These recordings formed the “AI, toys and the future” session, presented by Prof Rosie Flewitt and PEDAL’s Dr Emily Goodacre.
About Professor Rosie Flewitt
Rosie Flewitt is Emeritus Professor of Early Childhood Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her work over the past 25 years has focused on how young children communicate through their bodies as well as through spoken and written language, using their senses, movement and touch.
Recent externally funded studies include Early Childhood Care and Education settings’ use of digital documentation to record children’s play, young children’s storytelling and story acting, young children’s engagement with artefacts in science museums and participatory research with children living with profound disadvantage.
Prof Flewitt’s most recent large-scale study investigated birth to 3-year-old children’s language and literacy play with digital media at home in diverse communities across the four UK nations, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council.
About Dr Emily Goodacre
Emily is a Research Associate at PEDAL. Her current research examines children’s play with Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAI) toys in the early years, exploring the risks and opportunities of GAI toys with a focus on young children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Emily previously completed her PhD in PEDAL, researching children’s play communication and early relationships. Her research focused on children’s conversations with their friends and peers during freeplay and drawing activities, as well as fathers’ experiences of toy play and book sharing with their infants.
She has also worked at Anna Freud evaluating interventions aiming to improve young people’s mental health and reduce violence.
Rosie and Emily’s presentations concluded with a short Q&A session: