Wag the dog - The nature and foundations of preschool educators' positive ICT pedagogical beliefs

Abstract

It has become evident that the vast majority of early childhood educators feel positive about using ICT with children. However, as they are found to have had no or only a little training or practical experience of pedagogical use of ICT, it is important to explore where the positive attitude comes from, and what pedagogical benefits early childhood educators believe ICT use brings about. This study focuses on the relationships of educators' general and ICT-related pedagogical beliefs, and the foundations of educators' positive ICT pedagogical beliefs. In their general pedagogical beliefs, the educators emphasized the learning of socio-emotional skills, and reported that they carry out practices where children have an active role in their learning. In their ICT pedagogical beliefs, the educators emphasized the learning of academic skills, and the methods they described were usually individual exercises which were either carried out using ICT or by following educators' ICT-supported instructions. Positive ICT pedagogical beliefs were, to a large extent, based on perceptions of what different devices and software promise in terms of children's learning. Outside influences, i.e., the model observed from primary school, also played a significant role in the construction of the educators' ICT pedagogical beliefs. Explores preschool educators' general and ICT-related pedagogical beliefs Preschool educators' general and ICT-related pedagogical beliefs are incoherent Preschool educators have uncritical beliefs about the benefits of educational technology Primary education's ICT culture affects preschool educators' positive ICT pedagogical beliefs 1. INTRODUCTION A decade ago, Wang and Hoot (2006) stated that teachers in early childhood education 1 no longer ask if information and communication technology (ICT) should be used with small children, but how it should be used. A recent survey carried out by the Finnish teachers' trade union supports this statement. In it, 80% of early childhood teachers reported having a positive attitude toward using ICT with children. However, over 80% of the whole sample reported having insufficient pre-service or in-service training for using ICT with children, and a total of 40% have had no ICT pedagogical inservice training at all. Moreover, only 10% of them reported using ICT with children at least once aweek. (OAJ, 2016.) This is mainly due to the fact that ICTwhich in this study refers to digital devices (i.e., computers, tablets, smartphones) and products or outputs that are viewed, played, or created on these devices (i.e., applications, games, websites) (see Plowman, 2016)are scarce in

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