1 At home with the future: influences on young childrenʼs early experiences with digital technologies Joanna McPake and Lydia Plowman Citation: McPake J. & Plowman L. (2010) At home with the future: influences on young childrenʼs early experiences with digital technologies. Contemporary Perspectives on Early Childhood Education, ed. N. Yelland, pp.210-226, Open University Press, Maidenhead. Early years curricula encourage practitioners to build on childrenʼs home experiences. Research into the kinds of activities that young children engage in at home and considerations of how to link these to their experiences in pre-school settings can therefore make an important contribution to practice. This chapter, which draws on studies investigating young childrenʼs home experiences with digital technologies, seeks to identify some of the key factors that influence the nature and extent of these experiences. Although digital divides – reflecting classic social divisions of economic status, gender and ethnicity – have been extensively explored in order to understand the causes of inequalities in access to digital technologies, our research concluded that parental attitudes towards these technologies are more influential than economic disadvantage in determining young childrenʼs experiences. To explore this issue in greater detail, we have drawn on the concept of prolepsis, a key influence on parentsʼ interactions with their children deriving from the projection of their memories of their own idealised past into the childrenʼs futures (Cole, 1996). Parentsʼ assumptions, values and expectations are influenced by their past experiences, enacted in the present, and are then carried by their children into the future as they move from home to formal education. We argue that prolepsis has powerful explanatory force for understanding the kinds of decisions parents make about activities such as the extent to which children engage in technological play. It is now widely recognised that childrenʼs learning begins in the home and early years practitioners around the world are encouraged to recognise this and to build on childrenʼs home experiences. So, for example, Scotlandʼs Curriculum for Excellence states that: Parents are the first and most influential educators of their children. It is important that staff across all early years settings recognise the interests and experiences children bring from home and use these as a starting point to extend learning. (Scottish Executive 2007: 22) In order to do this, practitioners need to understand more about the kinds of activities likely to be available to young children at home. Much of the research in this field has focussed on early language and literacy experiences, but there is growing interest now in childrenʼs early experiences with digital technologies. Such technologies, which include not only computers, mobile phones and games consoles, but also many toys, musical instruments and domestic appliances, are now widely available in the home and increasingly accessible to young children. Many have the potential to support early learning, both to support traditional aspects of education in the early years, particularly for literacy and numeracy, as well as to increase young childrenʼs familiarity with contemporary social practices. Digital technologies have had a significant impact on the ways in which we communicate with others, on shopping, on leisure activities and on ways of working – and young children learn about these from observing their parents, siblings, friends and neighbours, and by joining in themselves. Thus, given the pace of technological change, childrenʼs early experiences at home and in the community are likely to be radically different from those of a few years ago and will continue to evolve quite rapidly. The research This chapter draws on two research studies conducted by the authors in the first decade of the 21 st century, exploring the home experiences of young children – aged between 3 and 5