Aesthetic aspects and photographic opportunities in young children´s use of digital camera
2016 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
This presentation describes a study that is exploring young children as camera users in preschool. The purpose is to investigate what characterizes their photographic and digital practice if they get access to digital cameras without the guidance or the supervisions from teachers. What are their interests, and their focus? Do they show aesthetic preferences?
When teachers photograph children in preschool it is often based in a documentary intention (Alnervik, 2013; Svenning, 2011). By taking the theoretical point of entry with new materialism and in particular together with Karen Barad (2003, 2007, 2010) and her agential realism, I understand the children's use of digital cameras as intra-active, mutual events. The study is conducted as a qualitative study with an ethnographic approach where children and researcher take part in the production of research material in two different preschool contexts.
Both parents and children have approved to take part in the study, and the chosen theoretical framework offers ethical considerations throughout the whole research process (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). Participating children have been asked during the study if their participation in the production of materials remains unchanged.
Children do not use cameras in the same way as adults in preschool; they use them in many different ways and with other and new strategies. They play with both photography and photographs and they develop knowledge about a democratic voice in relation to photography.The results that is presented and discussed here are preliminary and exploratory and they are based on empirical data from an on going study.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2016.
Keywords [en]
photography, documentation, digital camera, new materialism, young children
National Category
Educational Sciences
Research subject
Innovative Learning
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:hig:diva-23024OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hig-23024DiVA, id: diva2:1055943
Conference
26th EECERA Annual Conference 'Happiness, relationships, emtions and deep level learning', 31 August – 3 September 2016, Dublin, Ireland
2016-12-132016-12-132022-09-19Bibliographically approved