Are Preschool 'Educational' Apps Really Educational?

Apps are becoming increasingly popular, and are
being used as educational tools by parents and
educators alike. Many apps are branded
'educational' and aimed at children as young as 3
months. Despite this, little research into what
children under 5 years old learn from apps has been
conducted, and so their educational value is widely
unknown. Professionals are calling for systematic
independent research to test the educational claims
made by apps, enabling parents to make informed
choices about their child's app usage. The Science of
Learning provides a guide for educational principles
from empirical research, with several 'pillars of
learning' at its core (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 2015). Apps
may support learning through the following pillars:
'active learning', dynamic involvement in the task;
'engagement', focusing attention on the educational
content; and 'social interaction', connecting with
others around the new material. Interactive features
may promote the active learning and engagement
pillars, however over-employment of hyperinteractive
features, such as games, may distract
children from engaging with the educational content.
Apps with characters (avatars) may promote the
social interaction pillar, however app usage itself
may displace real-world social interactions.
The current research aims to address these issues at
preschool age, investigating whether apps have
added educational use compared to traditional
materials (eg. picture books), and which unique app
features promote the learning of school readiness
skills, an essential focus of this age group and skills
that are predictive of later achievement. Literacy is a
key subject, with the Early Years Foundation Stage
Curriculum outlining letter recognition, letter-sound
mapping, and reading and writing one's own name
as school readiness skills that should be learnt in
nursery.
These literacy skills will form the focus of three
studies. Preschoolers aged 36-48 months will be
recruited from private and school nurseries. A
pre/post- test paradigm will be used, with learning
measured as a difference in performance before and
after the learning phase. Letter recognition and
letter-sound mapping studies will compare a
commercial app with a book replicating its content, a
hyper-interactive app, and an app with an avatar. It
will also compare the use of a commercial app with
and without enhanced co-viewing, in which the
researcher engages in joint usage of the app with
the child. Name reading and writing will compare a
commercial app with a hyper-interactive app, an app
with an avatar, and enhanced co-viewing of the app.
Each study will also employ a generalisation task,
requiring children to apply any acquired knowledge
to tasks using materials from the wider-world.
Apps have the promote to learning due to their
interactivity employing the pillars of active learning
and engagement. However, preschoolers are
expected to learn less from hyper-interactive apps
as a result of increased engagement with superficial
entertaining material over educational material. By
employing live social interaction, it is expected that
children will learn more from joint book reading than
from apps. Equally, preschoolers are expected to
learn more from co-viewing apps with an adult than
without. As avatars provide an on-screen source of
social interaction, children are expected to learn
more from apps with avatars than without.
This research is imperative due to the prevalence of
apps, their educational claims, and the lack of
research on them in this age group. It aims to
ascertain which app features aid learning and how
best to use them, as well as providing an
experimental paradigm for further app research, and
informing parents and app developers about the
educational use of apps.