Young children, storymaking and multimodal digital texts: a case study exploring early literacy development in Chinese and Australian family contexts

Abstract

The emergence of new technologies provide opportunities for children to create multimodal digital stories. The important roles that parents play in supporting children’s digital literacy development were acknowledged in previous studies. However, there is still a need to extend research into children’s digital storymaking, particularly involving parents from different cultural backgrounds. This inquiry was conducted as a multi-site case study, and multiple methods were applied to collect multimodal data. This inquiry was conducted in China and Australia, exploring the literacy practices of 4-5-year-old children when using iPads to create digital stories in family contexts, as well as their parents' strategy use in supporting children's digital storymaking. The findings from this inquiry reveal children's literacy practices during digital storymaking. Children invited parental interaction, used multiple resources for storymaking, and demonstrated their agency in the process. Parental support and guidance were generated for four main purposes, including acknowledgment, seeking clarification, extension and technical/knowledge support. The strategies that parents used, encompassing comments, descriptions, interpretations, questions and suggestions, were applied to support each purpose.This inquiry acknowledged children's agency as they creatively and purposefully utilized multimodal resources to make meaning. They also incorporate imagination and life experiences to create stories on various topics, reflecting their special cultural backgrounds. The parents played significant roles in offering flexible and personalised guidance to extend children's stories, highlighting the importance of adopting contextualised strategies for each child.