Preschool teachers’ perceptions and pedagogical practices: young children’s use of ICT

ABSTRACT

ICT has been widely introduced to early childhood programs for young children to learn and play, but the meaningful integration of ICT into early learning and development is not strongly evident. While studies reveal that teachers are the key to the effective use of ICT in the classroom, there is to date limited research investigating how early childhood teachers perceive and support young childrens use of ICT. This paper reports on a survey study examining Chinese preschool teachers perspectives and pedagogical practices. Although there was a level of correspondence between the teachers perceptions and pedagogical practices, the teachers high positive perceptions of ICT benefits conflicted with their low frequencies of using pedagogies to facilitate the childrens ICT use. The results point to the importance of providing effective professional learning and development programs so teachers can employ a wider range of pedagogical strategies to support the childrens use of ICT.

KEYWORDS:

• Preschool teachers
• perceptions
• pedagogy and ICT professional development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Chuanmei Dong (born in 1983 in China) received her Master degree in early childhood education from East China Normal University and PhD degree from the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research has focused on the use of ICT in particular children's ICT use and early childhood teachers' ICT professional development.