Credit Points 10

Coordinator Joanne Orlando Opens in new window

Description This subject aims to develop students' understanding of children and adolescents' engagement in a digital environment, and how their experiences contribute to their understanding of their world and their role within it. Students will critically explore multiple aspects of digital engagement. This will include the various ways that children and adolescents use technology; the educational, economic, social, cultural and political factors that mediate their experiences; and the implications of their digital engagement for play, learning, social engagements, and identity. Students will examine the social impact of technologies on children and adolescents, and identify strategies to deliver and effect ethical change.

School Education

Discipline Teacher Education, Not Elsewhere Classified.

Student Contribution Band HECS Band 1 10cp

Check your HECS Band contribution amount via the Fees page.

Level Undergraduate Level 2 subject

Learning Outcomes

After successful completion of this Unit, students will be able to: 

1. Engage critically with media and research literature regarding the digital worlds of children and adolescents.
2. Analyse the key understandings and discourses regarding children’s and adolescents’ use of technology.
3. Identify the factors that influence how a child or adolescent uses technology. 
4. Identify how the use of technology impacts on the educational and social engagement of children and adolescents. 
5. Analyse strategies for delivering and effecting ethical change arising from digital engagement. 
6. Examine the ways in which childhood, adolescence and adulthood are constituted through education, technology and relations of power.

Subject Content

1. How children and adolescents use technology.
2. Debates surrounding children’s and adolescents’ technology use.
3. Factors that influence children’s and adolescents’ use of technology and the implications of their engagement.
4. How childhood and adolescence are constituted in relations of technology and power. 
5. Safe, age-appropriate use of technology, in terms of diversity and difference, including gender/race/class/sexuality/geographical location. 
6. The social impact of engagement with technology by children and adolescents, and what adults can learn from this.