretative work that goes beyond descriptions of observations (cf. Chen, 2016).

The event by the interactive floor was analysed as a polyrhythmic space that comprised various rhythms of human bodies, such as movements, intensities and voices, but also mechanical rhythms of different materialistic perceptions and cultural conceptions such as clock time, materialistic characteristics and boundaries, educational policies, and the teacher’s pedagogical actions out of conceptions of children and education. The rhythmanalysis enabled us to examine how different appropriations of the space interplayed and created different rhythms of synchronization and disruptions.

Rhythmanalysis emphasizes the importance of sensory and embodied data, whereof the researcher is seen as a source of epistemological data (Nash, 2020). In the analysis, we (as researchers) attuned ourselves to feelings, experienced as harmony or disruptions, when observing the event, and later when immersing in the video-recordings. The findings were inductively derived from the body when being there and participating in the rhythms, as well as when revisiting the event via video-observations and field notes of our experiences. In that way we identified and selected sections that entailed changes of rhythms throughout the literacy event. These sections were analysed based on perceived, conceived and lived dimensions, to describe the production of the polyrhythmic space. For example; the conceived dimension related to different ideas about the educational space expressed in educational policies, affecting how the space was appropriated; the perceived dimension related to material aspects of the space, such as the children’s and teacher’s bodies, the shape, and size of the interactive floor, and the pens used to navigate it; and the lived dimension related to different experiences of appropriating the space, interpreted through bodily expressions. The analysis revealed tensions between the three dimensions, due to differences in the children’s and the teacher’s appropriations of the space. These tensions were further thematically analysed and described with literacy desirings and commands as a related pair of analytical concepts. Finally, conclusions were drawn and presented as a thick description (Yin, 2013) in the form of a narrative, describing the production of the space as a phenomenon.

Ethical considerations

We addressed ethical issues in various ways before, during and after the fieldwork. The study underwent local routines at Karlstad university for ethical examination. Adequate measures were taken to obtain informed consent of all participants, following the Swedish Research Council’s guidelines (2017). Before the research began, written consent was requested from the teachers, the parents, and also orally from the children. To ensure confidentiality children’s and teachers’ faces are blurred in visual presentations in the study. Further, all names of participants are fictional.

In accordance with the theoretical points used in the study, we acknowledged that the observer and the technology used in observations are parts of, and affect the space produced and thereof the phenomenon studied (Aarsand & Forsberg, 2010). Ethical dilemmas arose in the lived space as the children and the teachers interacted with the digital system and each other. In the lived dimension of the space, emotions and bodily responses were crucial for understanding and relating to ethical dilemmas of doing research. For example, the use of video cameras as a tool in the participant observation posed problems for the researcher and participants alike on how to interact with the camera in an ethically responsible way. At times, the children devised various ways of signalling, through emotions and bodily expressions, a wish to be, or not to be, filmed. For example, a child could hold up a hand in front of him/her or close the door while another child could take the researcher’s hand and drag him to the activity. According to Aarsand and Forsberg (2010), video documentation relates strongly to children’s construction of publicly and privately produced spheres, which is also in the ECE classroom. The researchers developed awareness of and receptivity to the children’s different signals of privacy in such a way that each video documentation became an event in which on-site consent was established.

Furthermore, in order to conceptualize the interconnectedness between the researcher and the data, it was necessary to continually reflect on supplementary ways of understanding the data production (Macbeth, 2001). These processes of reflection via the rhythm-analytical approach assured that the responses to and resonances of emotions and bodily affects were taken seriously, and as such also troubling the idea that language mirrors the researched (the world) as an objective account of the real (Mehrabi, 2020; St Pierre, 2011).

Results

In the following sections, we describe how the literacy event are produced in the rhythms of children’s literacy desirings and different commands, taking material (analog and digital), and educational discourse in policies regarding digitalization, into account. We will illustrate that the algorithms of the software are significant for the production of this literacy event and serve as catalysts for children’s literacy desirings. We also highlight how the children’s literacy desirings are surrounded and affected by educational commands made by the teacher, but also by commands connected to functions (eg. programmed algorithms) in the software. Further on, we show the physical possibilities and limitations of the space, a space that is constantly negotiated, and how the children use different strategies to express their literacy desirings. We follow the intensified rhythm of the literacy event and how the activity upon and around the IF-setting comes to an end.

In between desirings and commands

In the beginning of this literacy event, two children, Leo, four years old and Clemens, five years old, are sitting by the IF, exploring functions in a word processing program. The functions include several tools and a colour palette to choose from when drawing and writing. The children are using the sensory pens to navigate the toolbar and to switch tools and colours by pressing different icons, exploring the functions as they draw colourful shapes and flows all over the interactive carpet. The teacher helps the children navigate the toolbar by verbal instructions and by pointing out the icons.

Clemens selects a feature in the word processing program that creates straight lines. He draws two straight lines parallel to each other and expresses his fascination by shouting out: ‘Wow!’ He changes colours to green and continues to draw lines, exploring the function. As he draws one line, he once again tries to draw an additional line next to it. But instead of making a second line, the function is programmed in a way that curves the first line which he then draws a straight line from. A shape of the letter P emerges on the sheet (Figure 1). Clemens once again shouts out: ‘Wow, wow, look!’ as he points at the product.

Figure 1. Explorations in a word processing program.

In the described event, an explorative space is produced through the dynamic interrelation of the perceived, the conceived, and the lived dimensions of the space. The physical-material aspects of the space, such as the large surface of the IF, the projected light, and the two interactive pens frame the possibilities and limitations of how the space can be appropriated by the children. They enable the children to express their literacy desirings through bodily expressions when exploring the material characteristics of the IF and its functions.

The space being made in this literacy event on the IF also consists of the conceived dimension, meaning the conceptual ideas related to it. The conceived dimension of the event is visualized in the commands of the algorithms of the software, but also in the teacher’s instructions, regarded as commands of the conceptual ideas of education, teaching and learning in early childhood education.

The exploration begins as a painting or graffiti activity, where the children create images and various flows and paths of colours. But when Clemens discovers the function that creates straight lines, the literacy event develops into a focus on writing letters. Clemens’ appropriation of the space and his exploration of the possibilities of the functions, lead to the emergence on the sheet of the shape of the letter P. His reaction to the phenomenon reveals that there is a meaning to the sign embedded in a social and cultural context. The letter P is part of a sign system familiar to him that he can relate to, and which becomes a symbol for writing. Clemens goes on to write the letter E. He then slides over the interactive floor and uses the pen to change colours on the colour palette. He draws two black lines forming a backward L. He spins around the floor and reaches out to click on the menu when the teacher asks him: ‘Clemens, are you writing your name?’

This educational space is a production of interactions between the children, the algorithms of the word processing program, and the material aspects as a combination of the digital setting and the physical, tactile aspects of the IF and its interactive pen. The children’s explorations and the commands made by the algorithms of the program induce Clemens to draw the shape of the letter P, which interacts with Clemens’ conception of writing and activates a desire to write letters.

At the beginning of the event, the teacher assumes a rather passive role in the ongoing activity. He does not interfere in the children’s explorations apart from instructing them in how to navigate the functions. But as the teacher discovers that Clemens is writing letters, he immediately confirms Clemens’ activity by asking if he is writing his name. The teacher then offers the children to go and get their nameplates. The nameplate can be understood as an educational command in the shape of a symbol encouraging the children to write their names. It is an example of how the teacher’s educational conception, regarded as the conceived dimension of the space, is lived through his pedagogical act of responsive teaching, where the teacher recognizes the children’s interests in order to create conditions for children’s learning. The teacher thus exhibits an understanding of teaching in early year education that can be traced to the Swedish ECE policy, regulating the teacher’s mission in preschool education. The teacher relates to the literacy event as part of the children’s education and to his own mission to teach the children using a pedagogical approach described in the preschool curriculum. He encourages the children to use their name plates and write their names. The teacher does not take total control over the activity but seems to value the children’s explorative processes. His educational command creates the possibility for the children to work with written language, but then he seems to wait for the children to keep up with their explorative actions. The teacher only interferes when the children need help to find functions or to solve problems in their writing process. The focus on the process, rather than the product, is visualized as the teacher gives the children the space and the time to remain in the process. In fact, when Clemens finishes his writing, the teacher makes space for another child by immediately erasing the product of the process (Clemens’ writing) to create an empty sheet on the canvas for a new process to take place.

There are crucial differences in the teacher’s and the children’s ways of appropriating the educational space. The teacher’s understanding of the space- and his approach to teaching- is likely informed by national policies that define the preschool as an educational space with specific understandings of teaching in this specific school form. The pedagogical initiative to purchase and implement the IF system as part of the preschool’s learning environment, and the teacher’s way of supporting and encouraging the children’s exploration can be seen as a reflection of one aspect of what digital competence conceptually involves according to the curriculum for preschool. Digital competence is described as something that individuals develop by learning to manage the user interface of the technology as a tool. The teacher’s pedagogical act in this particular educational event is to support the children in navigating the medium interface (IF system) and using its various functions. At the same time the teacher does not seem to limit the literacy event to the digital setting as he encourages the children to incorporate the analog nameplates into the digital setting. In this event, the teacher does not seem to distinguish analog from digital writing but combines aspects of both in the same literacy event. In fact, the system of IF itself challenges the dichotomous understanding of the terms analog and digital as it is digitally programmed but nevertheless contains input devices constructed as traditional analog pens.

The children’s appropriation of the space is dominated by the socio-material relations in the dynamics of the perceived and lived dimensions of the space. They are living the space exploring what is possible to create in relation to this enlightened magical carpet visualized in their embodied expressions. Clemens slides across the canvas and clicks on the menu and creates a new document. He is reframing the perceived dimension to make space for writing his name. As the teacher has gone to retrieve the children’s nameplates, the children are sitting down in the middle of the canvas and spinning around on the smooth surface. Then they rise and start to jump and dance on the enlightened sheet projected on the canvas. They appropriate the space through embodied interactions with the material characteristics of the space and express their literacy desirings when spinning and dancing on the canvas and using the sensory pens in broad movements to create flows and paths of rainbows and dashed lines.

Negotiations in the lived space

The IF is implemented as part of the preschool’s learning environment to arrange for teaching and learning digital competence. It can be seen as a pedagogical response to commands expressed in the revised ECE policies. The digital software is navigated by the hardware of the interactive pens that, in remediated design, are formed as a traditional analog pen, adopting its features. Despite the large-scaled surface of the IF, the perceived dimension of the space challenges the children to get enough room to write their names. It is also somewhat constraining as they are supposed to make room for each other on the canvas. At the same time, the limited interface is bringing the children together and enables them to interact and get inspired by each other (Figure 2). The children use different strategies when negotiating the space, both in relation to each other and in relation to the material characteristics and the children’s own conceptions of how it can be used. As the event evolves, a third child, five-year-old Kenan, joins the other two.

Figure 2. Limitations in physical space.

Clemens starts to write the letters from left to right but there is not enough room for him to finish his name. The conceived dimension of a literacy event in a pedagogical setting should be to command sequential writing, producing letters and words from left to right and beginning from the top of the space. When the perceived dimension of the educational space challenges the children’s sequential writing, the teacher instructs Clemens to continue above the writing. The teacher’s command indicates an ambition to support the children’s desire to write their names rather than to write their names correctly. As Clemens tries to make room for all the letters in his name, he continues to write on empty spaces regardless of the position and direction of the letters. When Clemens finally finishes writing he stands up on his feet, strikes out with his arms and shouts: ‘Daba da da, yabidi!’

When Clemens finishes his writing, the teacher makes the space available to Kenan by erasing the product of the process (Clemens’ writing) to create an empty sheet on the canvas for a new process to take place. Kenan brings his nameplate, places it on the canvas and begins to shape the letters of his name. There is not enough space to write the entire name and therefore Kenan starts from the beginning above his first letters and completes his writing. He turns around to the teacher and shouts out: ‘Look, I have written my name!’ He then turns to Leo and says, ‘Look Leo’. The teacher asks: ‘Maybe you can help Leo?’

Leo’s conception of how to use the nameplate differs from Clemens’ in that Leo uses it as a template. At first, he puts it on the canvas and draws directly on it. Then he draws the interactive pen along the sides of his name plate. He lifts the nameplate to inspect the result and notices the rectangle he has created. He seems to be disappointed and paints all over it in frustration. He inspects Kenan’s writing next to his own rectangle on the canvas. Suddenly he leans over and draws a line over Kenan’s writing. Kenan cries out ‘Hello, you painted over my name’. He turns to the teacher. ‘Teacher, Leo painted over my name’.

In the example above, it is not only limitations in the perceived dimension of the space that create worry and conflict; the social interaction between the children in the lived dimension is challenged in relation to Leo’s conception of the function of the (analog) nameplate. Leo knows what his name should look like (he has the name plate as a model) on the floor surface, but when the digital software does not correspond to his idea of how to write his name in the particular setting of the IF, his disappointment makes him react by acting out in the social dimension of the space. When Leo draws a line over Kenan’s name, Kenan becomes sad and upset and the rhythm of the space intensifies as the liveliness increases.

The literacy event on the IF evolves into a conflict. Several children are moving around the interactive floor, and the movement and noise increase. The activity is gradually intensified and when it gets too lively, the teacher’s solution is to change activities. The teacher raises his voice and announces: ‘You know what. I was thinking, maybe we need to … Clemens, shall we do some dancing instead?’. Clemens responds to the announcement by shouting out: ‘Yeah, we shall dance, we shall dance!’ The teacher tries to calm him when explaining: ‘Wait, we need to put it on first’.

Kenan continues the work of writing his name correctly. His conception of sequential writing makes him erase the writing and start over when he fails to make room for all of his letters. He begins to form the letters of his name once again, but there is not enough room this time either. Clemens sits down next to Kenan, points at his writing and shouts: ‘Wow’! He then rises to his feet and leaps over the canvas which moves back and forth. The movement causes Kenan to slip with the pen. He screams out: ‘No!’. Kenan is persistent and continues the process of writing his name and chooses the eraser function to correct his miswriting. But just in a few seconds the teacher says, ‘Kenan, now I am turning it off’. Kenan leans back and looks at the teacher. Clemens is excited to change activities and dances over the canvas and over Kenan’s letters and interrupts his writing. Suddenly the teacher turns off the projector and a white empty plastic canvas is all that is left of the former sheet that was a second ago full of letters and painting. Kenan remains sitting down looking at the plastic canvas floor. He reaches forward and pulls his hand over the space where his letters existed just a couple of seconds ago.

The intensified rhythm on the IF gets arrhythmic as it does not harmonize with the teacher’s conceptions of an orderly literacy event. It becomes discordant and makes the teacher turn off the projector and turn the ceiling lighting on. The entire space erases in an instant, and the illuminated floor surface, which the children were given the opportunity to explore, shape letters, and create their imprints on, disappears. All that remains is the white plastic carpet empty of content, letters, and the children’s expressions. It is as if the place that the children seemed to have a kind of magical attraction to, is suddenly totally dominated by the teacher’s educational command, and terminated with a keystroke, symbolically with the commander (teacher) standing in the middle of the previously ‘magical carpet’ (Figure 3).

Figure 3. The teacher ends the activity.

The example shows how the conceived space of digitalization in ECE, expressed in national plans and curriculums, are enacted and challenged in the lived space. The learning environment created with the IF-setting, both its spatial and temporal regulation, conveys the preschool’s views and expectations of digitalization in ECE. The physical and material equipment thus communicates with both the children and the teacher and regulates, limits, and/or enables behaviours and actions. The settings of the material space (eg. the size of the enlightened carpet) enable and constrain what children can produce. In the IF-setting, a relaxation of boundaries between children’s bodies and physical materiality is produced. The illuminated carpet, the remediation of the analog pens, the algorithms of the software, and the children’s movements become relationally interconnected. The lived space is shaped by and in the interplay between teacher, children, and materiality and the various mental conceptions about the educational space.

Perceiving the space as an ongoing production of different elements makes it possible to understand what constitutes it and which elements that dominate it. The teacher’s conceptions of a literacy event described and regulated by curricula, plans, and guidelines for education forces educational activities towards homogenization, which risks producing arrhythmia. Teachers produce the space out of their perception of their profession, and their understanding of education and learning is informed by policies. Meanwhile, the children are at another level producing the lived space in socio-material relations while appropriating the space, living out their literacy desirings in relation to the possibilities of the technology.

Discussion

This article asked how digitalization in ECE can be understood when seen as constituted by, and experienced through, the interactions between children’s and teacher’s conceptions, bodies and materiality when ‘made into being’ in everyday practices? The study does not focus on how digitalization is enacted as a policy being made into practice by teachers (Ball et al., 2012) but explores how digitalization is constituted in the encounter between children, teachers, technology, and policies. Complementary to earlier research presented, that has shown interest in digitalization in ECE at either micro or macro level, this study contributes with a relational both-and perspective. We argue for digitalization, to be understood as a relational process in educational settings rather than as an instrumental and deterministic implementation of technology. The results of our study show how the IF-setting as a space is realized not only with computer and projector, cables and lights, nor all this in combination with other physical materials such as floors and chairs; it is also realized with institutional documents, curriculum plans, and the ways in which children and teachers interact.

In addition to earlier literature stating the importance of separating the concept of digitalization from digitization (Melin, 2009; Rahm, 2019; Tilson et al., 2010), it is also clear from the results of this study that the analog and the digital do not stand in opposition. A digital tool or system must always be placed in an existing physical space. Instead of talking about digital technology, we might just talk about technology. This legitimizes the questioning of the dichotomy of analog-digital and helps us reconsider digitalization as relational in the production of the educational social space. Technology, whether classified as digital or analog, is not, from a modernist utilitarian perspective, something that is used by subjects. There is no dichotomy between analog and digital when children act, create and learn in the living space. The pens used by the children can be defined as neither digital nor analog. As remediated analog artefacts and digital input devices, they are both at the same time. If digital technology is seen as something that contrasts with what is seen as analog, educational changes risk to be temporary interruptions in the ordinary, as if digital spaces are produced as a filter on top of the analog spaces. Seen this way, educational ‘digital’ spaces are thus produced as a kind of digitalism promoting an approach where new digital technologies (digitization) make what we already do but do it more efficiently and rationally. The IF- system can in a certain sense be seen as producing a space that is placed on top of a physical material already existing, at least in the conceived space. On the other hand, we see in the lived relational space that it is intertwined with the already existing.

The literacy event in our study is admittedly influenced by the teacher’s readings of educational policies, but at the same time, the particular digital setting changes the pedagogical space through the negotiations taking place in the lived space as children and teacher interact with the digital system and each other. As policies do not tell what a specific practitioner should do, policy enactment needs to be understood as identifying digitalization as socio-technological processes, to explore the opportunities of these processes in relation to ECE practices. If the commands to preschool education practices get too dominant it risks controlling and suppressing children’s literacy desirings (Kuby & Gutshall, 2015). Children then become objects of educational commands based on decontextualized policies. In fact, one of the main purposes described in policy for digitalization in education is the aim for the children to ‘become’ democratic citizens rather than to acknowledge children as ‘being’ democratic citizens. Such writings postpones children’s rights, and do not acknowledge children as subjects of educational development.

In contrary, acknowledging children’s literacy desirings (Kuby & Gutshall, 2016), and studying children’s interactions with digital technology in different practices (Crescenzi et al., 2014; Hermansson, 2017; Hermansson & Olin-Scheller, 2019; Kjällander & Moinian, 2014; Petersen, 2015) is one way to contextualize policy and explore what digitalization can be, in order to produce educational spaces in new ways. If policy writers and educators of educational spaces do not regard children as co-creators with explorational ways to create new understandings of literacy, instrumental understandings (Cöster & Westelius, 2016) risk to reduce technological development to digitization, and the potentialities of digitalization as transformations of society (Rahm, 2019) are lost. However, in the production of the educational space (in the triad of conceived, perceived, and lived dimensions) new emergent spaces may be produced as when the children themselves, using their repertoire of expressions with broad hand movements, spinning in word documents, and living in socio-material relations, suggesting that writing is dancing.

Despite a strong indication in the technological determinism discours saying that digital technology will bring a radical change to daily ECE practices (cf. Cuban & Jandrić, 2015), it does not seem to transform teachers’ choice of content or teaching strategies (Hermansson & Olin-Scheller, 2022). By rethinking digitalization in Swedish ECE we argue for the necessity to acknowledge the intertwined and ongoing relationship between the opening (e.g. addressing children’s lived experiences) and the closing (e.g. turn taking or when the IF is turned off) of multiple desirings and commands.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.