Digitalization of daycare institutions: Possibilities and limitations for intergenerational practice

The digitalization of Danish daycare institutions is not only affecting the ways staff is documenting and reporting on its pedagogical work. It also appears to be redefining what pedagogical work itself is about, given the drastic increase in deployment of digital (mobile) media devices in the intergenerational interaction with as well as the intragenerational interaction among daycare children. To some extent, digital media usage, foremost of tablet computers, has seen a discursive and material normalization across a number Danish daycare institutions before at all clarifying how it could be rendered meaningful for the respective pedagogical practice.
Against this background, the presentation will in particular explore what this digitalization process may entail for the aim of promoting reciprocal intergenerational communication and practice. It draws on recent work in childhood geography as well as on situated sociomaterial approaches to critical psychological practice research in order to inquire into possible specificities of digital media device usage: How is this usage similar to and different from interacting via other material-communicative devices in a pedagogical practice? How do digital media devices affect the relational spatiality of situated intergenerational communication and practice? The presentation will build on preliminary findings from an ethnographically inspired empirical pilot study in a daycare institution. It aims at prototyping a conceptual framework which assists in purposefully tackling the above questions through implementing reciprocal intergenerational communication and practice as a tool of collaborative inquiry and analysis.