A Typology for Observing Children's Engagement with eBooks at Preschool

Abstract

This research reports a two-phase descriptive study of young children’s engagement with ebooks conducted in Head Start classrooms. Phase 1 focused on the development of a typology as an analytic framework for observing engagement with ebooks in different formats (shared book; independent book browsing) and across devices (stationary touch screen; handhelds). Converging extant research categories with videotaped observations of ebook reading from classroom samples (n=12 children), a typology was derived using qualitative analytic procedures. It consisted of three categories (control, multisensory behaviors, communication) and 11 salient behaviors of children’s engagement with ebooks. Phase 2 applied the typology to a comparable classroom sample (n=24 children) to obtain descriptive observations of children’s engagement with ebooks in teacher-led ebook reading at the touch screen and child-led ebook browsing/reading with handheld devices (iPad; iPod). Potential influences of behavioral regulation levels on children’s engagement with ebooks were also explored. Results supported the typology as a fairly reliable and manageable framework for analytic purposes of description and enumeration, yielding descriptive evidence of children’s engagement with ebooks in the