Preschool Children and Ipads: Observations of Social Interactions During Digital Play

Early Education and Development
ISSN: 1040-9289 (Print) 1556-6935 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/heed20
Preschool Children and iPads: Observations of

Social Interactions During Digital Play
Sandra M. Lawrence
To cite this article: Sandra M. Lawrence (2017): Preschool Children and iPads: Observations
of Social Interactions During Digital Play, Early Education and Development, DOI:
10.1080/10409289.2017.1379303
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2017.1379303
Published online: 19 Oct 2017.
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EARLY EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT
https://doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2017.1379303
Preschool Children and iPads: Observations of Social Interactions

During Digital Play
Sandra M. Lawrence
Psychology and Education, Mount Holyoke College
ABSTRACT
Research Findings: Digital play is now commonplace in many young chil-
dren’s lives, but not in preschool settings. This situation is likely due to the
fact that the existent literature seldom highlights what digital play looks
like, the various ways it can be situated, and what young children do when
Downloaded by [UAE University] at 05:48 24 October 2017
they play together with digital devices in the preschool setting. The present
study addresses this limitation by providing a close examination of the
social interactions of young children as they engage with different types
of iPad apps and each other. Observational data of 20 dyads of children
during digital play analyzed qualitatively revealed that children exhibited a
range of social behaviors from competitive to collaborative as they engaged
in 4 types of digital play: practice/task, exploratory, construction, and pre-
tense. Forms of play and exhibited behaviors were shaped by interrelated
factors of children’s individual characteristics and relationships, classroom
culture and routines, adult views and actions, as well as aspects of the
digital device itself. Practice or Policy: Selecting open-design apps, attending
to digital play structures, and monitoring peer play more closely may lessen
competition, enhance collaboration, and lead to more complex digital play.
Twenty-first century advances in technology such as touchscreen tablets
and smartphones have influenced the home digital landscape of young
children’s individual play and their play with others. Within this new “family
media ecology” (Wartella, Rideout, Lauricella, & Connell, 2013, p. 7) in
postindustrial developed countries, for example, young children’s engage-
ment with digital technologies is now an everyday occurrence in most
children’s home experience (Flewitt, Messer, & Kucirkova, 2015; Gattenhof
& Dezuanni, 2015). But children seldom use these technologies in preschool
settings (Blackwell, Wartella, Lauricella, & Robb, 2015; Neumann &
Neumann, 2014). Some early childhood educators do not view children’s
engagement with digital technologies as having any educational value
(Blackwell, Lauricella, & Wartella, 2014; Blackwell, Lauricella, Wartella,
Robb, & Schomburg, 2013; Nuttall, Edwards, Mantilla, Grieshaber, & Wood,
2015). Others are concerned that play with digital devices will limit inter-
actions with peers and others (Donohue, 2015; Moore & Adair, 2015).
Twenty-first century advances in technology such as touchscreen tablets and smartphones have
influenced the home digital landscape of young children’s individual play and their play with others.
Within this new “family media ecology” (Wartella, Rideout, Lauricella, & Connell, 2013, p. 7) in
postindustrial developed countries, for example, young children’s engagement with digital technol-
ogies is now an everyday occurrence in most children’s home experience (Flewitt, Messer, &
Kucirkova, 2015; Gattenhof & Dezuanni, 2015). But children seldom use these technologies in
preschool settings (Blackwell, Wartella, Lauricella, & Robb, 2015; Neumann & Neumann, 2014).
CONTACT Sandra M. Lawrence slawrenc@mtholyoke.edu Department of Psychology & Education, Mount Holyoke
College, South Hadley, MA 01075
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
2 S. M. LAWRENCE
Some early childhood educators do not view children’s engagement with digital technologies as
having any educational value (Blackwell, Lauricella, & Wartella, 2014; Blackwell, Lauricella, Wartella,
Robb, & Schomburg, 2013; Nuttall, Edwards, Mantilla, Grieshaber, & Wood, 2015). Others are
concerned that play with digital devices will limit interactions with peers and others (Donohue, 2015;
Moore & Adair, 2015). Early childhood educators’ concerns about digital play likely stem in part
from the fact that digital play is an emerging field with limited literature about what digital play
looks like as well as what children do as they participate in this new type of play (Marsh, Plowman,
Yamada-Rice, Bishop, & Scott, 2016). The present study addresses the need for more detailed
information about young children’s digital play by providing a close examination of the social
interactions of young children as they engage with different types of iPad apps and each other as
they play in a preschool setting. Designating peer social interactions as the units of analysis for
studying digital play illuminates the various ways in which children engage with digital technologies
together but also leads to more expansive views of digital play activities.
Young Children’s Peer Interactions During Play

A social interaction is defined as two or more individuals engaging with one another in an activity
while exhibiting verbal and nonverbal behaviors (Arnott, 2013). Vygotsky (1967) believed that these
interactions between and among people and the cultural, historical, and social context of their
situated communities were of supreme importance to the developing human being. In particular,
Vygotsky (1978) posited that social interactions involving children had a significant influence on
children’s cognitive development. Among preschool-age children most peer social interactions occur
within the context of play (Coplan & Arbeau, 2009).
Because portraits of play are far from being universal (Roopnarine, 2011), defining play is difficult
(Burghardt, 2011; Pellegrini, 2009; Yelland, 2011). As a way to characterize what play is and is not,
scholars have proposed various forms, functions, and types of play. Burghardt (2011), building on
the work of Rubin, Fein, and Vandenberg (1983), outlined five criteria for play pertaining to
observable and describable behaviors; these criteria include play’s focus on means rather than
ends, its pleasurable aspect, and its nonfunctional orientation. The National Association for the
Education of Young Children’s position statement on developmentally appropriate practices (Copple
& Bredekamp, 2009) identified kinds of play as physical, object, pretend (or dramatic), constructive,
and games with rules. Pellegrini (2009, 2011) categorized play into four dimensions: social, object,
locomotor, and pretend play.
Parten (1932), one of the earliest scholars to classify young children’s play, was also the first to
associate preschool children’s peer interactions with different levels of play. By focusing on char-
acteristics of social participation, she identified six levels of social interaction involved in play
ranging from solitary, nonsocial unoccupied play behaviors to more complex social interactive
behaviors involved in cooperative organized play. Although play researchers have found the devel-
opmental progression of Parten’s original levels of play somewhat problematic, refinements and
adaptations to this typology are used to characterize the social interactions preschool children exhibit
during peer social play (Coplan & Arbeau, 2009).
Peer interactions during play can be extensive or brief and can exhibit positive, negative, or
neutral tones (Fabes, Martin, & Hanish, 2009). Peer interactions are relational and depend on
children’s individual developmental processes, their relationships with playmates, and the context
of the play (Howes, 2011). Children who have progressed in their development of social competence,
for instance, can start games and sustain play with peers by expressing positive affect, attending to
and helping a play partner, being flexible and agreeable, resolving conflicts, and participating in
reciprocal turn taking (Howes, 2011; Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 2006). Social competence is
recognized as the central developmental task for young children (Rose-Krasnor & Denham, 2009)
and refers to the ability to interact successfully with peers such that play continues and the goals of
partners are met (Howes & Matheson, 1992). If children have not developed the social competence
EARLY EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT 3
needed to respond to peer suggestions and ideas or work through disagreements during play, the
play often ends (Howes & Matheson, 1992). Effective social play with peers also necessitates a joint
understanding between partners about the play acts in which they engage. Children achieve this
intersubjectivity with play partners as they negotiate ideas for introducing, extending, and modifying
play activities (Göncü, 1993).
Having an awareness of a joint understanding with a play partner as well as the ability to
negotiate, however, does not mean that peer interactions are without tension. Individual children
exhibit different behaviors with different play partners (Maccoby, 1990). For example, some children
are socially dominant when playing with specific children; they initiate frequently and get what they
want while play partners respond by submitting to the wants of dominant peers (Vaughn & Santos,
2009). Social dominance is relational—an “asymmetry between individuals and their relative com-
petitive abilities” (Hawley, 2002, p. 168). Some socially dominant children use coercive measures—
demanding, grabbing, and insulting—to achieve a desired resource (i.e., a toy or other material).
Other socially dominant children exhibit prosocial behaviors in their attempts for resource control
by helping peers, proposing alternatives, and making offers (Hawley, 2002).
The relationships children have with peer partners have a profound influence on peer play
behaviors (Fabes et al., 2009). Preschool peer relationships are changeable and exist on a friendship
continuum that extends from acquaintances to best friends (Berndt & McCandless, 2009). Young
children’s friendships may be temporary and fleeting, whereas others may be more stable (Howes,
2009). Children who are temporary friends (i.e., playmate like) typically engage in play because of
shared interests in activities. Peers in stable friendships also share interests, but the relationship
serves children’s affective needs as well (Howes, 1988). When friends play together, their interactions
are more supportive, prosocial, and cooperative than those of peers who are not friends (Rubin et al.,
2006). Like playing with nonfriends, children who play with friends also experience conflict and
express disagreements, but friend conflicts often can be resolved through negotiation and compro-
mise (Howes, 2009).
Young children generally choose to interact, play, and make friends with peers who are like
themselves in terms of gender, race, nationality, language, or shared interest in activities (Martin,
Fabes, & Hanish, 2011; Rubin et al., 2006). Of these domains, the most prominent criterion for the
selection of peer play partners is gender (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). When given a choice of play
partners, girls will select girls and boys will select boys most of the time. This phenomenon of gender
segregation in young children’s social play is ubiquitous in educational settings beginning around
age 3 and increases from ages 4 to 12 (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987; Martin & Fabes, 2001). In a study of
4.5- and 6.5-year-old children in school settings, for example, preschool-age children spent 30% of
their play time with opposite-sex partners, with most of the remaining time spent in play with same-
sex playmates. By first grade, however, children engaged in social play with opposite-sex peers for
only 6% of the time (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). In similar research with 4.5-year-olds, Martin and
Fabes (2001) found that children interacted with opposite-sex peers only 15% of the time. Thus,
children are mostly playing in same-sex groupings and interacting in particular ways that get
reinforced the more they play with same-sex peers (Martin & Fabes, 2001; Rose & Rudolph, 2006).
Social interactions among boys playing with boys differ substantially from those among girls playing
with girls. Boys prefer more rough-and-tumble, competitive, and risk-taking activities than do girls;
boys also are more likely than girls to exhibit more self-interest goals and dominance over peers
(Charlesworth & Dzur, 1987; Rose & Rudolph, 2006). Boys’ peer interactions during same-sex play
contain more commands, boasts, self-promotions, interruptions, and refusals to adopt peer suggestions
than do girls’ interactions in same-sex dyads (Maccoby, 1990; Maltz & Borker, 1983). Girls playing
with girls, by contrast, are more likely than same-sex boy groups to participate in cooperative activities
than in competitive ones (Martin et al., 2011; Mehta & Strough, 2009). Girls’ goals of peer play attend
more to maintaining relationships than those of boys playing in same-sex groupings (Rose & Rudolph,
2006). Same-sex girl dyads tend to engage in sustained and calmer interactions that contain more
prosocial behaviors such as agreements with the peer’s suggestions, reciprocity in turn taking, and
4 S. M. LAWRENCE
building on each other’s ideas (Charlesworth & Dzur, 1987; Fabes, Martin, & Hanish, 2003; Maccoby,
1990; Maltz & Borker, 1983; Martin & Fabes, 2001). These commonly observed gendered interactions
do not mean that girl–girl dyads do not compete or dominate peers or that boy–boy dyads do not
cooperate. When the object of play is a valued resource, for example, girls compete with one another
for resource control and boys can cooperate with one another, at least to some degree, to maintain
access to the resource (Charlesworth & Dzur, 1987).
Although children choose to play with same-sex partners far more often than those of the
opposite sex, boys and girls are more likely to be playmates with one another if there exists a task
that is novel, if the play requires cooperation, or if a teacher is responsible for the play grouping
rather than the children (Thorne, 1986). Green and Rechi’s (2006) extensive literature review of
cooperative and competitive interactions with mixed-sex play partners suggested that when play
involves competition for a valued resource, the results are often unequal: Boys dominate time with
the resource, and girls get less opportunity to play with the resource. Under certain conditions,
however, boys’ and girls’ interactions during play in mixed-sex dyads differ somewhat from the
gendered behaviors typically exhibited by same-sex dyads (Fabes et al., 2003; Holmes-Lonergan,
2003; Powlishta & Maccoby, 1990).
Findings by Powlishta and Maccoby (1990) in their study of mixed-sex pairs of preschool children
playing with a cartoon-viewing device, for example, showed that when playing without an adult
nearby boys dominated the play with demands and gained more access to the device. In the presence
of an adult, however, boys were less demanding and participated more equally in turn taking; as a
result, girls gained more access to the resource. Thus, the structure of the task and the influence of
adults during play may be able to shape how play evolves (Howes, 2011).
The facilitative actions of adults in particular can support children in their development of
cooperative and collaborative skills that can sustain peer play (Rogoff, 1998). Adult interventions
in children’s play by means of questioning, modeling, and offering assistance align with Vygotsky’s
(1978) concept of the zone of proximal development, whereby development progresses as children
engage in activities slightly above their ability with the help of adults or other children. Yelland and
Masters (2007) theorized that adult interactions for facilitating children’s play should attend to three
domains of scaffolding depending on the play context and children’s needs: cognitive scaffolding for
conceptual and procedural matters, technical scaffolding for using tools or objects, and affective
scaffolding for encouraging children to stay on task. Adults and children engaged in this type of
guided play or playful learning also provide children with increased opportunities for peer interac-
tion that can further their development (Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, Berk, & Singer, 2009).
The structures, values, and behaviors of children’s cultural and social communities also influence
their peer interactions and how they learn to play with other children (Howes, 2009; Rogoff, 1998;
Roopnarine, 2011). As children participate in play activities, they incorporate community values into
their interactions with each other. In some non-Western communities, for example, collaboration is
a valued part of daily life such that young children beginning at age 3 are expected to cooperate with
other children and are specifically taught how to build on one another’s ideas (Rogoff, 1998). By
contrast, many Euro-American preschool children from middle-class backgrounds acquire these
cooperative skills only when they reach preschool (not before school), which may be the first time
they have opportunities to interact with a large number of same-age peers (Fabes et al., 2009).
Forms of Digital Play

The affordances of new digital tablet technologies—their portability, their touchscreens, the capacity
for multiple-person viewing, and their small workspace requirements—all of which make them easy
for young children to use, have led to a small body of research on preschool children participating in
digital play. Like traditional play, however, digital play is difficult to define (Plowman, Stevenson,
Stephen, & McPake, 2012), a situation further complicated by the vast number, differing content,
and differing design of educational apps available for children. The number of educational iPad apps
available from Apple’s App Store as of June 2017 totaled more than 80,000 (Apple, 2017), and in a
review of paid educational apps, 72% of paid apps pertained to young children (Shuler, 2012). Yet
little is known about the learning goals of app developers (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015) or their ideas
about children’s play (Buckleitner, 2015).
Despite the volume and variety of content available for tablet apps, most educational apps for
young children are designed as either closed-design or open-design apps. And the manner in which
children engage with these apps influences what digital play looks like. Closed-design apps present
children with a number of interactive tasks, which, when completed correctly, result in a variety of
virtual rewards, including cheers, confetti, stickers, stars, music, and clapping characters. These
games tend to follow a behaviorist or transmission model of learning wherein children practice
particular literacy and numeracy skills and get rewards for their actions (Flewitt et al., 2015). By
contrast, open-design apps such as those pertaining to digital literacy, as well as painting, drawing,
and construction, follow a constructivist view of learning (Dezuanni, Dooley, Gattenhof, & Knight,
2015) and position children as creators rather than consumers of content (Lynch & Redpath, 2014;
Rowe & Miller, 2015).
Given the differences in types of apps and the ways in which children can engage in digital
play with them, some play scholars refer to digital play with general descriptors such as playful
explorations (Yelland, 2011, 2015). Other researchers depict digital play by focusing on levels,
forms, and types of digital play. Many of these forms and types of play have been adapted from
typologies of traditional play posited by numerous play scholars (Burghardt, 2011; Copple &
Bredekamp, 2009; Pellegrini, 2009; Rubin et al., 1983; among others). Couse and Chen’s (2010)
early study of children creating self-portraits on digital tablets, for example, referred to three
levels of tablet use: exploring/experimenting, investigating, and creating. Similarly, Moore’s
(2014) research on children’s digital play with open-design symbolic play apps identified four
playful ways of interacting with apps: sampling, experimenting, creating, and engaging in
pretense.
Some recent research has characterized digital play according to categories of play behaviors
children exhibit. For example, Bird and Edwards’s (2015) study of children engaged with digital
technologies identified two forms of behaviors—epistemic and ludic—that formed the basis of
their digital play framework. Epistemic behaviors included exploring, problem solving, and
acquiring skills with a digital technology, whereas ludic behaviors involved using the technology
to create (an image, scenario, or recording) and/or engage in pretend play. They claimed that
epistemic digital behaviors such as exploring the features and tools of a new technology were
necessary before children could use the technology for creating. In their study of preschool
children using eBook creation apps with iPads, Rowe and Miller (2015) also identified two
groupings of behaviors: Product-focused behaviors involved children naming and narrating
images, whereas process-focused behaviors represented children engaging in pretense and explor-
ing device functions.
Common features among these digital play descriptors include some type of demarcation between
the process of play and a resulting creation as well as a distinction between quick exploratory play
movements and more sustained play actions. These behaviors, forms, and types of digital play,
however, are somewhat app dependent; that is, open-design apps typically provide opportunities to
create images, stories, and videos, and they lend themselves to more and longer sustained play. The
task-related features of game-type apps, by contrast, tend to result in fast-paced play.
Peer Interactions During Digital Play With Tablet Apps

A growing number of studies has explored how young children’s digital play (both alone and with
others) can be valuable for literacy learning (Flewitt et al., 2015; Gattenhof & Dezuanni, 2015; Lynch
& Redpath, 2014; Neumann & Neumann, 2014; Wohlwend, 2015) and enhancing creativity through
digital drawing, animation, and photography, among other things (Dezuanni & Gattenhof, 2015;
6 S. M. LAWRENCE
Knight & Dooley, 2015; Rowe & Miller, 2015). Although focused primarily on the production of
stories, eBooks, and drawings as indications of learning from digital play, data from these studies
also pertain to children’s social interactions to some degree.
Wohlwend’s (2015) study, for example, involving kindergarten children in groups of three
creating animated stories with a puppetry app on a shared iPad, reported that children were able
to engage in collaborative literacy play by coordinating their ideas for stories, exploring multimodal
features of apps, and negotiating moves. Wohlwend provided limited information, however, as to
what coordinating and negotiating behaviors looked like or how three children interacted together in
a digital space. A similar study of early literacy and digital technologies by Flewitt et al. (2015)
explored the ways in which iPads integrated into classroom practice can enhance the teaching and
learning of literacy practices. Analysis of interview data from teachers and observations of children
playing with open-design apps revealed that during digital play preschool children collaborated
around the iPad by sharing, taking turns, and supporting one another’s moves and creations.
However, the number of peers playing with the iPad during the collaborations and what the
collaborative interactions looked like were not evident.
Recent research has identified additional features and contextual factors surrounding chil-
dren’s social interactions during digital play. Moore (2014), for example, explored the ways in
which prekindergarten students engaged with open-design tablet apps in classroom-based digital
play while also attending to the contextual factors that influenced children’s play choices. Video
data from children’s conversations, actions, and gestures combined with screen-capture data of
their created content as they played individually on side-by-side iPads revealed that children
engaged in a variety of types of digital play—sampling, exploring, and creating—as they shared
ideas, suggested moves, tested out actions, and provided technical assistance to one another.
These collaborative interactions, however, were few in number and were voluntary; if children
wished to play independently, they could because they did not share an iPad or have a need to
collaborate.
Settings in which children are required to share devices in order to play provide more insight
into the processes and outcomes of collaborative interactions. Research involving what
Kucirkova, Messer, Sheehy, and Fernández Panadero (2014) termed “collaborative engagement”
(p. 176), for example, focused on both individual children’s hands-on engagement with educa-
tional apps as well as their engagement with peers during digital play in two- to five-member
groups. Analyses from observations of children’s movements and their talk revealed that children
displayed “collaborative reasoning and joint problem-solving” (p. 181) as they contributed to a
multimodal story. The variations in group size as well as unknown information about the
composition of groups makes it difficult to determine the dimensions of the collaborative
engagement—that is, who was collaborating with whom and for how long and what noncolla-
borators were doing, for example.
Falloon and Khoo’s (2014) research involving 5-year-old children playing with open-design apps
in dyads provided extensive detail on children’s talk as they played. Analyses of data utilizing audio
recordings of children’s conversations and a display-capture tool to examine finger placements on an
iPad screen revealed that although children played in pairs, they primarily took turns independently
completing tasks, with some peers observing and affirming choices. Their findings also revealed
some instances of children interacting collaboratively by suggesting ideas about content and assisting
with technical features; episodes of peers engaging in competition for control of the device were also
noted. Although audio data of children’s talk and screen capture of finger placements illustrated
some of the outcomes and complexities of dyads of preschoolers playing in digital spaces, additional
data on children’s other nonverbal interactions, such as their body movements and facial gestures,
are needed in order to obtain a more complete picture of what the social interactions looked like and
how the reported collaborative moves were orchestrated.
The Current Study

The present qualitative study builds on the established, though limited, research on young
children’s digital play with peers. In order to delineate more precisely the features, factors, and
situations that enable the previously reported collaborative processes with digital play to occur,
children’s verbal and nonverbal interactions were closely examined as they tapped, swiped, and
scrolled while playing on an iPad with a peer (rather than playing independently) using a shared
device (rather than separate devices). Two guiding questions were explored using a constructivist
grounded theory approach: What do children’s interactions look like as they play together on a
shared iPad? And, in what ways do contextual factors of the preschool setting such as classroom
climate, curricular activities, and established routines influence children’s interactions during peer
digital play?
Method
Participants
The participants in the semester-long study of social interactions between young children were preschool
children, early childhood educators, and adult researchers. There were 23 five-year-old children in the class,
and 22 had parental permission to be involved in the study. Because the schedules of two children conflicted
with observation times, only 20 children participated in the study. There were 11 were boys and 9 girls in the
study. Seventeen children were White, two children were biracial (African American and White), and one
child was Latina. English was the first language of all children, and no child had a diagnosed disability.
Two White female teachers had primary responsibility for enacting the play-based curriculum;
another White female teacher had a part-time role. All three educators used digital technologies for
personal communications but did not use them in curricula. Seven female researchers (the primary
researcher and six research assistants) were involved with the data collection and some preliminary
data analysis for the project. The primary researcher and three assistants were White; three assistants
were women of Asian heritage.
Setting
The preschool was situated in a private early childhood education center on a university campus
located in a lower to middle socioeconomic community; the school served both university families
and those of the local community. At specific times during the day assigned pairs of children had the
opportunity to play with a shared iPad in a classroom activity center for a 15-min session. The 20
children observed in the study were involved in at least one session; eight children participated in
two sessions, and five participated in three. All children had different partners for the sessions except
for one dyad that was observed twice. Play with iPads was voluntary, and children could leave the
session when they wished. No child opted out of iPad play.
All children expressed a desire to play and were willing to wait for a turn to play with whomever
was assigned as a peer partner. Because teachers believed that all children should have equal
opportunity to participate in digital play and that children should be encouraged to play with a
range of children, teachers kept lists of who had played with iPads and when. Thus, teachers’ equity
concerns in combination with established classroom routines and children’s attendance influenced
the dyad formations for the study. Children came to the iPad table in assigned pairs regardless of
their play histories. None of the children in the 10 boy–girl dyads, six male dyads, or four female
dyads refused to play together; indeed, all were eager to get started.
For each of the 20 sessions of peer play observed, the iPad was placed on a table with the device
open to the home screen showing only the apps. At the beginning of peer play sessions children were
instructed to share the use of the iPad and decide together which app(s) they wanted to play. All
children had learned about and practiced with the apps during the previous semester when the
8 S. M. LAWRENCE
researcher met with each child individually over a period of 8 weeks to review app features and
menus, demonstrate app functioning, allow time to explore, and provide assistance as necessary.
The device was loaded with six educational apps. Five were closed-design apps focusing on
literacy, numeracy, and shape/size recognition: iWriteWords (Giggle Lab, 2013), Word Wagon HD
(Duck, Duck, Moose, 2014b), Park Math HD (Duck, Duck, Moose, 2014a), Bugs and Numbers (Little
Bit Studio, 2012), and Monkey Preschool Lunchbox (Thup Games, 2014). One was an open-design
coloring/painting app: Doodle Buddy (Pinger, 2012). These apps were selected by teachers from a list
of 15 curated apps identified by digital play researchers and early learning associations.
Data Collected
Observational field notes of children’s verbal and nonverbal social interactions as they engaged in
dyads with iPad apps in an activity center of the classroom constituted the primary source of data.
Each iPad session was observed and monitored by a pair of researchers (either the primary
researcher and an undergraduate research assistant or two research assistants). During digital play
sessions one researcher recorded field notes of the interactions as they occurred while the other
observed and scaffolded the play. The research assistants were provided with guidelines on how to
scaffold/intervene in sessions. Specifically, they were expected to remind children about sharing and
monitor turn taking, provide technical assistance as needed, and converse with children as they
might at other activity centers.
A secondary source of data was used to provide contextual information about children and their
environments from the perspectives of educators in the classroom. Near the conclusion of the field
observations, two of the three educators at the site participated in individual hour-long semistruc-
tured interviews (Seidman, 2006) that were audio recorded and transcribed; one educator who
experienced a serious family emergency could not participate. Open-ended questions focused on
prior teaching experiences, views about children’s digital technology use, impressions about the
presence of the iPad activity center in the classroom, and perspectives on children’s behaviors with
peers during iPad play. Examples of some of those questions include “What were your initial feelings
about incorporating iPads in your preschool classroom? Are they the same or different now?” “Do
you think there is a place for digital technology in preschool settings?” “Did you notice children
acting differently because of the presence of iPads; can you describe what you noticed?” “What sticks
out for you in terms of peer interactions while children were playing with iPads?” “What surprised
you the most about young children using digital technologies?” “What image of children playing
together with iPads will remain with you?”
Data Analysis
Data from field notes were analyzed using constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006), an
interpretive method that can be used to study both individual and group activities as well as social
processes to understand both the what and how of phenomena under study. A constructivist
grounded theory approach recognizes that data are social constructions between the researcher
and the participants (Charmaz, 2008). This focus on processes, interpretation, and coconstructions
is especially appropriate for arriving at understandings of how children interact with one another
during digital play and how context may shape actions and interpretations of that play.
Observational data from peer play sessions were reviewed each week to obtain an overall sense of
the talk, gestures, actions, and general impressions of the play episodes. Next, because the units of
analysis were social interactions (i.e., verbal and nonverbal behaviors), text of observational data was
divided into behavior-based meaning units during open coding. Meaning units were labeled with
gerunds in order to capture discrete verbal or nonverbal peer actions during the play activity, such as
“nodding in approval,” “rapidly swiping,” “leaning over seat,” “raising voice,” “making random
squiggles,” and so on.
Because coding is an iterative process and is ongoing as new data are collected (Charmaz, 2006),
codes were created and applied by the lead researcher in collaboration with six research assistants
and reviewed and refined during weekly data analysis meetings. After a few analysis meetings, more
than 100 codes of discrete actions from four sessions were reviewed by the team in order to identify
focused codes—codes that were recurring, were salient, and could be used to label larger chunks of
data (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Some of the focused codes included suggesting, helping, demanding,
grabbing, laughing, cocreating, and so on. Intercoder agreement on the focused coding was checked
by an early childhood educator, not associated with the study, who applied focused codes to five of
the 20 peer sessions. A comparison of 75 focused codes applied to the same sessions by the two
coders yielded 93% agreement. Focused codes identified were then applied to the 15 observational
field note reports remaining.
Focused codes also were used during qualitative content analysis of transcript data from the two
educator interviews. Qualitative content analysis is a systematic, context-bound, interpretive process
that focuses on determining meanings of experiences (Drisko & Maschi, 2016) and is well suited for
analyzing textual data such as interview transcripts (Downe-Wamboldt, 1992; Mayring, 2000, 2014).
Techniques and approaches to qualitative content analysis are varied and can involve both deductive
and inductive methods (Berg, 1998; Winston, 2012). A direct qualitative content analysis approach
(Hsieh & Shannon, 2005), for example, permits the use of codes and themes that have been
identified from analytical processes of one form of data of a study in order to label phenomena
occurring in different forms of data.
Educators’ stated perceptions during interviews about children’s digital play interactions, for
example, were labeled with some of the focused codes constructed from earlier rounds of analysis
of observational notes. Excerpts of interview transcripts such as “showing the other child how to do
something,” “experimenting with different parts, sort of discovering,” and “trying to take it [the
iPad] into a corner for himself” were labeled with previously constructed focused codes such as
helping, collaborating, hoarding, and exploring.
These focused codes from primary and secondary data in conjunction with written analytic
memos—brief narratives about possible relationships between pieces of data (Glaser, 1998)—
informed the construction of categories of behaviors such as cooperative assisting, turn-taking
procedures, exploring and testing features, following game rules, and cocreating images and pretend
scenarios, among others. Further constant comparisons (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) of categories with
categories, codes with codes, and memos with memos illuminated relationships, similarities, and
differences among pieces of data and led to the construction of themes. Continued comparisons of
relevant themes, categories, and codes provided an “interpretive understanding” (Charmaz, 2008,
p. 402) of peer interactions during digital play with iPad apps.
Findings and Discussion

As young children engaged in digital peer play with iPad apps, they displayed a range of observable
behaviors. At times they laughed and had fun; on other occasions they encountered tensions and
struggled to work through them. These behaviors and experiences appeared related to differences
between individual children and their relationships as well as the procedures, structures, and objects
of the play setting. Three overarching themes captured the connections between children’s interac-
tions during peer digital play and the context in which they took place: (a) the struggle for resource
control; (b) cooperating, collaborating, and having fun during digital play; and (c) the influence of
app design on children’s digital play behaviors.
The Struggle for Resource Control: “It’s my turn now!”

In 12 of the 20 peer play sessions analyzed, competition for control of the iPad was prominent.
Children playing in those 12 sessions included seven mixed-sex dyads, three male dyads, and two
10 S. M. LAWRENCE
female dyads. Even though children were instructed (and sometimes reminded repeatedly) to
share the device as they played with various apps, many children did not. At times one member
of a dyad directed efforts at gaining control of the iPad and maintaining possession for as long
as possible while a peer partner watched, grew increasingly discontent, and then struggled to
have some control during the play. Typical verbalizations accompanying these competitive
encounters were demands for a turn, exclamations about unfairness, and objections to the
partner’s moves. Children also initiated a number of physical actions to maintain control; at
times both children engaged in finger disputes on the screen as each tried to execute moves
before the other. On other occasions, children maneuvered to exclude peer partners from
participating by grabbing the device, blocking visibility, and restraining hands so that no
moves were possible. The following excerpt is representative of sessions that involved substantial
verbal and physical attempts to control iPad play:
At the start of the session Whitney quickly selected the Monkey Preschool Lunchbox app; then she and Ryan
began tapping the screen simultaneously. Suddenly, Whitney reached over and held Ryan’s hand to prevent him
from playing, but Ryan continued touching the screen with his other hand. These behaviors occurred with no
conversation from either child. After the completion of a few quick activities during which they both raced to
get to the screen, the matching game appeared, and Whitney proclaimed loudly, “I wanna do it by myself.”
Ryan consented. Yet, whenever Ryan attempted to play, Whitney pushed his hand away. When the sticker
selection board appeared, for example, Whitney announced, “I’ll pick a sticker” and held Ryan’s hand to try to
keep him from picking.… Whitney continued to control the session completing tasks and preventing Ryan
from playing. As Whitney played, Ryan sat and watched, crossing his arms holding himself and grimacing.
After Whitney completed a few more games, she said, “You can pick the sticker!” Ryan picked a sticker. Then
he watched and fidgeted while Whitney played the matching game. Suddenly, he stood up. When the sticker
board appeared, Whitney said in a demanding voice, “You can pick the sticker!” Ryan responded in a loud,
angry tone, “You can do it!”
Even though the researchers reminded Whitney and Ryan about sharing, Whitney would comply
with their suggestions for one or two turns and then return to maneuvers to take back control. As a
result, the struggle for control continued such that the focus on getting to the screen, making
demands, and objecting to moves seemed to take precedence over engaging with app activities and
having fun.
Competition for resource control is not unusual among preschool children during traditional play
(Ramsey, 1991; Vaughn & Santos, 2009); children often use commands as well as pushing and
pulling strategies during traditional play to get control of particular toys (Charlesworth &
LaFreniere, 1983; Hawley, 2002; Powlishta & Maccoby, 1990). Children have also displayed these
behaviors during digital play when required to share a digital device (Falloon & Khoo, 2014; Flewitt
et al., 2015). Extensive struggles during play, however, can be detrimental to the play experience if
“procedure-related interactions” (Ljung-Djärf, 2008, p. 62) rather than play-related ones characterize
peer exchanges. When partners were vigilant about monitoring turn taking for nearly an entire
session, for example, their engagement with play and their talk about play was minimized.
When considering why some peer play sessions were more competitive and others less so, factors
pertaining to individual children, their social situations, as well as their home and community
environments must be considered. Although children’s ages differed by only a few months, children
seemed to display varying degrees of social competence when interacting with their peers during iPad
play. Manifestations of social competence can be attributed in part to children’s individual differences
in temperament and developmental maturity (Howes, 2011), differences that enable some children to
be more capable of sharing and engaging in collaborative turn taking than others (Rubin et al., 2006).
The prominence of controlling behaviors can also be explained by factors beyond individual
development and temperaments. The number of boy and girl participants in the prekindergarten
classroom under study also may have influenced the tone of the play. Nine girls and 11 boys were
enrolled, making up 10 mixed-sex dyads, six same-sex male dyads, and four same-sex female dyads.
Girls as well as boys can and do display competitive behaviors, but boys’ play with other boys
involves more demanding and controlling interactions than when girls play with girls (Charlesworth
& Dzur, 1987; Maccoby, 1990; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). These gendered ways of interacting tend to
carry over to mixed-sex play arrangements (Powlishta & Maccoby, 1990). The distinctive competitive
character in 12 of the 20 dyadic play sessions observed may have been influenced by the character
and strength of boys’ interactive style.
Differences in the demands placed on children’s digital play activities when they occur in
school-based versus home-based settings may also have influenced the prevalence of competition
for control. For example, children frequently commented that when playing with tablets and
smartphones at home, they were able to grasp, hold, and move a device for as long as they
wished. Yet children participating in the preschool setting did not have access to individual
devices; instead, they had to share a device and experienced restrictions on what they could do,
for how long, and with whom. In other words, children experienced new demands placed on
their digital play activities.
Differences in the demands of settings can give rise to tensions during activities that must be
worked out, which often requires children to develop new motives for the activities (Fleer, 2014;
Hedegaard, 2012, 2014). The struggles children experienced with each other over their interpreta-
tions of the number, length, and quality of the turns are understandable given that the demands of
home-based digital play, for some children, likely did not involve these restrictions. Thus, children
needed to create new motives for digital play with peers—motives that some children may not have
fully developed. The following excerpt illustrates how a few children responded to the new demands
of classroom-based digital play with peers:
When Tyler and Felix arrived at the iPad table with the home screen showing the apps, Tyler quickly picked
Monkey Preschool Lunchbox. When the puzzle game appeared, they both tried to move the pieces. Then Tyler
moved the iPad to face him. Felix leaned over and tried to move the puzzle pieces, but Tyler had his finger on
the pieces first and was able to complete the whole puzzle. The next activity involved picking the biggest fruit.
Felix attempted to pick the fruit, but Tyler had his finger on the screen first. When the sticker board appeared,
and it was time to pick a sticker, Felix managed to select a star sticker and placed it on the board. Tyler then
leaned over to Felix and shouted “Hey!” and then switched the app to Bugs and Numbers and then back to the
home screen. Felix inched in to select a new game, but Tyler picked his hand up, moved it off the screen, and
switched back to Lunchbox. When the puzzle appeared again Felix asked, “Can I do one?” Tyler didn’t
acknowledge him; instead, he finished the puzzle and switched apps. Felix asked multiple times if he could
play and changed his position so that he could get to the screen, but Tyler continued to move Felix’s hands
away. The researchers reiterated the initial instructions about the need to share the device and then reposi-
tioned the iPad so that both Felix and Tyler could see it. Tyler objected to the move and remarked, “Now I
don’t have anything.” He sat and watched as Felix took a turn; then, he turned the iPad back to face him. The
researchers explained that if someone holds onto the iPad, then the other child can’t see or play, and they need
to share. Tyler then responded emphatically, “But if one of us doesn’t do it a lot, we won’t get to higher level.
We need to get to the next level!”
Felix displayed interest in exploring some of the activities and was content to take turns during the
play. Tyler’s focus while playing several of the games, however, was on getting to the next level, and
he suggested that he needed to be in control and have multiple turns in order to do that. This motive
for digital play likely worked well for him playing iPad games alone at home but did not fit the
demands of classroom-based digital play with peers.
For some peer partners, resistance to sharing was due not to individual game-based goals but
rather to the person with whom they were expected to share. Abigail, for example, in conversa-
tion with researchers who intervened during her session with a female classmate to model how to
share, remarked, “I know how to share, but I don’t want to!” It seemed that her reluctance to
share concerned the relationship she had with her peer partner that day—a partner she did not
choose.
Teachers’ expectations for equity in play when combined with scheduling and attendance situa-
tions resulted in teachers determining which children would be next in line for iPad play even if
those children had limited play histories. Consequently, some of the assigned dyads during iPad play
were friends who often played together; others played together less frequently. One of the criteria for
12 S. M. LAWRENCE
mutually satisfying social play is that peers want to play with each other (Howes, 2011). Yet not all
children participating in iPad play had the opportunity to select with whom they played. Having to
share play and play objects with peers not of their own choosing may have further influenced some
children’s ability to adjust to the demands of the digital play environment.
Cooperating, Collaborating, and Having Fun During Digital Play

Even though in 12 of the 20 sessions struggles for control of the device were prominent, not all of the
12 sessions remained competitive throughout. In five of the 12 competitive sessions children
exhibited controlling behaviors mostly in the beginning. Thereafter, the tone of the sessions shifted
as a result of adult intervention, a change in app, or evolution of the play. After the shift, decisions
about turn taking were smoother and conversations about choices seemed simpler.
Classroom teachers noticed these shifts in behavior away from competition for control in some of
the sessions. Although they were aware of children’s physical moves for control, their demands, and
their impatience over getting a turn, teachers were not concerned that they would get out of hand.
Rather, they viewed these behaviors as quite common and not particular to iPad activities. As one
teacher reported, “I don’t think it [iPad play] was really that different than any other activity.
Anything new will attract a certain number of curious children asking when they can have a turn or
becoming impatient and demanding a turn.” Teachers felt, though, that these behaviors were
manageable. They also believed that they would diminish over time as “the newness wore off” and
as children became “more comfortable” with digital play and each other.
In the session depicted here, when Connor and Lily began playing with Word Wagon, a closed-
design literacy app, Lily immediately took control of the device and had several turns in a row while
blocking Connor’s view of the screen. After the researchers intervened to remind the pair of the need
to share, the tone of the session shifted a bit:
Lily responded to the researcher’s suggestion to share by positioning the iPad so Connor could see and reach it.
When the choice of images to spell appeared, Connor selected train and smiled about his success in spelling it.
Then, Lily quickly stated “It’s mine now,” selected plum, and spelled it. Then she said, “Next one is mine
again!” But Connor responded, “No, it will be mine; we can share!” Lily was a little hesitant but then turned the
iPad to Connor … Throughout the item selection process in Word Wagon, both remarked excitedly about the
objects passing by on the conveyor belt. They named the objects, laughing and relating in some way to several
of them. When a key image appeared, Connor was animated, “Key, we turn the car on … vroom.” And when
the image of baby as a choice of a spelling word, Lily said to Connor excitedly, “Get the baby, get the baby!”
After several words, Lily switched to Park Math and selected a subtraction game involving smiling apples falling
from a tree during which Connor simulated the app’s moves by shaking his body. Then he suggested, “Let’s go
to another place!” Lily quickly agreed and switched to the home screen saying, “Yeah, we have not done this”
(pointing to the Monkey Preschool Lunchbox app) and asked, “Want this one?” Connor said yes. Lily quickly
played the first two games involving counting fruit and identifying different fruit. Then the matching game
appeared, and both children played together to make the matches. When Connor had difficulty matching the
lemon, he stopped and looked at Lily (seemingly perplexed) and said, “No lemon’s up there!” Lily said, “I can
help” and finished the match. Connor cheered “nice!”
Even though Lily continued to initiate moves and monitor the turn taking, the tension between her
and Connor seemed to subside. They easily asked each other questions and accepted advice. And
their prior focus on procedure-related interactions seemed to give way to more play-focused joint
interactions such as inquiring, suggesting, and making decisions.
Not only did children exhibit more collaborative behaviors as sessions shifted away from
competition, but in eight of the 20 sessions there was a noticeable collaborative quality from the
onset. Children’s interactions during those sessions included partners agreeing about decisions,
suggesting alternative moves, and assisting with technical concerns. During those sessions some
pairs played by exploring app menus and tools while completing app tasks; others created images or
engaged in pretend scenarios. The excerpt here with James and Khloe playing with Doodle Buddy, a
painting and drawing creativity app, is representative of a session that was collaborative from the
beginning:
With the Doodle Buddy opened, James chose the mountain scene from the background tool and exclaimed
“awesome.” Holding the iPad with both hands, he then made several moves including adding fire stamps
(“stickers”) to the mountain. Khloe stretched from her seat to see the screen and named what she saw, “The
whole mountain on fire!” They both smiled.… Then, Khloe said, “I want to do a new one.” She selected the
stamp selection tool but also clicked around other tools and tabs on the toolbar.… While the stamp tool was
visible, James saw a skull with crossbones and voiced “skeleton” and quickly began adding skeletons on top of
the background. Khloe chuckled then suggested, “Let’s do another.” James responded, “I want to try bombs”
and quickly proceeded to put bomb stamps around the image. When Khloe saw footprints as a stamp option,
she said, “Oh, stinky feet.” As James continued adding bombs to the screen, Khloe said, “You’re gonna
explode!” Next, James put some footprints on a cloud and said, “Feet are going to the clouds.” Khloe then
suggested, “How about we try space?” and selected the outer space background. James jumped in, said, “My
turn,” and began to erase the feet that he put on earlier. First, Khloe then James remarked “Bye, stinky feet!”
Then James asked with a smile and joking tone, “So what about the feet?” Khloe replied, “The feet exploded
into space by a spaceship.” She then added a stamp of an emoji face with tears to the image, and James reacted,
“Wah, wah baby. There’s a crying baby.” Khloe replied while pointing to the emoji stamp, “No, he’s gonna
throw up, he’s gonna throw up. Babies are throwing up in outer space!”
James and Khloe were one of three mixed-sex pairs who collaborated, rather than competed, during
app tasks and seemed to appreciate and enjoy each other’s ideas and comments. Together they
laughed and had fun creating their images, naming them, and imagining stories as they played.
The Influence of App Design on Children’s Digital Play Behaviors

The range of behaviors children exhibited while interacting with each other during iPad play ranged
from competitive to collaborative with some combinations in between. As previously noted, con-
textual factors pertaining to the structure of setting, the individual actors, and/or the relationships
between them seemed to influence the quality of the play. Children’s interactions during digital play
may also have been shaped by the digital device itself and the types of apps children used. As a highly
marketed and successful tablet device, the iPad is a prized resource, and for many young children it
is “more like an interactive toy than a computer” (Dezuanni et al., 2015, p. 1). The child participants
in this classroom were not immune to its status and allure. When the specifics of the study were
introduced to children, many remarked joyfully, “Oh, boy, iPad!”
Children were also familiar with the concept of apps and referred to all apps as “games” regardless
of whether they selected closed-design apps that had game-like qualities and right answers or an
open-design app that had palettes and tools for creating images. Their actions as they “played
games”—moves, gestures, expressions, conversations—seemed to align with four types of digital play
previously identified in digital play research: practice/task-related play (Falloon, 2013), exploration-
related play (Bird & Edwards, 2015; Moore, 2014), construction-related play, and pretense-related
play (Moore, 2014; Rowe & Miller, 2015). And in some instances the type of digital play in which
children participated seemed to have an influence on the tone of the play session.
Exploratory Play
In the 20 peer play episodes analyzed, children in 11 dyads engaged in some degree of exploratory
play with both closed- and open-design apps. They experimented with different tools; moved app
characters around; and clicked, scrolled, and tapped to see what would happen next. Often children
participated in this exploration during turn taking while their peer partners observed. Other times
children explored menus together by offering suggestions to each other on what to try next and
commenting on each other’s successful moves.
Teachers frequently witnessed this exploratory play. One teacher remarked that she saw digital
play “as another means of learning,” noting that “there’s a level of discovery as they experiment and
14 S. M. LAWRENCE
figure things out.” These explorations are believed to be a precursor to being able to play app games
or create a digital product (Bird & Edwards, 2015). But beyond the commonality of exploratory play
across app design, children exhibited marked differences in the types of play they experienced as they
engaged with particular apps.
Closed-design Apps and Practice/task Play

In 15 of the 20 sessions children engaged in practice/task-related play as they interacted with closed-
design structured literacy, numeracy, shape identification, and puzzle apps during all or part of their
sessions. Typically children tapped and swiped through activities that appeared on the screen and
when arriving at the correct answer obtained a virtual award—animations, applause, confetti, and/or
the chance to select their own sticker reward. Even though these apps have inflexible and preset
features, children seemed to enjoy completing tasks and wanted to do them over and over. And
because of the obvious demarcation of beginnings and endings of activities within the apps, these
apps seemed well suited to turn taking.
Practice/task play also contained considerable conversation between peer partners as they nar-
rated their moves and cheered each other along during the “games.” During the session in which
Connor and Lily, excerpted above, played with Word Wagon, Park Math, and Monkey Preschool
Lunchbox, for example, they completed tasks and practiced skills, but they also exchanged comments
and sought each other’s input on choices from time to time.
Although some children participating in practice/task play with closed-design apps can experience
cooperative exchanges, apps with a closed design and an enticing reward system seemed to foster more
competition than collaboration for some children in this study. Staying with an app for continuous
turns enabled children to receive more virtual praise, accumulate more stickers, or achieve higher
levels. One teacher remarked about the detrimental effect of these extrinsic rewards on social inter-
actions: “… the barrage of stimuli in terms of graphics, sounds, and the fast pace of the action sort of
thing really ramps up the desire for more, and it almost cues that reinforcement.” Thus, maintaining
control of the device, as depicted in the sessions above with Whitney and Ryan as well as Tyler and
Felix, was the easiest route for achieving their individual goals. But as seen in those sessions,
competitive game-playing goals can conflict with the social goals of peer play (Wang & Ching, 2003).
Open-design Apps: Construction and Pretend Play

When children played with Doodle Buddy, an open-design app intended for creating/constructing
images, they interacted collaboratively and displayed different play types, namely, construction-related
play and pretense-related play. Doodle Buddy offers multiple choices of colors and sizes of crayons/paints
for free-hand drawing, a variety of preset background scenes, and an extensive number of stamps
(“stickers”) and stencils that afford children extensive possibilities for creating images together. Both
educators interviewed commented on the advantages for some children of virtual paints and crayons
available in open apps. As one teacher remarked, “I think that children who don’t have a lot of fine motor
control can get frustrated when they cannot achieve what they want to with their hands.” She noticed that
for one child in particular, “what was in his head was getting to the iPad more easily than what his idea
would have if he had to use crayons or markers.” Her teaching partner felt similarly that “a finger moving
across a screen was much easier for some children” and gave them not only “the opportunity and tools to
create” but also the motivation to participate with others in making those creations.
During the four episodes of construction-related play observed in two mixed-sex dyads and two same-
sex female dyads, for example, two children worked together on one screen to coconstruct images with
finger drawings, stamps, and stencils of characters on a blank or predesigned background scene. And
while adding elements to their images, they offered suggestions and accepted each other’s ideas.
When playing with the Doodle Buddy app, Rose and Brandon seemed open to ideas and enjoyed
their play. But during the majority of their session before they selected Doodle Buddy they played
games on closed-designed apps and displayed intense competition for control—moving the device
out of view and making demands on each other. When they switched from practice/task play to
creating images on Doodle Buddy, their exchanges were more agreeable:
Suddenly Brandon said, “Hey Rose, wanna play a different game?” Rose responded enthusiastically, “Yeah, great
idea! But, I want to choose a game. Can I choose a game?” Brandon ignored her request and switched to Doodle
Buddy. As Brandon began to explore the colors of the crayon tool, Rose offered a suggestion. “You can write your
name.” Brandon responded, “Yeah, and you can write other words—like D-O-G.” While Brandon explored the
crayon tool for writing words, Rose suggested, “Hey Brandon, let’s make a beach.” Brandon responded, “Like a
snow beach?” Rose said, “Yeah.” She selected a beach scene for a background and began reviewing the stamp and
stencil images; then she suggested, “Hey Brandon, I have a great idea for a snow beach!” and added bicycle
images. Brandon reacted with a smile to the images (which he referred as motorcycles) and proclaimed, “I love
motorcycles.” Next, Brandon returned to the crayon tool and drew green squiggles near the bicycles while
commenting on the scene they were creating, “Look out! Now there’s green seaweed on the beach!”
Although aspects of struggle for control are still evident, the focus on creating an image (i.e., construc-
tion-related play) combined with the absence of game features and rewards seemed to pave the way for
more give-and-take interactions such as agreeing to suggestions and extending each other’s ideas.
Walker and Owen, who also engaged in competition for screen control when using a closed-
design app, seemed to enjoy exploring app features and elements as well as seeing the outcomes of
their moves on the image they were creating when they used Doodle Buddy:
Walker made the first move on the app and selected a jungle background. Then Owen said, “I want to add a
stencil,” and picked a flower stencil. Walker then commented, “Make a lot of them. You should smudge it,
smudge it all around!” Owen ignored Walker’s suggestion about smudging and returned to his original idea
adding flowers and began to color the flower stencil in red. But when the stencil disappeared from the image, he
uttered “Oh!” and frowned. Walker then injected, “That’s OK, we can do stamps.” Owen decided to continue
with the stencils saying, “I’m gonna do a bug.” But looking at the choices of bugs in the stencil tool, he decided
to try Walker’s idea, “I’ll do it with stamps.” After Owen added some bugs, Walker declared, “I want to pick
now!” and applied some alien-type stamps. Owen then decided he wanted to smudge his bugs, “I want to
smudge it!” Walker added, “I want to smudge it, too! I want to smudge it all around! Let’s pick more aliens!”
Owen began trying to fill the page with bugs while Walker tried to fill the page with aliens. However, their rapid
smudging caused the app to freeze. They both clicked around here and there and then stared at the screen
contemplating what they should do next. Owen suggested, “We could just do a different game.” But Walker
said, “I like this; let’s try to do the same one.”
Although there seemed to be a sense of urgency to spread particular elements throughout the image
(i.e., smudge), Walker and Owen were able to participate in the smudging together and gave each
other some latitude to express ideas and accept suggestions that were offered.
In addition to exploring and creating with the open-design app, children also created brief
imagined situations to accompany their constructed images. On a few occasions children talked to
the characters in scenes, as when Brandon cautioned the motorcycles (and imagined beachgoers) to
watch out for the seaweed in the image he and Rose created. In another dyad children injected
imagined actions into their still images, such as when James reported that feet were going to the
clouds and Khloe remarked that babies were throwing up in outer space. Children also seemed to
add themselves to the ministories they were creating, as in Khloe and Sheryln’s play session:
Khloe suggested, “Let’s go to the beach!” … Sheryln enthusiastically responded, “Yeah!” and when the beach
background became visible on the screen, they both uttered, “Oooh.” Then they began exploring different colors for
the crayon tool.… After they decided their picture was finished, they shook to erase and then changed the
background to a castle scene.… Sheryln then whispered some ideas to Khloe who agreed and responded with
laughter, “Yeah, that’s funny.” Sheryln subsequently verbalized several ideas about what to add to the image, “How
about fairies? Maybe we can put, uh, disco balls.” Thereafter, Khloe exclaimed gleefully, “We’re going to have a disco
ball (smiling and dancing in her seat) because they’re having a great party!” Khloe then began to fill the castle with
blond-haired fairies. After pausing Sheryln disclosed, “I’m going to do a different thing,” as she switched the
selection on the stamp tool from the white blonde-haired fairy sticker to the black-haired fairy sticker and then to the
brunette fairy sticker. When all her fairies were part of the image, she announced, “I’m going to a different ball.”
Khloe laughed and suggested “Let’s put frogs on their faces.” Sheryln responded, “I’m going to put balloons” and
16 S. M. LAWRENCE
proceeded to put a balloon on a fairy’s face. As they inspected their image, they both began laughing loudly. And
they continued laughing as Sheryln put more balloons and Khloe put more frogs on the fairies’ faces.
While creating their first image, both Sheryln and Khloe seemed excited about the beach scene, as if
they were going to the beach. Similarly, in the castle scene, Khloe danced in her seat with joy when
she announced that not only were the fairies having a party but she was going to one too (i.e., a disco
ball). Sheryln enthusiastically expanded on Khloe’s imagined scenario, declaring that she also
intended to go to a castle party but that she would be attending a “different ball” with fairies that
had different colored hair and balloons.
These brief instances of children projecting ideas and scenarios onto characters, situations, and
themselves during digital play align with the criteria for pretense within traditional play (Kavanaugh,
2011; Lillard, 2011). Episodes of children engaging in pretense have also been observed in other
studies of digital play, with children narrating their eBook creations as if they were part of their
constructed scenes (Rowe & Miller, 2015) or imagining themselves as characters within stories they
created with puppetry apps (Moore, 2014). But as in the current study, these instances were few and
brief. Only one mixed-sex dyad and one same-sex female dyad engaged in any pretense during
digital play episodes.
Conclusion
This small-scale study focused on the social interactions, processes, and outcomes of young chil-
dren’s participation in digital play in order to better understand how peers engage in digital play
together. Findings from 20 peer play sessions conducted in this preschool classroom revealed that
young children exhibited a range of verbal and nonverbal social behaviors as they engaged in four
types of digital play with one another. As children participated in practice/task-related play,
exploration-related play, construction-related play, and pretense-related play, they were observed
suggesting, helping, demanding, competing, negotiating, rejecting, and so on at different times and
with different playmates. But when particular behaviors were exhibited repeatedly within a single
play episode, the session seemed to have a particular tone. On occasions in which children were
demanding, arguing, and excluding each other over procedural matters such as turn taking, for
example, tension from competition for control of the device seemed to hamper the pleasure of play.
By contrast, in sessions in which children’s behaviors were more collaborative than competitive and
included assisting, negotiating, and responding to ideas, both members of the dyad seemed to enjoy
the play.
Findings suggest that the type of app selected seems to play an important role in both the peer
interactions during play and the type of digital play displayed. During the peer play sessions children
were free to choose among six apps, but children rarely stayed with one app; rather, they clicked
through and played with a few apps during the timed session. Overall children played with the
closed-design apps more often. During practice/task play with game-type apps children had oppor-
tunities to explore app tools and practice literacy, numeracy, and pattern and shape recognition. But
the closed content of the apps did not allow for any construction-type play or joint pretend play.
In addition to limiting the types of play in which children could engage with the app, the game-
like features and external rewards (winning stickers, trophies, stars, etc.) seemed to lead to struggles
for control of the game play. Generally children seemed to have a joint understanding (Göncü, 1993)
that they were playing together and that there was an expectation about sharing. But some socially
dominant peer partners disregarded the rule about sharing even though they were instructed and
reminded by adults (and peer partners) to share. For them, the lure of rewards seemed to outweigh
classroom values and play rules. Thus, to prevent a dominant peer from getting all of the rewards,
peer partners became vigilant about monitoring turn-taking procedures. As a result, the tone of
many of these sessions was tense, not fun.
By contrast, when children played with the creativity app, there were no extrinsic rewards.
Instead, the rewards for children were seeing the results of the moves they made to apply particular
finger drawings, colors, stamps, stickers, and backgrounds to their evolving images. Children’s social
interactions during play using Doodle Buddy, for example, did not include demands or commands,
and children exhibited minimal struggle for control of the device. The tone of the digital play was
more collaborative. Children had fun when they applied features to the images as well as when their
partner contributed to the creations. And they seemed to enjoy suggesting colors and stickers to each
other and assisting with some technical features of the app.
Although observations included only four instances of peers spending extensive time engaging in
construction play using the creativity app, three of the four instances also led to brief pretense-
related play. The children narrated stories about the characters and objects in their creations or
imagined themselves in the settings they were creating. Whether fantasizing about babies throwing
up in outer space, seaweed clogging up a beach, or going to a disco ball, children seemed to have fun
joking and laughing at the images and stories they created. Not only were they enjoying themselves
but they were also using their imaginations and symbolic representations (Vygotsky, 1978) to create
these stories about their images. These examples of interactions during digital play with open-design
apps appear similar to a form of traditional play such as sociodramatic or pretend play that children
exhibit in other activity centers of the classroom. Interactions involving imagining and pretending
are ones that Vygotsky (1978) believed can impact children’s development.
In addition to the way in which types of apps shaped children’s play, the composition of dyads
as well as the presence of an adult during play episodes may have influenced the interactions that
took place. As noted, 12 of the 20 episodes were characteristically competitive because of one or
both members of the dyad vying for control of the device by dominating the peer partner through
verbal or nonverbal exchanges. Of the 12 episodes, seven involved mixed-sex dyads. Some prior
research suggests that girls are often passive when interacting with boys, paving the way for boys to
take control (Maccoby, 1990; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). Other research demonstrates that girls
become more controlling in mixed-sex dyads, whereas boys attempt to agree with girls (Holmes-
Lonergan, 2003).
At first glance manifestations of social dominance in this study were not obviously gendered. Of
the seven mixed-sex dyads that displayed a significant competitive character for some or all of the
session, play interactions in three of the mixed-sex dyads were dominated by females. And in two of
the mixed-sex dyads, males and females had equal status controlling and relinquishing the device,
and thus the play, through various verbalizations and physical maneuvers. In addition, of the eight
sessions that were cooperative throughout, three involved mixed-sex dyads in which neither the male
nor the female dominated. Turn taking was smooth, peers listened to and assisted each other, and
children joked and laughed together.
Research has shown that preschool children’s peer interactions in mixed-sex dyads differ in relation to
the presence or absence of an adult during the interactions (Powlishta & Maccoby, 1990; Thorne, 1986).
Powlishta and Maccoby’s (1990) study of children in mixed-sex dyads taking turns with a movie viewer
showed that when competing for the viewer in the presence of an adult, boys made fewer demands than
girls and allowed more time for girls to have turns. As a result, girls had longer turns than when the adult
was not present. Because children in this study were observed and scaffolded during all episodes of digital
play (i.e., mixed-sex and same-sex dyads), children’s ability to shift from competitive to cooperative play
or engage in collaborative play may have been influenced by the presence of adults. Socially dominant
boys may have toned down their demands and loosened their control such that girls became more
assertive and insisted on equal time with the device.
Limitations, Implications, and Future Directions

Results from this study may be limited in several ways. The study involved one group of preschool
children from a particular setting situated on a college campus; thus, the population was rather
18 S. M. LAWRENCE
homogenous in terms of race, class, and language. Further research on digital play with a more
diverse population and in different settings would be beneficial to a wider range of educators. In
addition, observational data were limited by the handwritten note-taking procedures. Because
children’s verbal and nonverbal interactions happen quickly in a preschool classroom, video capture
of peer interactions would have revealed more of the verbatim comments, facial expressions, and
body gestures.
Results also were constrained somewhat by the teachers’ decisions to assign peer partners to the
iPad table. Because teachers encouraged children to play with different play partners at all of the
activity centers and wanted children to have similar opportunities for iPad play, attention was not
directed to issues pertaining to friendships, gendered interactions, or differences in social compe-
tence. As a result, when children played with peers who were unfamiliar to them or displayed modes
of interacting that contrasted with their own, tensions had to be managed.
Successful management of peer conflicts is another limitation. During data collection, under-
graduate researchers took on the roles of researcher-observer as well as scaffolder of the play, and
some undergraduates were more experienced than others at reminding, explaining, questioning, and
modeling for children how to play together with the digital device. More extensive guidance on how
and when to scaffold digital play along cognitive, technological, and affective dimensions (Yelland &
Masters, 2007) could have enhanced the quality of the play sessions.
Despite these limitations, for early childhood educators wishing to integrate digital technology into
their curricula the study provides much-needed detail about how children interact during iPad play
when sharing a device. The social interactions exhibited during peer play with iPads were varied, there
were many of them, and they were not different in kind from those observed among preschoolers
engaged in traditional play (Coplan & Arbeau, 2009; Göncü, 1993; Howes, 2011; Rubin et al., 2006).
Neither were the types of play in which children participated substantially different from play in other
activity centers in play-based early childhood centers. In other words, children were not isolated from
one another staring at screens; instead, they were talking, playing, and imagining together.
Overall, the iPad seemed to invite social interaction. At times practitioners in the classroom were
surprised by the types of social interactions that accompanied digital play. One teacher remarked
that iPad play provides “a different playing field for kids” and that “it allows for some different
dynamics, too.” One of the dynamics she observed was that children “who were not always leaders
could be if they knew something [about a feature or an app] that somebody didn’t.” She referred to
this situation as “a peer teaching kind of thing” and noticed that “it just happens and requires little
adult intervention.” Both educators were pleased to see children in learning situations sharing their
expertise and “working on things collaboratively.”
Educators contemplating digital play in their classrooms should consider allowing children to
choose their play partners to some degree. Because the phenomenon of gender segregation is strong
and persistent among preschoolers, having a choice of partners will likely result in the formation of
same-sex dyads (Maccoby, 1990; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1987). These playmate dyads may also be
friends who share behavior styles, which in turn may likely increase the possibility that play
opportunities will be enjoyable and beneficial.
Practitioners should also consider a wide array of apps for children’s digital play. The current
study offered children only one choice of an open app, and not all children elected to play with it.
But in the few sessions with children playing with open-design apps, extrinsic rewards were not
available, and thus there were fewer incentives to compete. Because open-content apps allow for
more creativity and cooperation, providing children with a variety of open-design apps may permit
more in-depth analysis of construction play and pretense-related play—types of social play seldom
observed during peer play with game-type apps (Dezuanni et al., 2015; Lynch & Redpath, 2014).
Topics for future research could involve stable pairs engaged in peer play, rather than changeable
pairs, to study how digital play develops over time. Focusing on more open apps may provide
opportunities for studying how children produce collaborative digital creations. Because the
American Academy of Pediatrics (2016) recently acknowledged that children as young as 2 years
of age are engaging with relatives via video chat on smartphones and tablets, observations of digital
play among 4-year-olds (or younger) may provide additional information on how children have
adapted to the changing digital landscape. Finally, future research focusing on types of converged or
hybrid play, whereby children participate in traditional play activities while utilizing digital technol-
ogies for part of an activity (Edwards, 2013; Yelland, 2015), may suggest new ways in which children
can interact during social play.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the children and educators who participated in this study and the following under-
graduate students for their assistance with data collection: Paige Craven, Veronika Mak, An Nguyen, Thu Pham, Mary
Trammel, and Huong Vu.
ORCID
Sandra M. Lawrence http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7413-5800
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Preschool Children and Ipads: Observations of Social Interactions During Digital Play

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Early Education and Development

ISSN: 1040-9289 (Print) 1556-6935 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/heed20

Preschool Children and iPads: Observations of

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10409289.2017.1379303

Published online: 19 Oct 2017.

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Preschool Children and iPads: Observations of Social Interactions

Young Children’s Peer Interactions During Play

Forms of Digital Play

Peer Interactions During Digital Play With Tablet Apps

The Current Study

Findings and Discussion

The Struggle for Resource Control: “It’s my turn now!”

Cooperating, Collaborating, and Having Fun During Digital Play

The Influence of App Design on Children’s Digital Play Behaviors

Closed-design Apps and Practice/task Play

Open-design Apps: Construction and Pretend Play

Limitations, Implications, and Future Directions

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