In this chapter, issues relating to the digital literacy practices of girls aged from three to eight in both home and school contexts are explored. Since the late 1990s, there have been persistent concerns about boys' achieve- ment in literacy. Here, I argue that these concerns have overshadowed matters that should be considered by educationalists who are committed to gender equity in their classrooms. In this first section of the chapter, the nature of the anxieties expressed about boys and literacy are investigated before data from a number of projects that have focused on children's use of new technologies and related literacy practices are discussed. Three key issues are the focus for reflection. First, I suggest that girls' experiences of literacy across homes and early years settings are not as seamless as is often assumed and that girls as well as boys experience dissonance across these domains. Second, I suggest that there is a need to pay attention to the reductive gendered discourses that are embedded in many of the home literacy practices of girls in order to inform the development of critical literacy curricula. Finally, I consider the way in which initiatives designed to motivate boys through the incorporation of popular culture into the lit- eracy curriculum can reinforce gendered stereotypes and marginalize the out-of-school experiences of girls. This discussion is undertaken within a context in which it is acknowledged that there is a need to move beyond a simplistic binary which fuels the see-sawing debate regarding the achieve- ments of one gender at the expense of the other (Jackson 1998). I would suggest, as do many others, that such a position is an over-simplification of the issues and that we should address the needs of all pupils (Skelton and Francis 2003). However, in this chapter I have chosen to focus on an investigation into the experiences of young girls in the early years because this is where it is often erroneously assumed that literacy transitions from home to school are relatively seamless.
