Electronic and Printed Books with and Without Adult Support as Sustaining Emergent Literacy

Abstract

Emergent literacy (EL) enhancement has been the goal of numerous educational programs for years, especially for children from low socioeconomic statuses (LSES) (Snow, 1994; Whitehurst, Zevebergen, Crone, Schultz, Velting, & Fischel, 1999). During the past decade, technology software, including electronic books (e-books), have become incorporated within this agenda. One of the common activities in children's education in the Western world in mainstream families is that adults read storybooks to children constantly from a very young age (DeBruin-Parecki, 1999). Studies of the last 4 decades have shown how powerful this activity is, especially for the child's oral language, with less clear results regarding emergent or early literacy (Stahl, 2003; van Kleeck, 2003; Whitehurst et al., 1999). The proposed study examined how e-books compare with traditional printed books in the support of LSES children's EL with and without adult assistance.

Benefits and Pitfalls of Multimedia and Interactive Features in Technology-Enhanced Storybooks

“…We also excluded technology-enhanced interventions focusing on expository texts ( Peracchio, 1992 ; Silverman & Hines, 2009 ), programs that targeted explicit literacy training ( Penuel et al, 2012 ), or stories with only written text ( Doty, Popplewell, & Byers, 2001 ; Lewin, 2000 ; Miller, Blackstock, & Miller, 1994 ; Neuman, 1992 ) or sign language ( Gentry, Chinn, & Moulton, 2004 ; Wang & Paul, 2011 ). Additionally, we excluded studies that overlapped with other studies ( Choat & Griffin, 1986 ; Greenfield & Beagles-Roos, 1988 ; Reissner, 1996 ; Vibbert & Meringoff, 1981 ), presented data already included in another study ( Korat, Segal-Drori, & Klein, 2009 ), or presented data for children and adults together ( Pratt & MacKenzie-Keaing, 1985 ).…”

Can the computer replace the adult for storybook reading? A meta-analysis on the effects of multimedia stories as compared to sharing print stories with an adult

“…We disregarded multimedia interventions focusing on expository texts (e.g., Silverman and Hines, 2009 ), stories with sign language (e.g., Wang and Paul, 2011 ) or without oral narration (e.g., Doty et al, 2001 ). We also excluded studies without any outcome measures (e.g., Reissner, 1996 ), and studies presenting the same data as in a study already included (Korat et al, 2009 ), or data only for a group of children and adults together (Pratt and MacKenzie-Keaing, 1985 ). Moreover, we excluded studies utilizing the support of an adult in the multimedia story condition (e.g., Korat et al, 2013 ) in order to assess whether adult support in traditional story sharing activities is more beneficial than the scaffolding that multimedia elements provide.…”

A Vygotskian perspective on parent–child talk during iPad story sharing

“…Applications like these often ‘blend’ the affordances of oral and book‐based story sharing, as they allow users to edit the content orally (i.e., users can add their own recordings to the story) but also have similar features to traditional books in terms of their book‐size format and textual and visual representation (Kucirkova, Messer, Sheehy, & Flewitt, ). Despite the apparent convergence of modes in iPad stories and new technologies, most research has remained focused on a dichotomous comparison of paper‐based versus oral story sharing (e.g., Farrant & Zubrick, , Fivush , ) or electronic versus paper‐based books (e.g., Korat, Segal‐Drori, & Klien, ; Shamir, Korat, & Fellah, ). To date, there is very little theorised documentation of parent–child interactions supported by new interactive technologies such as book‐making iPad apps.…”