Children’s digital boundary crossings when moving in between porous ecosystems

Abstract

In this chapter, we take a closer look at how the affordances of digital technology in children’s and young people’s everyday lives enable them to participate and take agency in a world that reaches outside the limitations of their physical one. Building on Bronfenbrenner’s nested ecological systems theory, and Neal and Neal’s networked ecological systems, we explore how children’s digital interactions contribute to constructing new mesosystems, beyond the ones predefined by their physical/everyday/tangible microsystems. Children and young people exploiting the porosity of such systems may lead to the creation of new learning spaces that teachers and parents are unaware of. In these spaces, knowledge that is or is not recognised in traditional learning spaces can be created and shared among children and young people themselves as well as moral strategies and conducts of behaviour. We argue that this calls for greater involvement from adults in children’s digital lives.