The digital media play an increasingly pervasive and influential role in children’s lives (Rideout & VJR Consulting, 2011). However, whilst there has been extensive investigation into the media use of this age--‐group in the USA and western Europe, there has been little research on the media use of children under the age of 6 in Taiwan. Therefore, Phase 1 of the study began by conducting an online survey (n=535) in order to situate the work undertaken in Phase 2. The results showed that TV dominates the media use of young Taiwanese children. Opinions differ regarding the effects of TV viewing on young children. Some child development specialists warn of the dangers of too much viewing, especially for infants (Christakis, 2008). However, more programmes are designed specifically for young children and many aim to support their learning. Evidence has shown that TV can have a positive impact on learning (Wright, Huston, Scantlin, & Kotler, 2001). The key issue is the extent to which children engage with the programme. The literature into children’s learning from media content indicates that the child’s engagement with the programme is strongly related to their understanding of the programme content (Calvert, Strong, Jacobs, & Conger, 2007). However, little is known about how parents can support their child’s engagement by co--‐viewing children’s TV programmes with them. Therefore, Phase 2 of the study aimed to explore in--‐depth this particular link between parental scaffolding and child engagement. Adopting a social constructive paradigm and using case study methodology, the researcher gathered video recordings of thirteen parent/child dyads of 3--‐ to 5--‐year--‐olds co--‐viewing the same episodes of two animated educational television programmes in natural conditions. In the analyses, measures of children’s engagement and thematic coding of the scaffolding behaviour of the parent were used to deductively and inductively analyse video recordings of the home observations. The findings indicated that there is a positive association between the child’s engagement and the level of parental scaffolding. It is suggested that dissemination of the findings from this study could help parents to understand and appreciate the value of parent--‐child co--‐viewing of educational children’s television programmes and promote children’s learning from the programmes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:641050 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Wang, Min-Hsuan |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10021637/ |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds