Technologically Constructed Childhoods: Moving beyond a Reproductive to a Productive and Critical View of Curriculum Development

Abstract

MANY COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD have in place national early childhood curriculum documents for supporting educators, including Australia. It is timely for the field of early childhood education to consider the contemporary experiences of children from the twenty-first century in relation to how early childhood curriculum is framed. For instance, a technology-constructed childhood through everyday life-support technologies (in real use or through play) or a technologically driven play world that is more imagined than real (e.g. monster trucks, Xbox games) has implications for how curriculum development may be conceptualised. This paper draws on cultural-historical theory, in particular the work of Elkonin (2005), to examine how children's everyday lives are shaped over time by the economic imperatives and social conditions which produce technologies to support families and communities. Through a discussion of an empirical study of children's everyday lives, this paper presents a model to explain the technological diversity found across families and through this examines how curriculum may need to be re-conceptualised to take account of an emerging technologically constructed childhood.