This research project will produce an account of play, learning and technology in the everyday lives of young children. Children will be three years old at the start of the period of data collection and their play experiences and interactions at home will be traced over a period of about 18 months in twelve households. The study investigates how children perceive, acquire and develop their experiences with technology at home and will produce a nuanced account of children’s interactions with a range of domestic, leisure and work technologies, including technological toys. The extent of children’s engagement with these toys, how they are integrated into play activities and the influence of family practices and everyday activities on children’s play and learning will be central. The studies will use video, instant photographs and drawings, as well as observations and conversations with parents, children and other family members. The studies aim to: document an ecological framework of children in their natural settings, describe children’s play activities, produce accounts of family members’ perspectives and attitudes, and create case studies of specific technological objects.

We originally framed this research within sociocultural theory. However, ecocultural theory synthesises elements of Vygotskyan socioculturalism and Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of human development and emphasises typically occurring activities and ‘oikos’ (the household). This was more appropriate for our aims and provided theoretical underpinning for our use of case studies to explore technology, play and learning at the intersections of cultural context and individual variability of child and family. This approach required multiple sources of data, numerous visits to family homes and detailed documentation of everyday lives. We recruited families with a three-year-old child by leafleting preschools serving disadvantaged areas in central Scotland and assessed half the sample of 14 households as having low socioeconomic status, with an overall distribution in line with the Scottish Household Survey. Each of the households represented a case and was the key unit of analysis, with contributory analysis at the level of individual children (seven target boys and seven target girls), toys or technologies. Three investigators and two contract researchers carried out the fieldwork, with a pair allocated to each of the fourteen households for all visits. Although labour intensive, this provided consistency and enabled relationships to develop over the nine rounds of data collection between summer 2008 and autumn 2009. An initial analytical account, including personal, methodological and theoretical reflections, was compiled jointly after each visit to inform subsequent stages. Each round of data collection had a specific focus, including children taking photos and telling us about their favourite toys and activities, surveys of toys and technologies, parental perceptions of their child's play and learning, autobiographical accounts of their own childhoods, video recordings of children’s interactions with technological toys, mobile phone diaries of typical days, and family interviews about the transition to primary school. A sub-set of four families participated in additional case studies of three technological toys. This was based on two visits and a one-week video activity task which facilitated more intensive focus on child-technology interactions.