After the pandemic: reconceptualising children’s lifeworlds for multimodal learning

In this paper we advocate a reconceptualization of early learning in the twenty-first century in the form of multimodal lifeworlds. We began our rethinking of young children’s learning prior to the pandemic, but the issues have become more salient during this time as schooling was suspended and teaching and learning moved online. We consider the trajectory of research regarding the role of new technologies for young children’s learning, both in their homes and in educational contexts. We contend that we need to rethink the ways in which digital artefacts can create new contexts for learning. We believe that if we foreground the learning that is possible in contemporary multimodal learning ecologies, deep learning will occur. We raise complex questions and issues that require consideration as we plan for pedagogies that will encourage, support, and transform children’s learning. The paper considers our understandings about new and continually evolving technologies, as artefacts that inhabit the contemporary child’s lifeworld. These resources form part of their suite of learning devices which impact on children’s identities, learning ecologies and how they make meaning of self. Finally, we present a possible conceptualisation, which combines the elements that are relevant for pedagogical planning, discussed in the article, to consider how new technologies, as social, cultural and personal artefacts can contribute to children’s learning ecologies.