Co-viewing in An Italian Classroom. Language, interaction, and making sense of television

The article presents data of a quasiexperimental research on media education practices in Italian primary and preprimary schools. Drawing on a socioconstructivist theoretical approach to children’s social and cognitive development the study focuses on peer coviewing in the classroom as a social activity that contributes to the development of children’s media-related competences. By describing and analyzing audiovisual recorded interactions of children participating in such an activity-in-context, the article suggests that this activity leads to cognition and understanding as locally situated and socially distributed processes. The social interactions and talk that occur during coviewing are tools through which children collectively make sense of television, orient each other to the text, and construct understanding as an interactive achievement and a socially organized process.