“I am the only one doing anything at all here”: Sponsored, shared, and felt unplugged videogame play in Nordic Early Childhood Education and Care classrooms

Young children create broader playscapes by moving fluidly between devices and surrounding artefacts and invoking screens and nondigital interfaces—enacting playful literacies of unruly affect and patterned discourse. We present findings from a video-ethnographic case study of three play sessions with four children, ages 3–5 with varied gaming experiences, in a Norwegian Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) classroom. Using an elevated stage, blocks, wooden stair structures, and printed Super Mario imagery, they assemble and enact an “unplugged videogame.” Shared Social Practices (SSP), Collaborative Affective Attunement (CAA), and sponsors of literacy were primary analytical concepts, referring respectively to routinized ways of engaging in literacies, unpredictable atmospheres and intensities which propel literacies in action, and structuring agents carrying the ideological freight of literacies. Our research questions were: in our case of unplugged videogame play in a Nordic ECEC classroom, how do SSP and CAA emerge through young children’s playful literacies, and; how are SSP and CAA of young children’s playful literacies sponsored? Our findings show that discursive–affective features of play, sponsored by Super Mario, such as composing their course in adherence with Super Mario lore or invoking shared felt histories with Super Mario, could propel relational moments of unpredictability. However, one child’s vigor in establishing and maintaining SSP of and evoking shared felt histories with Super Mario, constrained the emergence of CAA and SSP, because of the diverse sets of familiarities with Super Mario. Other sponsors of literacy, such as ECEC ideologies, also intervened. When playing out a scaled-down version of Super Mario lore, children with diverse sets of familiarities with Super Mario exhibited more coordination and attunement in their play. Structuring agents, such as sponsors of literacy, must be considered in relation to both affective and discursive dimensions in analyses of young children’s messy and unpredictable play beyond-the-digital.