New literacies in early childhood literacy research: a review of research

Abstract

Against the background of Michael Kamil and Sam Intrator’s landmark reviews of research about new technologies and literacy development, this article maps recent research concerned specifically with the 0–8 years age group. Drawing on databases of research conducted in North America, Britain and Australasia, it affirms that the early childhood dimension is even more radically under-researched than other age ranges with respect to new technologies and literacy development. The authors develop an analytic framework comprising four quadrants to categorize the various studies conducted in the early childhood age range, and assign these to their appropriate quadrants. This reveals a lopsided distribution of the meagre corpus of studies available. The article provides a map of the field against which early childhood educators can judge ‘at a glance’ how far their personal areas of interest are served by existing research. It simultaneously pinpoints areas where new research is needed to fill important gaps.