Childhood(s) in the postdigital society: 

Educators’ practices and knowledge, families approaches and experiences.

In what Cheney-Lippold (2016) called ius algorithmi, the common citizen’s interaction with interfaces offering products and services of their interest, becomes valuable raw material for Big Tech companies. Digital data is frequently monetized and used to get further people’s attention, marketable consumers’ profiling, and increase incomes. In this context, there is an exponential growth of data extracted and monetized. Also, an overwhelming presence of commercial platforms generate power concentration, and the shape of consumers (including families and educational institutions) behaviour. Children, like any other citizen with attributed rights, are also part of this landscape.

Early education and care (ECEC) as part of the schooling system, and as a political space to build citizenship, needs to generate perspectives and practices on the issue. However, most contributions on the problem of datafication and platformisation come from primary, secondary, and higher education. Also, technologies’ usage is more entangled with private life and the parent’s choices.

By introducing the results of our effort to address the problem within the Italian context, we aim to enlarge educators, families and policy makers’ understanding on childhood in the postdigital society. Several expert voices and parallel sessions with research outcomes and educational experiences will set the basis for enriching debate as a driver of future action.

Call for Papers

The international conference “DataChildMap. Childhood(s) in the postdigital society: Educators’ practices and knowledge, Families approaches and experiences," aims to reflect on the current society radically transformed in a digital sense, considering the impact that pervasive phenomena of datafication and platformisation have on the early stages of children's lives. Our educational concern is directed towards the uses and abuses of technologies, problematizing issues related to privacy, manipulation, and surveillance in the 0-6 age group. There is a recognized need to outline new coordinates and good practices of responsibility, training, ethics, and awareness that, in a necessary and non-delayable manner, must involve parental and professional educational figures for the acquisition of a pedagogical stance capable of caring for children's autonomy and freedom in every circumstance. 

In this meaningful context, our Call For Proposals is extended to the scientific community, in continuity with one of the fundamental objectives driving the DataChildMap project: the construction of shared workspaces through a critical-dialogical openness, aimed at developing novel logics of family and professional agency. For educational figures, this entails embracing a challenge that, always placing the child's autonomy at the center, calls for becoming protagonists of active citizenship and policy making, and for devising new reflective alphabets, tools, and virtuous practices to address the complexity of the post-digital era.

The Call For Papers accepts the types of contributions, described as follows.

Articles

• It is mandatory for the Articles to be anonymized and within the 5000 words maximum (title, abstract, keywords and bibliography excluded)

Please consider that, in some cases, it can be suggested to change the type of the contribution from an Article to a Poster (in any case, all chosen Abstracts will be published in the Congress' Book of Abstract)

• It is mandatory to comply with the following editorial guidelines: APA style 7

• Please follow this reference format: Paper Example

• Please send the Article in the text file format (.doc, .docx, .odt) exclusively through the designated Submission Form

Abstract

• For the drafting of the Abstract, please follow this reference: Abstract Instructions 

• It is necessary to comply with the following editorial guidelines:  APA style 7

• It is mandatory for the Abstract to be anonymized and to be within the 250 and 500 words maximum (title, keywords and bibliography excluded)

• Please send the Abstract in the text file format (.doc, .docx, .odt) exclusively through the designated Submission Form

Digital Posters

• For the drafting of the Digital Poster, please follow this format reference: Digital Poster Format

• The Digital Posters will be published as an attachment in the corrispondent Parallel Session;

• The Posters' content (text, images, tables, charts, etc.) are at the discretion of the author.

Digital Posters may be created using programs like Canva, Venngage, or simple Office Tools like PowerPoint, Word, etc. 

We also suggest a couple Tutorials, for example: https://guides.nyu.edu/posters or https://www.utm.utoronto.ca/asc/media/2215/download?inline  

Please consider these as examples of infographics posters we kindly accept. 

• Please send the Posters in the .pdf format exclusively through the designated Submission Form

Please use the Submission Form  below to send your contribution. We cannot accept contributions sent by email.  

Please also check the editorial guidelines and prepare your work accurately before you send it.  All contributions will be subject to double-blind peer review.

• Submission of full contribution for the revision: March 10th, 2024  25 March 2024!

• Feedback to authors: April 10th, 2024

• Submission of final contributions: April 30th, 2024

• Books of Abstract's publication: June 20th, 2024

• Sharing of sessions' presentations, posters and video recordings: July 10th, 2024

• All selected Abstracts will be included in the Congress' Book of Abstract, published by the University of Padua;

• All Posters will be made available, in a open access manner, on the Congress' website page. 

• The selected Articles will be published with DOI on repository Open Access;

• There will be a further selection in which the articled deem particulary worthy  will be published as a Special Issue in the italian Journal ANVURA.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Juliana Elisa Raffaghelli, Emilia Restiglian, Marco Scarcelli

With the contribution of the Project's Scientific Committee

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE

Maria Valentini, Romina Malghera, Francesca Crudele, Paola Zoroaster, Monica Gottardo