Children Associate Racial Groups With Wealth: Evidence From South Africa

Group‐based social hierarchies exist in nearly every society, yet little is known about whether children understand that they exist. The present studies investigated whether 3‐ to 10‐year‐old children (N = 84) in South Africa associate higher status racial groups with higher levels of wealth, one indicator of social status. Children matched higher value belongings with White people more often than with multiracial or Black people and with multiracial people more often than with Black people, thus showing sensitivity to the de facto racial hierarchy in their society. There were no age‐related changes in children’s tendency to associate racial groups with wealth differences. The implications of these results are discussed in light of the general tendency for people to legitimize and perpetuate the status quo.     

Conditions,processes and consequences of technology use: a case study

Abstract

The conditions, processes and consequences of technology implementation were explored in order to develop a holistic view of technology use in a typical elementary school (ages 6-11 years). This qualitative case study employed a symbolic interactionist conceptual framework, an interpretivist research paradigm and analytic induction strategies. Assertions generated from the process of analytic induction suggest that even when conditions appear ripe for transformational uses of technology, these uses often do not occur. The study raises questions about whether school-wide transformational uses of technology can occur without an organized reform effort and whether the conditions for transformational use of technology advocated in the literature are sufficient to facilitate such use. The study also supports the need to consider stages of adoption when planning for technology integration within a school and adds another dimension to the question of whether constructivist teaching strategies enable transformative uses of technology or whether the transformational uses of technology lead to more constructivist tendencies.     

How Parent Perceptions Relate to Elementary Children’s Portable Technology Use by Gender and Grade Level

This study examined how parents' reports of children’s technology use in the home varies by a child’s gender or grade level. Framed by technology adoption models, this mixed-method study gathered parent reports of their elementary child’s use of portable technology for entertainment and learning in the home, collected from 120 surveys and 13 individual interviews with survey respondents. Results across the four 2×2 ANOVAs yielded three significant main effects: gender and entertainment devices, gender and entertainment apps, grade level and learning apps. No significant effects were found among any of the interaction variables or within the ANOVA summary for learning devices. Interview data revealed girls are interested in reading with Kindle, whereas parents are reluctant to provide boys with portable technology because of their preference to play games. Strategies are provided for teachers, support specialists, and parents to improve how children use technology. Implications for app developers are suggested.     

User study of a new smart toy for children's storytelling

This article introduces StoryTech, a smart storytelling toy that offers children a mixed reality environment in which to tell imaginative stories. During usability testing, an empirical study was carried out with 90 child participants. The findings indicated that StoryTech creates a rich storytelling experience, especially for ages five and six.