Disembodied Voice and Embodied Affect: e-Reading in Early Childhood Education

• Main Author: Carina Hermansson
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cappelen Damm Akademisk NOASP 2017-03-01
• Series: Nordic Journal of Literacy Research
• Subjects: E-books; embodiment; affect; reading; early childhood education
• Online Access: https://nordicliteracy.net/index.php/njlr/article/view/467/1527

This article is based on observations made in a Swedish digital early childhood classroom during reading time. The question of ‘what is happening’ in the digital classroom when six-year-olds read a fictional electronic book is explored through video observations focusing on children learning to read by engaging in e-books. Informed by affect, as described by Baruch de Spinoza and interpreted by Gilles Deleuze, this article provides a way to attend to the highly dynamic encounters between bodies, ideas and materiality that characterize the children's engagement in e-reading. The analysis suggests that the digital voice is a vital component for activating engagement in and a drive for reading through the moments and movements of embodied reading when children co-read a fictional e-book on their own. Focusing on how e-book reading is enacted in the educational everyday reading practices, this article is an empirically grounded contribution to the understanding of how e-reading is constituted in contemporary digital classroom in all its complexity.