Through an action research-inspired methodology this project seeks to explore the everyday pedagogical practices on digitalised media-play in a Danish kindergarten setting. Through in-depth analysis of the practices of a kindergarten situated in the small town of Bording, Denmark, we explore what both formative, cultivative and cultural learning aspects for children aged 3-6 may be extracted from media-pedagogical practices. This project takes its inspiration on the aspects of life formation through the traditional German philosophical idea of bildung (Ensslin & Goorimoorthee, 2018).
The Danish take on childcare pedagogy for children aged 0-6, is undergoing perceptible changes due to the recent completion (July 2018) of the reform on the enhanced educational curriculum for day-care institutions. The recent reform emphasizes themes like children’s perspectives, learning environments, play, digitalisation and life formation and incites all Danish institutions to construct a pedagogical setting around these themes. In connection to the idea of cultivation and life formation, the educational curriculum emphasises that the pedagogical practices concerning these themes should be framed by whatever seems meaningful and challenging for the child, whilst also considering how the practices help the child in both grasping, navigating and acting in a global and digitalised world (The Ministry for Children, Education and Equality, 2016). In total the word digitalisationis found six times throughout the rather short text of the reform. In the parts concerning children’s learning it is emphasised, that children learn through exploring through their body and their senses, by experimenting with all sorts of materials and by making new discoveries themselves. Through this, learning by experimenting with digitalisation and digital media is mentioned in the same sentences as learning through nature and natural phenomena and learning about culture and sustainability. In creating a high-quality learning environment in Danish kindergartens, the reform highlights the presence of digital media, like iPads or programmable robots, as equally important as other structural parameters like the physical surroundings, staffing, the educational levels of the staff and the number of children in each institution. Furthermore, the reform underlines the importance of a didactical planned pedagogy that frames diversity and allows for a learning environment that develops the child’s ability in mastering and expressing oneself through the use of digital media in an independent, authentic and curious way (The Ministry for Children, Education and Equality, 2016). Through all this we learn how notions of self-cultivation, formation and cultural learning through media play and experimenting with digital media, be they iPads, coding toys or something else, are set to be an inevitable part of the everyday practice of any day-care institution in Denmark in the near future.
For many children, young people and adults in western countries today, lots of time and devotion is put into playing with media and digital worlds like the ones found in video games. The time, thought and energy that people spend in these digital arenas can be viewed as passive and simply unchallenging or it can be viewed as learning, developing and sparking social transformation (Gee, 2013: 169). Through this project we seek to further explore this view and argue how aspects of life formation might as well happen simultaneously with the development of concrete skills by children investing time in media-play by for example practicing and perfecting videos game skills whilst negotiating taking turns playing, game rules etc. with their peers at the same time. Playing with media together as a group develop synchronized intelligences made up by individuals with each single individual representing only a small part of the community’s collective knowledge and acquaintance, which we claim spark social transformation, life formation and cultivation (Gee, 2013).
