Title: Language, culture, and technology in children’s learning across social contexts

Presenter: Early Childhood Education Department Chair, Holland Professor of Early Childhood Education, Mills College

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Abstract: Understanding the complex roles of input and experience in children’s social and linguistic development necessitates re-examining standard paradigms, theories, and practices used in the field. The current talk will review several studies concerning the role of social and linguistic experience in children’s learning. These studies explore how characteristics of young children’s environments (e.g., formal vs. informal, mono- vs. multilingual; physical vs. augmented reality) shape learning and attention in unique ways. These studies further engage a critical cultural lens on methodological issues in the study of language and culture in children’s learning, including sampling, data analysis, and researcher positionality. The latter part of this talk presents emerging theoretical and applied research on the role of social interaction in young children’s learning from and engagement with technology.

Bio: Priya Mariana Shimpi Driscoll is a Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Education at Mills College, where she directs the Early Childhood Education program. In 2006, she received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from the University of Chicago. In 2009, she completed a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellowship in social and cultural foundations of child development at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has been at Mills College since 2009, where her research program examines the role of cultural and environmental experiences in young children’s social and linguistic development. Her work also examines issues such as cultural language loss and bilingual education planning in families. Finally, Shimpi Driscoll is interested in how children learn through interactive play in museum spaces and other informal learning environments, including technology-focused contexts. She currently advises educational technology companies on curriculum development and child-robot interaction. A robot tutor she helped to create was named as one of Time Magazine’s 100 Best Inventions of 2019.