Call for papers
Children’s everyday life and technology: technological practices and methodological discussions
Technologies are part of children’s everyday life. They have altered how children engage with their physical and social surroundings. This development has been both praised and cursed. While being ‘plugged in’ is often discussed as a major health and wellbeing threat due to the increase of cyber bullying, sexual abuse and more time engaged in sedentary activities, other studies bemoan children’s loss of creativity, face-to-face contact and environmental literacy. In contrast, technologies can also enrich children’s lives by overcoming physical, socio-economic or cultural barriers. Children can maintain relationships with friends and family members located in different cities or overseas, explore virtual landscapes with children from different backgrounds around the world or positively change disabled children’s learning and communication experience. Some of these discussions have been lately connected to a critical engagement with ‘digital citizenship’ and inequalities in access.
Technologies are also used as research tools for gaining new insights in children’s mundane everyday life. Studies followed children with a GPS tracker, videoed children’s way to school, used facebook as a discussion forum and phones to respond to daily surveys. All in all, opportunities to make use of quickly changing technologies in research projects as well as for researching children’s technological practices are diverse.
This session aims to bring researchers together who are interested in children’s daily engagement with technologies and/or the use of technologies in research projects for unpacking children’s mundane everyday life in different contexts and places.
Papers can focus on, but are not limited to the following themes:
- Children’s place and meaning making through, with and against technologies
- Children’s (changing) everyday engagement with technologies or their fluid movement between virtual or real worlds
- Theoretical lenses available for thinking about children’s everyday life and technology
- Reduction or increase of social and physical disadvantages due to (in)accessibility of technology (sedentary lives, easier participation on society, …)
- Critical and ethical reflections on the use of technologies in research projects
Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words by 7th March to Christina.ergler@otago.ac.nz.
Acceptance of the papers will be confirmed by email and they will be included in the conference programme (http://www.cscy.group.shef.