Let me Count the Ways. Analysing the Relationship between the Learner and Everyday Technology in Early Childhood

The first part of this paper outlines four ways in which the relationship between the learner and everyday technology might be analysed, using early childhood studies as examples. The four different individual-technology relationships are described as: affording, anchoring, distributing or appropriating. They are associated with four different learning outcomes: skills and problem-solving strategies, working theories or schemas, personal style and abilities, and membership of a learning community. Each succeeding example describes an increasingly complex model of the relationship between a learner and everyday technology that departs from a focus on the individual as the site for learning. The second part of the paper then sets out a fifth example in which the relationship is analysed as a combination of all four processes: affording, anchoring, distributing and appropriating. In this fifth example the learning outcomes are described as learning narratives (a combination of learning dispositions).