What Can Reading and Games Tell Us about Today's Children?

Abstract

The present article treats changes in the learning environment of contemporary children as exacerbation of the “childhood crisis.” We believe that new research in the field of developmental psychology is required in order to apply cultural-historical theory to new data. The article presents two studies: one of them considers a preschool game based on contemporary cartoon plots, and the other considers how adolescents (eighth- to tenth-graders) read J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books. The preschool study shows that the game has developmental potential and that its plots reproduce complex human relations. The Harry Potter study shows that adolescents are attracted to bold and heroic stories with ambiguous and unknown outcomes.

Notes

English translation © 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text © 2013 “Voprosy obrazovaniia.” “Chto mogut rasskazat’ o sovremennykh detiakh ikh chtenie i igry,” Voprosy obrazovaniia, 2013, no. 4, pp. 283–99. Katerina Polivanova (doctor of sciences, psychology) is a professor at the Institute of Education, National Research University Higher School of Economics. Email: [email protected]. Elena Sazonova is a graduate student at the Psychological Institute, Russian Academy of Education. Email: [email protected]. Marta Shakarova (candidate of sciences, psychology) is a researcher for the recruiting company Beagle Group. Email: [email protected]. Translated by Peter Golub. Translation reprinted from Russian Education and Society, vol. 57, no. 7. doi:10.1080/10609393.2015.1096150.

^1. Today a child is faced with a wide variety of cultural texts, both complex and simple. Our choice of text was determined by the research objectives and not assumptions about the quality of the product.

^2. Quidditch is a game played on a flying broom by characters in Harry Potter.