ICT is regarded as playing an ever increasing role in the lives of people which includes young children; The role of ICT in early childhood educational services in Aotearoa New Zealand is still being argued despite policy expectations that endorse and support it’s integration into practice.
This chapter draws upon a small, qualitative case study involving young children and their uses of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in one early childhood setting. We particularly focus on Jessica, aged 4 years old, whom is identified and examined by the ways she uses digital technologies in her life and how other people involved in lives might also use ICT as a means of initiating, facilitating and supporting learning. This includes her family and her early childhood setting. We define this as digital smartness.
We use a socio-cultural perspective to recognise and examine this notion of children’s digital smartness. We examine ICT and learning in terms of the social and cultural contexts of the young children and particularly look at influences of family/whānau and the early childhood education setting.
We argue for a more complex view of how the digital smartness of children can be understood and affirmed in early childhood settings. We identify the Bourdieuian construct of habitus as a valid perspective to informing and meeting obligations of a more coherent teacher pedagogy of ICT. We assert that certain factors need to be in place for this to happen. It includes a consistent teacher pedagogy that has the awareness and welcoming of the diversity of children’s digital habitus and that affirms the digital smartness of children in the 21st century.