Exploring Media Technologies with Children: Conduct of Everyday Life and Subject-Scientific Technology Research

Abstract

Complex interaction processes lie at the heart of everyday media technology usage. An investigation of the child-technology relationship thus necessitates concepts that are able to embrace both the intersubjective and the material relatedness of human everyday life. Recently, child research has increasingly discussed the conduct of everyday life concept, which emphasizes the two-sidedness of the human-world relationship, the socio-material mediatedness of everyday life as well as the directedness of human action. Consequently the concept has the potential to overcome taken-for-granted, one-sided explanations for the child-technology interaction. The article includes data material collected in a kindergarten in order to make the conduct of everyday life concept fruitful for psychologically investigating technology together with children. It underlines the importance of a precise analysis of material arrangements in specific practice relations as well as the fact that parents, pedagogues, researchers and children all actively contribute to these relations.