Developed, not taught: Digital judgement, moral agency, and early childhood in the digital age - EECERA
Conference abstract, EECERA2026 Madeira
This essay addresses an underexplored paradox in early childhood research. Children are increasingly protected from digital technologies through restriction and control, while expected to develop digital judgement at an early age. The essay examines pedagogical responsibility when judgment cannot be transmitted as a skill, but must emerge through children’s lived digital moral experiences. Research on digital childhood has focused on competence, risk management, and regulation (e.g., Choi, 2016; Fernández-Prados et al., 2021), framing judgment as a future-oriented capacity. While strengthening protection, these approaches marginalise children’s present moral responsiveness. This essay builds on relational and ethical traditions that conceptualise agency as lived and responsive, moving beyond skills-based accounts of digital participation. The framework draws on Lévinas’ (1981) ethics of responsibility, Biesta’s (2020) concept of subjectification, and Lipman’s (1981) understanding of judgment as a relational and ethical practice developed through lived inquiry rather than instruction. Rather than empirical data, the essay presents analytical vignettes constructed and informed by existing research. The analysis follows a Levinas-inspired, essayistic approach, informed by Otherwise than Being (Lévinas, 1981). It moves in a non-linear, spiral manner between illustrative vignettes and philosophical reflection to explore the ethical dimensions of digital childhood. Ethical responsibility is addressed through a non-deficit representation of children as moral subjects in the present. Digital judgment cannot be taught as a transferable skill without displacing children’s moral agency. It develops through lived moral experience and relational responsibility. Educational practice and policy should move beyond restriction and skills-based models toward approaches that recognise children as morally responsive subjects in the present.
This essay addresses an underexplored paradox in early childhood research. Children are increasingly protected from digital technologies through restriction and control, while expected to develop digital judgement at an early age. The essay examines pedagogical responsibility when judgment cannot be transmitted as a skill, but must emerge through children’s lived digital moral experiences. Research on digital childhood has focused on competence, risk management, and regulation (e.g., Choi, 2016; Fernández-Prados et al., 2021), framing judgment as a future-oriented capacity. While strengthening protection, these approaches marginalise children’s present moral responsiveness. This essay builds on relational and ethical traditions that conceptualise agency as lived and responsive, moving beyond skills-based accounts of digital participation. The framework draws on Lévinas’ (1981) ethics of responsibility, Biesta’s (2020) concept of subjectification, and Lipman’s (1981) understanding of judgment as a relational and ethical practice developed through lived inquiry rather than instruction. Rather than empirical data, the essay presents analytical vignettes constructed and informed by existing research. The analysis follows a Levinas-inspired, essayistic approach, informed by Otherwise than Being (Lévinas, 1981). It moves in a non-linear, spiral manner between illustrative vignettes and philosophical reflection to explore the ethical dimensions of digital childhood. Ethical responsibility is addressed through a non-deficit representation of children as moral subjects in the present. Digital judgment cannot be taught as a transferable skill without displacing children’s moral agency. It develops through lived moral experience and relational responsibility. Educational practice and policy should move beyond restriction and skills-based models toward approaches that recognise children as morally responsive subjects in the present.
Publisert i 2026
Les artikkelen her