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I’m delighted to say that my joint publication with Professor Jackie Marsh, ‘Digital Literacies in Early Childhood’ has been published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education.

As anyone involved in teaching (or, indeed, researching) in HE is well aware, the proliferation of information readily accessible online presents a serious challenge to quality research. The Oxford Research Encyclopedias draw on expert authors to provide readers with a reliable understanding of an unfamiliar topic. Each article is peer-reviewed in line with the rigorous quality standards associated with Oxford publications, but currently freely available online. Tim Allen, Acquisitions Editor for Oxford University Press, Education discusses the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education HERE.

The study of digital literacies in early childhood (0–8 years) is an emergent and fast-growing area of scholarship. Young children’s communicative practices are today more complex and diverse in scope than ever before, encompassing both “traditional” reading and writing and a growing range of “new” communicative competencies across multiple digital media contexts. Scholars are increasingly interested in children’s literacy practices outside traditional print-based texts, and the theory of multimodality helps them to understand children’s communicative practices in relation to a range of modes, including those present in digital technology.