FACULTY OF EDUCATION

DEPARTMENT OF EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION

Assignment No SPECIAL ASSIGNMENT

Name ELESTINA SHAMUDZARIRA

Programme BACHELOR OF EDUCATION IN EARLY CHILDHOOD

Module title & Code ASSESSMENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN (BEE 3204)

Tutor/Lecturer MR MAHOSO

Due Date 6/07/2020

Student no 01171898312

QUESTION

Discuss any five (5) factors that should be considered in the assessment of ECD children.

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Contemporary young children are part of the generation of digital natives (Fleer, 2011;
Prensky, 2001a, 2001b). Young children in this study refer to children aging from 0 to 8
years (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). They live in a world enveloped by technologies and use
technologies in their daily life (Hague & Payton, 2010; Plowman, Stevenson, Stephen, &
McPake, 2012). Many countries recognize the increasing role of technology in children’s
lives. They emphasize the development of technology-integrated curricula that are
developmentally appropriate for young children and that help to bridge young children’s
digital experiences at home and in school (Mawson, 2003; McKenney & Voogt, 2009;
Plowman, Stevenson, McPake, Stephen, & Adey, 2011). Because of the rapid development of
technologies, they have changed children’s lives and ways of learning, particularly in the past
ten years. Researchers have urged a rethinking of the roles of technology in young children’s
development and consequently the development of learning theories and curricula that meet
the needs of contemporary children (Fleer, 2011; Yelland, 2011). Although many researchers
and educators have advocated for the importance of young children’s learning with
technology and devoted themselves to investigating and implementing technology-related
practices, the influence of young children’s use of technologies on their development is still
controversial. Some researchers believe that the use of technologies may impede these
children’s social, emotional, physical, and cognitive development (e.g., Armstrong &
Casement, 2000; Cordes & Miller, 2000), while others support the use of technologies in
improving young children’s development in the aforementioned domains (e.g., Clements &
Sarama, 2003; Plowman & McPake, 2013; Plowman & Stephen, 2003; Yelland, 2011). Such
discussion surrounds one question about which early childhood educators have been
concerned: are the technology-related practices developmentally appropriate for young
children (Radich, 2013)? In terms of developmentally appropriate practices, knowledgeable
adults play important roles in scaffolding young children’s learning within the zone of
proximal development (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997; Vygotsky, 1978). Researchers are thus
concerned with the learning effect on children between adult-facilitated and technology-
assisted learning. For example, de Jong and Bus (2004) conducted a study to compare
children’s learning outcomes after they listened to adults’ storybook reading and read e-books
on their own. Another example of developmental appropriate practice is that children learn
abstract concepts through manipulating concrete objects (Dunn, 2001; Hsin, 2012).
Researchers have thus debated the effects of manipulating physical materials and virtual
materials on children’s learning of science or mathematic concepts (Clements & Sarama,
2003; Zacharia, Loizou, & Papaevripidou, 2012). Moreover, promoting the development of

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social skills is considered one of the important developmentally appropriate practices for
young children (Bredekamp & Copple, 1997). Some researchers have argued that technology
may impede young children’s social skills because children develop these skills through in-
person interaction, and their use of various technologies keeps them from such interaction
(Armstrong & Casement, 2000). In contrast, some researchers have indicated that technology
in fact promotes children’s social development in various ways (Infante et al., 2010).
Researchers on both sides argue that the practices they advocate are developmentally
appropriate. However, such binary discussion can lead researchers and educators to overlook
the complex relationships between children’s use of technology and their learning. We
therefore aim to provide a typology for effectively conceptualizing the interplay among
critical factors that influence children’s learning with technology. Another concern which
motivated our examination of the relationships between technology use and children’s
learning is a lack of a complete, in-depth picture of the past ten years that shows (a) how
technologies play a role in children’s learning across the aforementioned four developmental
domains, and (b) what research themes and methods researchers have focused on. Although
researchers have debated on and raised the importance of this topic for the past ten years,
there has been little attention given to a systematic literature review of the empirical studies
that have been conducted to understand young children’s learning with technology in
different developmental aspects. Also, an overview of the research purposes and methods of
these empirical studies is needed. A more complete picture of this topic would encourage
researchers to fill the research gaps and to address issues that have not been fully elaborated
or supported with evidence. It would also consequently support the development of
technology-integrated curricula. Researchers have paid attention to not only how
technologies affect young children’s learning across domains, but also how young children
learn to use a variety of technologies, that is, the development of digital literacy. In
comparison with the traditional view of literacy, such new forms of literacy emphasize
children’s abilities to comprehend and create multimodal digital texts in order to
communicate with texts or others (Bawden, 2008; Lankshear & Knobel, 2008). There has
been an emergent research trend in digital literacy. However, how preschoolers and
kindergarteners develop their digital literacy and how they enact their roles as creators rather
than consumers (Taylor, 1980) of technologies have, as yet, been understudied. In response to
the aforementioned needs, we have conducted a systematic literature review and initiated an
evidencebased discussion on how technologies influence young children’s learning. We

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asked the following research questions:  How do technologies influence young children’s
learning across different developmental domains?  What are the purposes and methods
focused on by researchers when conducting studies of this topic?  What are the key factors
that influence children’s learning with technology?

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