Interactive multimodal narrative as an approach to developing emergent literacy in early childhood education

Abstract

At present, the Portuguese education system promotes the development of new literacies in all education levels in response to new requirements of the digital world which imply changes in children’s education. In fact, reading and writing are no longer limited exclusively to books, rather they are associated with diversified digital media integrating text, sound, image, and video. In this context, we developed an exploratory study in a kindergarten with the children and their family members. Data were collected through participant observation, children conversational interviews, and digital narratives produced by children. Data analysis is based on content analysis with NVivo software support. The emergence of literacy is evident in verbal interactions in peer-group work, in contact with the written text, in “writing” in various media, and in sharing knowledge, discoveries, and digital narratives produced in an online community http://janelajardim.ning.com). This paper presents: (1) a systematic literature review in the field of digital narrative and emergent literacy; (2) the description of children’s activities concerning interactive multimodal narrative; (3) the results of this work; and (4) the conclusion about contribution of multimodal narratives to the emergence of reading, writing, and digital skills.