A Participatory Learning Framework for Enhancing Children’s Reading Experience with Electronic Book Readers

As electronic book (e-book) readers are increasingly applied in educational contexts, it is becoming imperative to explore issues of how to integrate these new reading devices with pedagogical principles. To achieve this goal, this study proposes a participatory learning framework to design reading activities with e-book readers. Such a framework addresses the integration of individual reading, collaborative learning and a learner community, and highlights the role of parents in assisting children to engage in reading communities. An evaluation found that e-book readers are helpful in this framework in facilitating parent-child interaction. The findings also show that the collaborative storytelling activity on the e-book readers may afford a variety of forms of interaction. Three major parent-child interaction patterns were also found. Each pattern facilitated the parents to apply certain types of dialogic reading strategies. Further discussion of the findings with regard to parent-child reading and its educational implications is included.