Umeå University's logo

This study investigates preschool teachers' perceptions about the pedagogical use of digital play and, by using the Learning in Working Life framework as a theoretical point of departure, it also investigates how these perceptions are connected to the teachers' professional learning environment. Participants wrote a self-report essay about digital play. Results show that the participants identified opportunities with digital play on a societal, content, workplace practice and social-cultural level of the workplace-learning context. Challenges were identified on a social-cultural, technical-organisational and content level. The conclusion is when introducing digital play into preschools, the challenges include too little time and reluctant parents and colleagues. The opportunities can be summed up as helping to prepare children for the future and enriching their upbringing and learning.

The purpose of this thesis is to improve knowledge on preschool teachers’ educational use of digital play and their professional learning about it. The thesis is focused on three questions; How can preschool teacher educational use of digital play be understood? How can the professional learning context of preschool teachers using digital play for educational purposes be understood? And, How can preschool teacher knowledge needs concerning educational use of digital play be understood?  The participants were preschool teachers who had started to introduce tablets and digital play in educational practice.  Netnography, Self-report essays, and Interviews were used as methods for data collection. The data consist of 465 posts from online forums, ten self-report essays and eleven interviews with preschool teachers. Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006) was used as a method for data analysis. The theoretical framework ‘Learning in Working Life (Illeris, 2007), which examines the constituent parts of workers’ professional learning context, was used to make sense of, and interpret the findings towards a synthesis and a deeper understanding of the informants’ stated experiences from educational use of digital play and from professionally learning about it. 

The results show that the participants’ incentives for using digital play were linked to a user-friendly technology and to the perceived opportunities to support children’s life-focused and school-focused learning. Moreover, the children’s learning environment was perceived to be enhanced by digital play, as it enabled opportunities for variation, individual adaptation and innovation in the educational practice. The participants envisioned digital play in preschools to be: different from children’s home use, purposeful, embedded in educational practice, secure, primarily collaborative and preferably used with teacher presence. Their professional learning context included reluctance from colleagues and guardians and limited time and opportunities to learn about digital play at work. In this situation, technology, like opportunities for knowledge exchange via Internet forums, became an enabler of professional learning. Some participants also explored digital play together with the children, to overcome the shortcomings of the professional learning context. The participants needed knowledge about topics in social discourse, technology and educational use of digital play. Dealing with children’s access to tablets and how to enhance children’s agency in digital play were issues that many participants worked to improve. Sometimes the envisioned educational use of digital play conflicted which the participants’ experiences from the professional learning context, which can be interpreted as instances when the participants experienced the introduction of digital play as challenging.

This article reports on findings from an interview study with eleven Swedish preschool teachers. The purpose was to increase the knowledge about preschool teachers’ experiences from pedagogical use of digital play. The participants were preschool teachers who used digital play in their practice, and their narratives were analysed using an inductive approach to thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The results showed that the use of digital play provided more opportunities in children’s creative work, better pedagogical documentation, access to the Internet as a source of information, access to more pedagogical material and opportunities to create new pedagogical activities. Two main teaching objectives were identified in the participants’ statements, to prepare children for school and for life in a digitised society. The participants wanted to increase children’s access to tablets and increase children’s agency in their digital play activities. Furthermore, they wanted to increase their pedagogical knowledge about digital play and they wanted to be in control over the digital play activities that they introduced in their practice.

This paper presents different angles on the subject of digital play as a means to develop children’s literacy and power, using an online ethnographical study of Swedish preschool teachers’ discussions in informal online forums. Question posts (n = 239) were analysed using the Technological Pedagogical Knowledge framework and the Caring, Nurturing and Teaching framework, with the aim of understanding how teachers intended to support children’s literacy development with tablets. Literacy development can be understood as a social practice that needs to develop along with changes in society’s demands on citizens. The results presented indicate that school subject oriented skills are predominantly present in the mind-set of these preschool teachers. When digital play is increasingly used for pedagogical purposes in preschools, that also means that preschools have expanded their opportunities to work with children’s literacy development. For preschool teachers, it is important to discuss how literacy development can be supported in a contemporary media landscape.

This paper focuses on preschool teachers' use of online social networks for discussions about tablets in preschools. Posts initiating discussions ( n = 465) were analysed to increase understanding of what questions tablets raise among preschool teachers and to understand online communication from a professional development perspective. Posts were analysed using thematic analysis in combination with the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge framework, which illustrates what kind of knowledge teachers need in order to teach efficiently with technology. The results indicate that traditional means of professional development are frequently discussed but that the newness of tablets in preschools makes it difficult for preschool teachers to find support in research, training and literature. Thus, communication can partly be described as collegial support. Questions often aim at urgent and specific forms of desired knowledge, possibly challenging to address by acts of reading literature, attending courses or lectures. Furthermore, market interests become visible, as providers of services and products promote lectures, books, websites and applications. As rapidly changing technologies enter the preschool practice, it seems that preschool teachers will increasingly be dependent on more direct and flexible forms of professional development.

An online questionnaire was directed towards students undergoing various teacher training programmes at Umeå University, Sweden. The survey targeted approx. 200 students. 96 responses were recieved to questions about what challenges a teacher may face when using video games in the pedagogical practice. The answers were interpreted and placed into the categories displayed in the tag cloud below.

The study showed that a majority of the student teachers had no experience of video games being used for learning purposes, neither as pupils nor as student teachers. Almost half of the respondents stated that they would use video games in their future teaching practice but almost as many expressed uncertainty whether or not they would use video games in their teaching. Our study also showed that many student teachers are positive towards using video games in their teaching. They could also identify many challenging factors that are important to address if video games are to find their way into their pedagogical practice in the future.

The most frequently identified challenges were related to:

• teachersʼ knowledge about and experience of game based learning

• supporting structures and material that help teachers design game based learning activities

• teachersʼ general proficiency with and access to technology

Much could be done in order to overcome challenges like these. Our conclusion is that game based learning should be embraced to a higher extent in the teacher training programmes, educational support stuctures for game based learning should be improved and finally more resources and efforts should be focused towards educating teachers to become more technically skilled.

The Department of Interactive Media and Learning at Umeå University offers online courses about ICT and how ICT can be used for educational purposes. In many of the courses students can apply to the course even if the course has already started. When the students enter the course continuously teachers feel an increased demand to have structured and accurate information that helps students to easily understand the course content, assignments and aims. In this paper we have examined how students handle the information and information structure of the course "ICT for education". This was done by analyzing student posts in the course communication platform as well ass making a student survey and course evaluation at the end of the course. The results show that almost every student in this course feel that online courses compared with campus courses demand more of the students when it comes to understanding the course content, assignments and aims. The majority of these students also agree upon that the online course teachers are more available when it comes to answering students questions compared with teachers at campus courses. For the students the most important source for information about the course is the study guide. Other information sources used in this course are equally important for the students but many agree upon that the number of information sources within a course should be reduced as much as possible in order to make the course content, assignments and aims more easily to understand. The questions asked by the students in the forum for questions as well as in the student reflection documents tend to decrease as the course continues. This could indicate that the students understanding of the course has increased and that their acclimatization within the course is fulfilled. When half of the course time had passed the students in this course stopped asking questions about the course content, assignments and aims. One key question to be answered in further studies should be how to reduce this introduction time and if this can be done just by improving information structures and information content.