An analysis of mother-child interactions during an iPad activity

Abstract

Positive parent-child interactions play an important role in fostering the development of pre-schoolers’ knowledge and understandings of their world. Due to the relatively recent launch of touch screen tablets (e.g., iPads) little is known about how parents scaffold their children’s learning with tablets. A mother and her two young children were observed interacting during a joint iPad activity and their verbal utterances were recorded and analysed. A coding system was designed to measure cognitive, affective, and technical scaffolding (CATs) strategies the mother used to support her children’s interactions with a literacy app. The findings showed the mother made more utterances than each of the children. The mother used cognitive scaffolding most frequently, affective scaffolding second most frequently, and technical scaffolding least frequently. Maternal scaffolding provided to young children may be important to support early learning with iPads and other touch screen devices. Further research is needed using a larger participant sample to validate the CATs coding system and to examine the different ways that parents provide cognitive, affective, and technical scaffolding to their children.