Social Media Web 2.0 Tools Adoption in Language and Literacy Development in Early Years: A Scoping Review
Abstract
:1. Introduction
1.1. Digital Technology in ECE
1.2. Social Media Web 2.0 Tools in ECE
1.3. Social Media in Language and Literacy Development in ECE
1.4. Research Objectives and Questions
2. Methods
2.1. Information Sources and Search Strategies
2.2. Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria
2.3. Study Selection
2.4. Analysis
3. Results
3.1. What Social Media Tools Were Used to Support Language and Literacy Development in ECE?
3.2. How Were Social Media Tools Used to Support Language and Literacy Development in ECE?
3.3. What Were the Effects of Using Social Media Tools on Language and Literacy Development in ECE?
3.4. What Were the Research Methods Used in Studies That Examined the Implementation of Social Media Tools in Language and Literacy Development in ECE?
4. Discussion
4.1. Limitations and Contributions
4.2. Future Research Direction
4.3. Implications for Policy and Practice
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Criterion | Inclusion | Exclusion |
---|---|---|
Age of participants or children taught by the participating teachers or children in the participating families | Age range of 3–8 years old, or children attending preschool to 3rd year in primary school if age is not reported | Children in other age range or grade range |
Mental and physical fitness | Children who are mentally and physically fit | Children who are not mentally or physically fit |
Literature focus | Using social media tools to support language and literacy development, with evidence on the impact of such practices on children’s language and literacy development | Studies not involving social media tools and studies that did not explicitly explain how social media tools were used for language and literacy development, and studies without evidence on the impact of such practices on children’s language and literacy development |
Article type | Full-text, empirical research from peer-reviewed journals | Articles that are not empirical research and articles that are not from peer-reviewed journals |
Language | English | Non-English |
Publication Date | 1 January 2012 to 31 August 2022 | Before 1 January 2012 |
Author (Year) | Research Aims | Design | Instruments | Participants | Country | Target Language | Setting |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Dore et al. (2021) [52] | To assess the feasibility, social validity, and preliminary impacts of a virtual summer kindergarten readiness program during the pandemic | Quasi-experimental: pretest and posttest design, no control group | Child assessment | A total of 91 caregivers and their preschool-aged children with an average age of 63 months (SD = 4, min = 53, max = 72). Overall, 73% of the participants spoke English at home, while 27% of the participants were English language learners | USA | English | School |
Ellison & Drew (2020) [53] | To examine whether and how digital play via sandbox games can support creativity in boys’ writing | Case study | Focus group interview and evaluation of student writing samples | A total of 12 Year 3 boys in one classroom undertook the intervention; 8 participated in interviews and 6 agreed to have their written work be analyzed | UK | English | School |
Eubanks et al. (2018) [54] | To explore the effect of a technology integrated 21st century writing workshop on the ability and attitude towards writing of children enrolled in a Chinese language immerision program | Mixed-methods | Observation, pre-survey, post-survey, audio-visual materials collection | 24 second-grade students (7–8 year-olds, 7 boys, 17 girls) enrolled in a Mandarin Chinese program in Colorado. Most participants are non-native Chinese speakers; only one child was a Chinese heritage speaker because her parents spoke Chinese at home | USA | Chinese | School |
Gaudreau et al. (2020) [62] | To compare the effects of dialogic reading over video chat and more traditional forms of book reading, in promoting story comprehension and vocabulary learning | Randomized experiments with three experimental conditions: (video chat vs. live vs. prerecorded book reading) | Child assessment | A total of 58 4-year-olds in the three experimental conditions and 11 children in the control condition where they only completed the pre-tests and post-tests without reading the book | USA | English | Home |
Genlott & Gronlund (2013) [55] | To test the effectiveness of a new method of learning to read and write in early years | Quasi-experimental: pretest and posttest design with non-equivalent groups | Child assessment and student work samples | A total of four first-grade classes in the same school; the children were 7-year-olds. Two classes which contained 41 students were in the experimental group and two classes which contained 46 students in total were in the control group | Sweden | Swedish | School |
Genlott & Gronlund (2016) [56] | To compare the effectiveness of an ICT-integrated pedagogical method, Write to Learn (WTL), with traditional pedagogy or using ICT without WTL, in literacy development and mathematics | Quasi-experimental: posttest only design with non-equivalent groups | National Literacy Test for grade 3 | A total of 502 grade 3 students in a Swedish city who started to experience the WTL method from grade 1 | Sweden | Swedish | School |
Kaynar et al. (2020) [57] | To examine teacher perceptions on e-book use in their classroom | Qualitative | Interview | A total of 13 English teachers in 13 different classrooms containing children aged 4 to 6-years-old from three different campuses of a private chain preschool/kindergarten. | Turkey | English | School |
Lysenko & Abrami (2014) [58] | To explore the impact of integrating two web-based applications into early elementary students’ literacy instruction on their reading comprehension | Quasi-experimental: non equivalanet groups, pretest and posttest design | Child assessment | In study 1 in 2010–2011, 351 students from 22 classes and their teachers were included in the analysis. Among them, 114 grade 1 and 61 grade 2 students were in the experimental group. In study 2 in 2011–2012, 166 students in 10 classes participated. Among them, 27 grade 1 and 67 grade 2 students were in the experimental group. The experimental group included four teachers who were all continuing on from study 1; another five control teachers were newly recruited. | Canada | English | School |
Miller (2018) [25] | To examine the effect of emerging technologies on English language acquisition for native Spanish-speaking ELLs enrolled in ESL and bilingual education preschool and elementary programs | Qualitative | Teachers’ narrative accounts | A total of 46 bilingual and ESL teachers in early childhood centers or elementary schools who self-perceive as innovative technology users from five Texas public school districts in the Gulf Coast region, central Texas region, and Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area | USA | English | School |
Szecsi & Szilagyi (2012) [63] | To explore immigrant Hugarian families’ perceptions about the role media technologies play in their child’s development, maintenance of heritage language, and cultural identity | Qualitative | Interview and autoethnographic interview | The study included two families. Only family one had a boy aged five who fell into the age range of this review. So only his data were charted for this review | USA | Hungarian | Home |
Shin (2014) [38] | To examine how ELL students use blogging to develop academic literacy and how does this process shape the social, political, and academic nature of students’ literacy practices | Case study | Observation, interview, informal conversations, documents and materials (written texts, blog postings, instructional materials, and school documents). | One Spanish-speaking 2nd grade student who did not have internet-related computer experience prior to the research project. The whole project was conducted with 20 2nd graders in one 2nd grade class where the majority of the students’ primary language was Spanish, but this study only reported on one student | USA | English | School |
Silvia de Oliveira et al. (2013) [59] | To investigate changes in students’ reading and writing practices after receiving full access to a laptop with internet connections | Case study | Observation, child assessment, student-created digital artifacts | A total of 19 6-year-old students in a 1st grade classroom and their teacher in a public school which participated in the One Laptop per Child project | Brazil | Portuguese | School |
Snell et al. (2022) [64] | To investigate the impact of a vocalbulary-focused texting program on home-school connections in preschool children’s vocabulary and language learning. | Randomized experiments | Child assessment and survey | A total of 173 treatment children (24 lead teachers) and 173 control children (25 lead teachers), and their parents or guardians from public school prekindergarten and Head Start programs in a large East Coast city. Children aged 3–5 years old | USA | English | Home |
Theodosiadou & Konstantinidis (2015) [60] | To examine e-portfolios’ impact on learning in a Greek primary school environment | Case study | Survey, interview, and student work samples | A total of 14 8-year-old pupils in 3rd grade in a public primary school in northen Greece | Greece | Greek | School |
Sun et al. (2017) [61] | To examine the effectiveness of integrating mobile SNS with face-to-face instruction in improving speaking skills of young children | Quasi-experimental design: pretest and posttest with nonequivalent groups | Child assessment | A total of two 1st grade English classes (average age 6.5 years) in an urban public elementary school in Beijing. The children had prior experiences using iPads in learning English as iPad was integrated into the curriculum. One class was the experimental group (37 children, 17 girls and 20 boys), one class was the control group (35 students, 14 girls and 21 boys) | China | English | School |
Olszewski & Cullen-Conway (2017) [65] | To investigate whether social media platforms can be used to promote parent–child literacy behaviors in families with pre-school children | Quasi-experimental design: one group pretest-posttest design | Child assessment and observation | A total of seven children of preschool age and their parents | USA | English | Home |
Social Media Tool (Number of Studies That Used This Tool) | Key Features | Type | Web Link |
---|---|---|---|
Google Docs via Google Drive (n = 2) | A cloud-based word processor that allows collaboration. | Productivity tools | https://www.google.com/docs/about/ (accessed on 30 August 2022) |
Twitter (n = 2) | A microblogging platform. | Microblogging tools | https://twitter.com/ (accessed on 27 August 2022) |
Google Slides via Google Drive (n = 1) | A cloud-based slide editor that allows collaboration and online presentation. | Productivity tools | https://www.google.com/slides/about/ (accessed on 30 August 2022) |
Google Sites (n = 1) | A platform for creating one’s own site without any programming skills. | Text publishing tools | https://workspace.google.com/products/sites/ (accessed on 30 August 2022) |
Book Creator appp (n = 1) | A digital book-making tool. Children can use texts, images, videos, audios, color, and movements to create digital books. Students can embed contents from other apps such as Google Maps or Youtube videos. Each teacher can create a class library for children to publish their books. Created books can also be shared in various ways including hard print, email, ibooks, or shared with an assigned code to Google Drive. It also allows real-time collaboration among multiple users and it can read the student-created book aloud to the audience. | Text publishing tools Mobile social media tools | https://bookcreator.com/ (accessed on 27 August 2022) |
Skype (n = 1) | A video chat service. | Interpersonal social media tools | https://www.skype.com/en/ (accessed on 30 August 2022) |
Minecraft education version (n = 1) | A sandbox game with no set objectives; using a block-like structure, players can create freely at their own will, similarly to LEGO in the virtual world. The educational version allows teachers to control many in-game features such as chat features, fighting, weather and player’s health so that the students can concentrate on the educational element of the game. | Social Gaming tools | https://www.minecraft.net/ (accessed on 28 August 2022) |
ePearl (n = 1) | A web-based digital portfolio tool that encourages students to set goals, device and monitor strategies to achieve their goals, and to reflect on their learning. Work can be shared with teachers, peers, and parents to obtain feedback. It offers both a text editor and an audio recorder, slideshows, videos, podcasts, scanned images, and photos can also be uploaded to the platform to document student work. | Text publishing tools | https://www.concordia.ca/research/learning-performance/tools/learning-toolkit/epearl.html (accessed on 27 August 2022) |
Raz-Kids (n = 1) | An interactive e-book platform. Key features include interactive, levelled e-books and accompanied eQuizzes, assessment of student reading levels, student incentives and awards, student avatars, student management portal for teachers, student and teacher autonomy in choosing which materials to use. Its social media feature is that the teacher can comment on student work via writing or recording. | Text publishing tools | https://www.raz-kids.com/ (accessed on 29 August 2022) |
Zoom (n = 1) | A video conferencing platform. Key features include meetings, cloud phones, webinars, access and use other apps from within Zoom. | Interpersonal social media tools | https://zoom.us/ (accessed on 30 August 2022) |
Facetime (n = 1) | A cloud phone service. Key features include screen sharing, video or music sharing, and multi-user calls. | Interpersonal social media tools Mobile social media tools | https://support.apple.com/zh-cn/facetime (accessed on 30 August 2022) |
Weblog Typepad (n = 1) | A class blog created by the teacher. Students can post their writings and exchange comments with teachers, peers, parents, etc. It is not clear which platform was used to create this class blog. | Text publishing tools | https://www.typepad.com/ (accessed on 1 September 2022) |
School-built virtual learning environment called AMADIS (n = 1) | Each student has an account and a profile with their pictures on this platform. Students can post texts in a blog-like format and comment on each others’ posts. Students can also post pictures in addition to texts. | Text publishing tools | N/A (Internal platform, no public access) |
Showme App (n = 1) | An application that allows users to record and create voice over presentations and share the presentations. Key features include recording voice, drawing, adding text, taking photos, and adding images. Sharing can be done online privately or to a community audience. | Mobile social media tools/ Audio Publishing tools | https://www.showme.com/about_showme (accessed on 27 August 2022) |
Class Dojo (n = 1) | A digital platform that connects teachers, students, and families. Key features include: a classroom page where teachers can make announcements or post texts/photos about class activities to share with families and students, an e-portfolio section where students can upload their work to share, and a message function to communicate with families. | Text publishing tools Interpersonal social media tools/ Mobile social media tools | https://www.classdojo.com/zh-cn/?redirect=true (accessed on 27 August 2022) |
Remind (n = 1) | An app for two-way communications among teachers, students, and parents. Key features include group messages, one-on-one messages, in-app translation, no revealing of personal contact information, and setting quiet hours/active hours. | Interpersonal social media tools Mobile social media tools | https://www.remind.com/ (accessed on 27 August 2022) |
Papa (n = 1) | An audio publishing platform. Users can create personal profiles, record, upload, and share their audio or music of up to 6 min long accompanied by a picture that is either taken with the app, or chosen from the photo album. Users can like, leave a written or audio comment on others’ audios; they can also follow other users’ channels. | Audio publishing tools | http://papa.me/ (accessed on 29 August 2022) |
Author (Year) | First vs. Second Language | Dominant, Minority, or Foreign Language in the Country Where the Study Took Place | Social Media Tool Used | Purpose of Social Media Tool Integration | Target Aspect of Language and Literacy Development | Learning Activities Involving Social Media Tools |
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Dore et al. (2021) [52] | First language (73% of the sample) Second language (27% of the sample) | Dominant language | Zoom | To facilitate remote learning | Phonological awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, and narrative | The program was a virtual summer kindergarten readiness program which had five components: regular teacher–caregiver video chat; regular teacher–child video chat; a Watch Together activity where parents watched educational TV shows with their children; a Play Together activity where parents played with their children; and a Read Together activity where parents read books with their children. Zoom was used for conducting weekly meetings between teachers and caregivers and between teachers and children. ZIn the teacher–parent chat, teachers would review lessons from last week, provide an overview of the new materials and discuss the concepts covered in the new week. Caregivers could ask questions or discuss challenges they faced. In the teacher–child chat, teachers discussed the educational TV show that children had most recently watched with their parents in the Watch Together activity; then, the teacher read a book with the child and completed a learning activity (unspecified in the article). All activities in one chat session were supposed to support the same skill. |
Ellison & Drew (2020) [53] | First language | Dominant language | Minecraft | To help students visualize the objects they will write about | Creative Writing | In this writing lesson, students were asked to write a setting description about a castle. Students used the Minecraft game to create their own castles in pairs. They were encouraged to discuss their building plans with their partners during the process. Then the castle designs were printed out from multiple angles and used as a stimulus for writing a setting description. However, the study did not mention whether any online interactions occurred. |
Eubanks et al. (2018) [54] | Second language | Minority language | Book Creator | To provide an instructional tool that students can use to compose digital texts | Writing | In this 3-week 21st century writing workshop, each student were asked to create a story. They used the Book Creator app in the following steps in creating a digital story: first, they created three-part storyboards with narration, sketch, and digital media; second, they put all the materials together to create a digital book; third, they published the digital book to the digital classroom library and shared with parents. |
Gaudreau et al. (2020) [62] | First language | Dominant language | Facetime | To provide tool for virtual communication, especially virtual Storytime practice | Story comprehension and vocabulary learning | The study took place in a lab environment. In a dialogic reading session, the experimenter read a book, gave prompts, and asked questions to a child over Facetime app on an iPad. |
Genlott & Gronlund (2013) [55] | First language | Dominant language | Google Docs | To give students a real audience for their writing and let them know that they would receive feedback after their texts are published | Reading and writing | Google docs was used for publishing students’ written texts and receiving feedback from peers, teachers, and parents. Depending on the type of assignment and topic, students either wrote in a document that was shared with teachers and peers, or their work were published directly on a class web site which was built on Google Docs. It was mandatory that teachers and peers provided timely feedback after the texts were published. |
Genlott & Gronlund (2016) [56] | First language | Dominant language | Google Drive (including Google Docs) and Google Sites | To provide a tool for collaborative learning, especially formative feedback and assessment | Reading and writing | The Write to Learn method contained seven steps in one learning cycle; GAFE tools were used to facilitate each step of the learning process: (1) Teacher published learning goals on Google Class Site. (2) Teacher published tutorials or inspirational videos on Google Class Sites to arouse students’ interests and provide them with pre-understanding of the task, which represented a flipped classroom approach. (3) Teacher provided written examples to illustrate the writing strategy and literacy genre of the task concerned in Google Drive for students to view and learn from. (4) Students started to write individually or in pairs and shared their writing via Google Drive with peers and teachers to give and receive formative feedback continuously. (5) Students learned to provide high quality formative feedback via practice using Google Drive; then they published the final version of what they wrote via Google Sites to get final feedback from more readers including other students, teachers, and parents. This helped increase students awareness and knowledge in writing for an audience. Publishing to a wider audience on Google Sites also ensured that students get final responses to the published texts. (6) Teacher evaluated student work to help the students see what learning goals they had accomplished and the next steps. All the past drafts, formative feedback available on Google Drive and Google Sites were taken into consideration when teachers evaluated student work. |
Kaynar et al. (2020) [57] | Second language | Foreign language | Raz-Kids | To provide a platform for e-book reading | Reading, speaking, vocabulary | On Fridays, teachers would give assignments to students using the Raz-plus platform. Over the weekend, students read the assigned books, recorded their voices, completed associated learning activities, and sent them to teachers. On Monday, teachers would have a meeting with the students about the assignments and reward students for completion, such as by giving them extra stars that they could use to purchase icons for their avatars in the system. There was a comment function where teachers could either write or record a private message and sent to the students to comment on student work. After class, students could also use the platform as a self-assessment tool by reviewing books that were taught in class. |
Lysenko & Abrami (2014) [58] | First language | Dominant language | ePearl | To develop self-regulated learning skills | Reading comprehension, listening comprehension, vocabulary, written expression | E-pearl was used in two ways. First, it was used in combination with another web-based application, ABRACADABRA (ABRA) which was an interactive multimedia tool for developing emerging literacy. ABRA housed 32 activities link to 26 interactive digital stories of various genres and 10 additional stories written by students and gamification features. When using ePearl together with ABRA, students can view the digital books on ABRA from within ePearl via a link to ABRA. Then they made recordings of excerpts of the books on ePearl, and created writings related to the stories on ePearl, posted illustrations from ABRA toghether with their writings on ePearl, reflected on their work and received feedback from teachers, parents, and peers. They could also set learning goals for all of these activities. Second, ePearl was also used independently. Students set learning goals, created digital artefacts including writings, drawings, pictures, and scanned and uploaded paper artefacts, reflected on their work, and received feedback from teachers, parents, and peers. |
Miller (2018) [25] | Second language | Dominant language | Showme app | To enhance student engagement and establish an authentic audience for student work | Unspecified | (1) Showme App: students could take a picture of something that was related to their language learning, such as an object starting with the letter A when they learned the letter A. Then, the student put the picture in the ShowMe box and added a written and recorded description of the picture on the ShowMe app. Then, an email would be sent to family and classmates containing the picture, written description, and recording. (2) Twitter: teacher would regularly post links to students’ work and announcements on class twitter account for family and friends to see. |
Szecsi & Szilagyi (2012) [63] | Heritage language | Minority language | Skype | To communicate with extended families and friends located in distant locations | Speaking, listening, reading, and writing | Skype was used for regular video chats with grandparents who were in Hungary. Communications included both verbal chats and typed chats. Grandma also read stories to Samuel over Skype once or twice a week and engaged in pretend play with Samuel. They pretended to be the characters in the stories and tell each other about their day. |
Shin (2014) [38] | Second language | Dominant language | Weblog Typepad | To provide authentic and meaningful purposes for student writing by offering the students expanded audiences via blogging | Writing | The teacher initated a blog-mediated writing curriclum for English Language Arts (ELA) lessons. A class blog was created by the teacher on the Weblog Typepad. In their daily ELA lessons, students would first learn to write in different writing genres such as recounts, reports, and persuasive essays. Then students would post their writings on the class blog. The teacher invited other teachers, school librarians, her family members, and parents to join the blog as an expanded authentic audience for the students. The students and the audience could post and exchange comments on student writings on the class blog. |
Silvia de Oliveira et al. (2013) [59] | First language | Dominant language | School-built virtual learning environment called AMADIS | To create a virtual literate environment for the students and promote social practices of writing and reading by allowing them to share with the entire school community | Reading and writing | (1) In a teacher-assigned project "Curiosity Awards", students could choose questions to investigate, such as “what did lions do besides attacking and eating?” Students would write journals (blog posts) on the virtual learning platform (VLE) to record their findings in both textual and picture formats, and to share their findings with peers and to give and receive comments. However, posting on the VLE is not a required component of the task. So, the amount that students posted on the VLE varied. (2) Students also posted and commented on the VLE spontaneously without involving a teacher-assigned task. They blogged and commented to ask questions, express themselves such as their interests, and to keep records. |
Snell et al. (2022) [64] | First language (74% of the sample) Second language for the rest | Dominant language | Remind ClassDojo | To provide a home–school communication tool | Vocabulary | Teachers used Remind or ClassDojo to send weekly texts to parents that contained information on vocabulary words of the week and related activities that parents could try at home to help their children learn these vocabularies. These words were from books that were being read in the classroom in that week. Teachers could send the vocabulary and the activity texts together or separately. In the vocabulary text, there was also a link to a Text to Talk website. The website contained child-friendly definitions of the words, suggested activities, and a link to the book being read, if available. Note that this intervention was designed as a text intervention, so families without smartphones could receive the message as standard SMS messages. However, teachers all used social media tools to send the messages. |
Theodosiadou & Konstantinidis (2015) [60] | First language | Dominant language | Google Drive (Google Slides) | To monitor pupil’s learning progress | Narrative, reflective and writing skills | A folder with a set of PowerPoint slides was created for each student on Google Drive. Each slide centered around one learning activity and had a picture related to that activity. Students wrote about their learning activities and posted their writing on the slides. Each slide had a consistent layout such that for each activity students were supposed to write about the following topics: (1) activity description; (2) new knowledge gained; (3) what they liked and why; (4) difficulties encountered and why. Consistent prompting questions were provided for each topic on each slide to facilitate students’ writing. Teachers and students discussed together in class to determine which activities the students should write about in the slides. When the e-portfolio was completed, students presented it to their parents. |
Sun et al. (2017) [61] | Second language | Foreign language | Papa | To practice English speaking in a meaningful way | Speaking | Papa was used to complete oral assignments. Teachers would assign a specific question such as “what day is my best day?” for the children to record a response on Papa, and they were also asked to draw or find an image to accompany their recordings. Children recorded and uploaded their audio to Papa at home with the supervision of parents. |
Olszewski & Cullen-Conway (2017) [65] | First language | Dominant language | To deliver instructional materials to parents | Story comprehension, vocabulary, and print awareness | Twitter was used to deliver specially designed instructional videos on dialogic reading to parents. Videos less than 1 min were delivered to parents on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday each week for 9 weeks. Videos demonstrated strategies across vocabulary, story comprehension, and print awareness. Each video started with a parent demonstrating the target strategy, followed by a brief description of the strategy by a narrator, and then ended with demonstration one more time. |
Author (Year) | Language and Literacy Skills Measured | Impact on Language and Literacy Development |
---|---|---|
Dore et al. (2021) [52] | Alphabet knowledge, emergent literacy skills including phonological awareness and print knowledge skills | Children exhibited small but significant improvements in alphabet knowledge, but no significant gains in phonological awareness or print knowledge skills. |
Ellison & Drew (2020) [53] | A total writing quality score composed of three dimensions: text structure, sentence structure and grammatic features, vocabulary | Evidence was inconclusive regarding impact on creative writing ability. Among the six boys whose writing samples were scored, three boys’ pre-test and post-test scores were the same while the other three boys scored 1 or 2 points higher in the post-test. |
Eubanks et al. (2018) [54] | Writing ability | The field investigator reviewed and evaluated the final published books and thought they were of A or A+ quality, but no details were given on the rating standards or procedures, or why the field investigator was qualified to make such judgements.In addition, field notes from observations showed that, compared to student writing in the same semester prior to the 21st century writing workshop, students (1) produced significantly more writing; (2) applied sentence structures learned before; (3) increased utilizations of new vocabulary in the writing workshop. |
Gaudreau et al. (2020) [62] | Story comprehension including explicit and implicit comprehension and a page-by-page retell Vocabulary learning including expressive, receptive, and transfer vocabulary | Children in the video chat, face-to-face, and prerecorded book-reading groups performed similarly in story comprehension and vocabulary learning. However, children were more responsive to the dialogic prompts and questions in the video chat and face-to-face formats than in the prerecorded format. |
Genlott & Gronlund (2013) [55] | Reading skillWriting skill | Reading Skill: the reading assessment tested the number of words that a child could read correctly in one minute. A slightly higher proportion of children in the experimental group (87.8%) achieved the pass level (at least 35 words per minute) than in the control group (84.7%). Moreover, 56% of the children in the experimental group achieved a high score (>55) while only 36% in the control group achieved a high score. Therefore, the authors concluded that the intervention resulted in more excellent readers in the experimental group. Writing skill: based on evaluations of students’ writings, the control group only produced very short texts which could hardly be considered as stories. On the contrary, the experimental group produced much longer stories which were clearer with a logical flow of events. Teachers read the students’ writing and claimed that test group students had mastered writing skills that were required by the national tests to be taken at grade 3, despite the fact that the participants were only in grade 1. |
Genlott & Gronlund (2016) [56] | Reading and Writing | Students using the Writing to Learn (WTL) method scored significantly better than students who did not use the WTL method on the National Standard Tests (NST) of literacy. Moreover, there is no gender gap in literacy in the experimental group who used the WTL method. |
Kaynar et al. (2020) [57] | N/A | Interviews with teachers showed that teachers believed that the platform enhanced students’ literacy skills, particularly fluency and accuracy in speaking and vocabulary growth. |
Lysenko & Abrami (2014) [58] | Reading comprehension, listening comprehension, vocabulary, written expression | Students in the experimental group performed significantly better than students in the control group in terms of vocabulary and reading comprehension in both study 1 and study 2. The effect was consistent across grade levels, but no significant differences were found on listening comprehension. In study 2, the experimental group also scored significantly higher on written expression than the control group. |
Miller (2018) [25] | N/A | Teachers believed that students’ talk became deeper and children were better able to express themselves as a result of using technology in the classroom. |
Szecsi & Szilagyi (2012) [63] | N/A | Participants believed that their children made improvements in heritage language skills as a result of regular use of technologies. However, they also emphasized that adults’ creative and dedicated participation was required to achieve the optimal results. |
Shin (2014) [38] | N/A | Linguistic analysis of the child’s blog postings showed the following achievements in literacy development: (1) The child became more aware of the interpersonal functions of text. He also displayed an understanding of the relationship between semiotic choices and meaning potentials which was above the writing proficiency of most second graders, as evidenced by his use of contradictory linguistic options in a recount about his experience going to amusement parks. (2) In his persuasive letter, the child demonstrated a level of understanding about the purpose and audience in constructing texts, which was beyond the proficiency and sophistication level required by the school curriculum standards for 2nd grade English Language Arts. |
Silvia de Oliveira et al. (2013) [59] | Written language conceptualization | The findings were inconclusive. The number of children at the advanced stage of written language conceptualization, the alphabetic stage, increased from five to nine after using laptop with internet access for 5 months. Additionally, the number of children at the initial stage, the pre-syllabic stage, decreased from eight to six. No change was found for the intermediary 1 stage, the syllabic stage; and the number of children at the intermediary 2 stage, the syllabic alphabetic stage, actually decreased from three to one after 5 months. |
Snell et al. (2022) [64] | Target word knowledge and receptive vocabulary | Children in the treatment group acquired significantly more target words than those in the control group, but there was no significant difference in the standardized measure of receptive vocabulary between the two groups. |
Theodosiadou & Konstantinidis (2015) [60] | N/A | The author provided qualitative accounts on children’s improvements in literacy skills. Based on student work, they observed that students could only write very simple or unfinished sentences in the beginning; as they progressed through the project, they could write more carefully structured and detailed descriptions of each learning activity. Moreover, they would also express their dispositions or feelings for each activity and accompany their descriptions with meaningful rationale for their choices. Parental interviews also showed that parents thought their children became more articulate. Children became more willing to correct their spelling or syntax mistakes, as they knew their portfolio would also be presented to their parents. |
Sun et al. (2017) [61] | Speaking skills: accuracy, fluency, and pronunciation | The experimental group made significantly larger gains in fluency, but gains in accuracy and pronunciation were comparable to that of the control group. |
Olszewski & Cullen-Conway (2017) [65] | Story comprehension, vocabulary, print knowledge | Based on coding of observations, there were increases in parent dialogic reading strategies use during the treatment, when compared to the baseline. Children showed significant gains in vocabulary and story comprehension, but not on print knowledge from pretest to posttest. |
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Zhao, Y.; Lu, J.; Woodcock, S.; Ren, Y. Social Media Web 2.0 Tools Adoption in Language and Literacy Development in Early Years: A Scoping Review. Children 2022, 9, 1901. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9121901
Zhao Y, Lu J, Woodcock S, Ren Y. Social Media Web 2.0 Tools Adoption in Language and Literacy Development in Early Years: A Scoping Review. Children. 2022; 9(12):1901. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9121901
Chicago/Turabian StyleZhao, Yiran, Jinjin Lu, Stuart Woodcock, and Yuejing Ren. 2022. "Social Media Web 2.0 Tools Adoption in Language and Literacy Development in Early Years: A Scoping Review" Children 9, no. 12: 1901. https://doi.org/10.3390/children9121901