App-based Learning for Kindergarten Children at Home: Learning4Kids

Programme(s): H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Topic(s): ERC-2018-STG - ERC Starting Grant

Call for proposal: ERC-2018-STG

Funding Scheme: ERC-STG - Starting Grant

Grant agreement ID: 801980

Project description

Tablets and learning apps enhance learning at home

Many families struggle to support their children's basic education needs due to a range of financial and social difficulties. This results in lower literacy and mathematical competences for these children, and negative consequences for future societies. Smartphones, tablets and computers – found in almost every home – can help reverse this trend. Children’s learning process can be improved through specially designed applications that fulfill several educational and psychological conditions. That is the main goal of the EU-funded Learning4Kids project. It will design and test an innovative software for tablets to be provided to families of young children. Supported by new technological solutions, it will provide an easy, non-expensive, engaging application providing high-quality home learning that will effectively improve children's competences.

Objective

Children’s literacy and mathematical competencies are a critical platform for their successful functioning as individuals in society. However, many children, in particular those with low socio-economic status (SES) backgrounds who may not receive the home support needed to develop to their full potential, are at risk of not reaching sufficient competence levels. The overall aim of this project is to develop innovative computer tablet applications (‘apps’) and test whether the apps support parents in the provision of high-quality home learning environments (HLEs) and consequently, impact positively on the short- and long-term development of children’s competencies. Specifically, the project objectives are to
1) identify, engage and retain families with low SES;
2) use tablet-based, easy-to-apply interventions to improve the quality of the HLE, encourage participation, remind families to use the apps, control the app usage, and provide feedback to parents;
3) unravel the specific approaches within the intervention that influence either the development of children’s literacy or mathematical competencies.
I will use a multi-method intervention approach and draw on expertise from psychology, education, and didactics to evaluate the effectiveness of the apps. This project exploits new technological possibilities afforded by smart phones and tablet computers that are very common nowadays in European families. The results will lead to empirically tested, inexpensive software that will be accessible to the general public due to low download fees. Whilst offering substantive advances for the scientific fields of psychology and education, this project also has broad societal implications. Improving young children’s learning trajectories is both a social and economic imperative as it equips them to achieve greater individual success and also to contribute to the economy. The projected improvement in the HLE for young children will thus positively influence European society.