Talking About the Good Childhood: An Analysis of Educators’ Approaches to School Children’s Use of ICT

Abstract

This paper presents a study on how primary school educators describe children’s use of ICT. This is done in order to lay a foundation for an understanding of how information literacies may be enacted in Swedish primary schools. The empirical material consists of four focus group con-versations conducted with 20 educators at three Swedish primary schools. The analysis is focussed on how the educators discuss and describe ICT as tools for information activities and as parts of children’s childhoods. Two descriptions of childhoods are identified in the analysis: 1) the good childhood, in which there is room for traditional tools for information seeking such as books; 2) the contemporary and insufficient childhood, happening outside the school context, where digital tools for information seeking and other activities are used. The task of primary school is descri-bed as counterbalancing contemporary childhoods and therefore avoiding ICT. The authors discuss how the implications of these approaches could be limiting for how information literacies may be enacted in primary school.