A challenge for early childhood (EC) educators internationally is how to increase the integration of popular culture, media and digital technologies in EC settings to promote children's learning with digital media. But an ongoing puzzle is why the practices of some educators change, while others remain the same. Much research about teaching practice positions the locus of change in teacher beliefs, attitudes, values and knowledge. Re-mediation by cultural tools (i.e., concepts and artefacts) offers an alternative explanation, but this still does not consistently result in hoped-for shifts in practice. To gain further clarity, we investigated the idea of multimodal play as a ‘threshold concept’ for EC curriculum. Multimodal play integrates popular culture, media and digital technologies in ways that can promote children's learning. Considering multimodal play as a threshold concept may assist educators to adopt new practices in response to children's significant interest in and rapidly changing life worlds of popular culture, media and digital technologies.

中文翻译：

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多模式游戏：幼儿课程的门槛概念？

国际幼儿 (EC) 教育工作者面临的一个挑战是如何在 EC 环境中增加流行文化、媒体和数字技术的整合，以促进儿童使用数字媒体的学习。但一个持续存在的谜团是为什么一些教育者的做法会发生变化，而另一些则保持不变。许多关于教学实践的研究定位了教师信念、态度、价值观和知识的变化轨迹。文化工具（即概念和人工制品）的修复提供了另一种解释，但这仍然不能始终如一地导致实践中所希望的转变。为了进一步明确，我们将多模式游戏的想法作为 EC 课程的“门槛概念”进行了调查。多模式游戏以促进儿童学习的方式整合了流行文化、媒体和数字技术。