Preschoolers’ “Animation” of Computer Games

Abstract

Research on preschool children's computer gaming often focuses on interview data or parental reports, leaving open the examination of children's actual game activity. This study explores how preschool children actually engage in gaming and their degrees of play immersion. Classroom observations of Swedish preschool children's gaming revealed their involvement in computer games took the forms of responding to characters through instructed actions, recycling the game characters' talk, and engaging in dialogues with the game characters as if they were “real.” These results are discussed in relation to previous research on children’s play, and their implications for future research and educational policy.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to thank the children and the preschool teachers who generously agreed to participate in the study.

Notes

¹ In Sweden most preschool teams consist of staff from two different professions, preschool teachers and child minders. The preschool teachers receive three and a half years of university education, and the child minders have a secondary school degree. The teachers hold the primary responsibility in carrying out the educational practice, even if the child minders generally do the same work.

² The term “edutainment” refers to a entertainment and learning (Ito, 2009).