Children's Development and Technology

Children use a range of digital technologies in their day-to-day lives. Relatively little is known about how these technologies can impact their development and learning, and stakeholders (such as families and educators) have varied questions and concerns about this.

In this research stream, we are asking stakeholders to share their questions about digital technology and young children, as well as exploring how well designed children’s apps are to support learning.

To do this, we are conducting a Priority Setting Partnership called Kids & Tech Questions following the model of the James Lind Alliance used in medical field. The project will include two surveys with families and educators of preschool and primary school children aged 2 to 11 years, to provide uncertainties and rank their importance; discussions with primary school aged children about their ideas and concerns; a check of the research literature to verify which questions have been adequately addressed by previous research; and a final workshop to create a top priorities list.

We are also performing a systematic analysis of a sample of commercially available educational apps for children. This will highlight relative strengths and challenges of apps with regard to pedagogical features identified in the research literature, and seek to identify app store information which predicts the pedagogical quality of the apps.