This Call addresses all members of the ELINET Association and external experts to contribute to our Annual Topic 2020-2021: Enhancing digital literacy skills in early and primary years’ education. You can download this call here. We also kindly ask you also to spread this call within your regional and national networks
We are looking for co-authors who will contribute to the two main outcomes of our project:

1. European Framework of good practice in enhancing digital literacy skills in early and primary years’ education”
2. European policy paper as a short summary of the Framework (similar to ELINET’s European Literacy Declaration), both addressing policymakers, practitioners and other stakeholders in this field.

Both papers shall contain research-based recommendations for educating pre-school and primary school children to become digitally literate citizens.

Parallel to this conceptual work we are looking for good practice examples (in a separate call), which we will review and analyse and in case of approval publish on our website.
Furthermore, we will integrate the main findings of this practice research in our framework according to ELINET’s top-down and bottom-up approach of exchanging research and practice.

Finally, we plan to publicly present both papers and selected examples of good practice during the 22^nd European Literacy Conference in July 2021 in Dublin.

If you want to contribute to the two papers, please address the following ELINET contact persons responsible for different chapters

(DEADLINE: 31.8.2020)

Overall coordinator: Renate Valtin

Age group 0 – 3 years: Aydin Durgunoglu

Age group 3 – 6 years: Eufimia Tafa

Age group 6 – 10 years: Renate Valtin and Tiziana Mascia

Background

Digital media are now the norm for everyday literacy practices – the rise and spread of digital technologies have significantly altered what it means to be literate in the 21^st century, with profoundly enabling (or disabling) implications for interpersonal, community and individual communication.
The inclusion of digital technologies is seen as an imperative for children’s later learning and participation in an ever-changing digital world. However, despite some attempts, there is an absence of a commonly agreed competence framework for digital literacy in the early years and a lack of understanding of what it should mean to be digitally-literate. To address these gaps, the ELINET Association decided to work on this topic in a joint bi-annual project 2020-2021 and to continue this work for secondary students and adolescents in the future.

Our concept of digital literacy

In the absence of a commonly agreed competence framework of digital literacy of children, we adopt a “working definition” which will be refined later: The ultimate goal of digital literacy is for children to locate, comprehend, integrate, create and use information from multiple sources (online texts, videos, audio, images, interactive graphics,…) as well as to communicate and express effectively in various modalities at home and at school (oral, paper, visual, digital).

Focus

We are looking for research studies and good practice examples from three areas:

First: concerning the effectiveness of the digital tools used by educators and caregivers to develop children’s language and literacy proficiencies across different modalities.  In childhood, digital tools can be helpful in fostering basic language skills, basic reading skills (“learning to read”) and reading for comprehension (“reading to learn”). In addition, we want good practice examples concerning writing (learning to write and create information by writing) and using digital devices for sharing information.

 Second: concerning competencies specific to the digital media (creating and using the hardware and software), for instance, using digital devices as a medium for coding and programming, or a “playground” for learning a variety of creative digital-based skills.

 Third: concerning additional skills such as locating, comprehending and integrating information distributed across sources and formats, critically evaluating the reliability and validity of the available information, and adjusting comprehension and expression strategies according to the different types of interactions that are required (for example social media posts versus longer, deeper academic content).

The structure of the framework of good practice

We will use the same structure in all chapters:

1. First we will give the definition of the educational aim, grounded in the digital literacy framework,
2. then we will summarize the current state of knowledge and identify research gaps and
3. finally we will offer recommendations for, and features of, good practice. These recommendations should be derived both from the research and the good practice examples we will collect.

These are the topics we have in mind for the different age groups; however, they might be modified during our work process:

Age group 0 – 3 years (toddlers)

Coordinator: Aydin Durgunoglu

●      Linguistic foundations of literacy (learning the oral language of the community, all aspects, not just vocabulary which is incredibly important, but also syntax, morphology, communication strategies, understanding another person and expressing oneself)

●      Pre-literacy, awareness of and interactions with written material in any modality; the differences and connections of print to visual and auditory material.

Age group 3 – 6 years (pre-primary years)

Coordinator: Eufimia Tafa

●      Digital tools for fostering emergent literacy such as fostering oral language skills, listening and narrative skills, writing skills, metalinguistic skills such as phonological and phonemic awareness.

●      Use of digital tools (devices/apps) as a “playground” for learning a variety of creative digital-based skills: for instance, producing graphic art story books and digital stories, animation, introduction to coding, programing Lego robots, composing musical pieces.           

Age group 6 – 10 years (first years of primary school)

Coordinators: Renate Valtin and Tiziana Mascia

●      Fostering basic reading skills: grapheme-phoneme-relations, morphemes, decoding, fluency, comprehension (“learning to read”)

●      Fostering high level reading skills:  learning and using metacognitive strategies of monitoring, rehearsal, elaboration, critical and creative thinking regarding online and print content (“reading to learn”)

●      Fostering the effective use of tools and strategies for reading online: best use of search engines, choosing the right search words to locate information, to get the main idea, to skim and scan, learning how to evaluate information in searches (detect biases and attempts to influence opinions or consumption, to recognize fake-news) and how to synthesize information of different sources

●      Fostering writing and communication skills  

●      Using digital devices to foster reading for pleasure

●      Use of digital devices as a medium for coding and programming, a “playground” for learning and developing a variety of creative digital-based skills.