Parental Mediation for Young Children’s Use of Educational Media: A Case Study with Computational Toys and Kits

Parental mediation literature is mostly situated in the contexts of television, Internet use, video games, and mobile devices, while there is less understanding of how parents mediate their children’s engagement with educational-focused media. We examine parental involvement in young children’s use of a creation-oriented educational media, i.e., coding kits, from a mediation perspective through an interview study. We frame parents’ mediation practices along three dimensions: (1) creative mediation, where parents mediate to support children’s creating and learning with media; (2) preparative mediation, where parents explore and prepare media for children’s engagement; and (3) administrative mediation, where parents administer and regulate their children’s media use. Compared to the restrictive, active, and co-using mediation theory, our proposed framework highlights various supportive practices parents take to help their children learn and create with media. We further connect our findings to Joint Media Engagement and reflect on implications for parent involvement in children’s creation-oriented media design.