The Image and Digital Storytelling that Reflects Higher Psychological Functions: Learning with Technologies on Preschool Children of Foreign Marriage Families

By Cheng Hsu, Chia-pei Wu and Nguyen Hoang Linh.

Published by Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal

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Article: Electronic	$US5.00

While one can learn a concept of science from school education, the concept formation is quite different in preschool children than elder learners. Especially for preschool children of foreign-marriage families, the cultural issues can be significant in their scientific concept formation. Our research is based on Vygotsky’s Cultural-historical psychology to investigate those preschool children’s learning psychological path to their scientific knowledge construction by using Technologies. A total of 12 preschool children participate in our research project. We use language as the key to detect the children’s higher psychological functions in the activity of “read-together” programs and storytelling that are conducted in a countryside area where local residents marry foreign bribes commonly. While the foreign-marriage mothers use picture books and read together with the children by using technologies, we use observation to the children’s learning and storytelling activity in the read-together program as well as in-depth interview with the foreign-marriage mothers that later developed into a digital form. We also have the preschool children work on some problem-solving activities that are associated with word usage as well as audio-visual instructions. The result shows that the multicultural assumption from the government and the mainstream scholars in the foreign-marriage families’ social-cultural settings are improper; instead, we come up with the idea “pseudo-multicultural” to appropriate our links from preschool children’s higher psychological functions into their scientific concept formation.

Keywords:	Science Communication, Pseudo-Multicultural, Vygotsky, Cultural-Historical Psychology, Digital Storytelling

Ubiquitous Learning: An International Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, pp.127-136. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 714.126KB).

Dr. Cheng Hsu

Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, National Chung Cheng University, Ming-hsiung, Chia-yi, Taiwan, Taiwan

As a assistant professor in National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan, the Republic of China, I have a focus on developing community wide awareness and understanding in “science communication” in the contryside area in Chia-yi county, Taiwan. We often found that the “underground” radio stations disseminate imporor scientific knowledge that sounds correct but in fact a twisted advertisment type of “drug selling” programs. That makes citizen’s health in danger. We are trying to have some social change in this area and focus on foreign-marriage families.

Dr. Chia-pei Wu

Assistant Professor, Department of Applied English, I-Shou University, Kao-hsiung, Taiwan, Taiwan

Nguyen Hoang Linh

Master student, Department of Communication, National Chung Cheng University, Chiayi, Minsiung, Taiwan

He had finished his undergraduate degree in communication at Academy of Journalism and Communication which regarded as the same class of University in Vietnam on June, 2009. At the moment, I’m attending the full-time for Master degree at Graduate Institute of Telecommunications in National Chung Cheng University. My short-term objective is to complete my master degree at this university. Hence, my long term goal for future career is to reinforce my understanding and job performances well and become a good communication worker at my country - Vietnam.