A systematic review of literacy apps for young children 

Background: Educational apps are becoming ubiquitous in the home literacy environments of young children (aged 0-8). A synthesis of what we have known in this area can guide future work in promoting children’s literacy development. Therefore, this systematic review examined 1) the content areas and theoretical framework of literacy apps, 2) the learning outcomes driven by literacy apps, 3) the design features of effective literacy apps across languages, and 4) the design features of effective literacy apps across types of learners.

Method: Following the Prisma systematic review method, we searched five major English databases (e.g., ERIC and PsycInfo) and the eight previous reviews (e.g., Neumann & Neumann, 2014) between 2014 (the most recent review) and October 2022. The initial search yielded 5,575 records, with 2,893 articles after removing duplicates. We screened these articles by titles and abstracts (N = 144) and by the full papers, leading to 24 articles (25 studies). Each study was coded, and the data was analyzed in response to each research question.

Results: Our key results include that we identified eight theoretical frameworks centering on emergent literacy development and human-computer interaction. Moreover, most literacy apps were designed to facilitate children’s vocabulary skills, mainly in English. Furthermore, among the effective literacy apps in existing experiments, we found some similarities and differences across target languages and types of learners.

Conclusions: Our findings provide a foundation for future research on evidence-based literacy apps among young children. Future directions are proposed to advance our understanding of technology-based reading intervention. Copyright © 2023 by Association for Reading and Writing in Asia.