Characterizations of preschool technology education: analyses of seven individual preschool teachers’ and childcare attendants’ descriptions of their teaching

Abstract

In recent decades the preschool has leaned more towards a learning-oriented pedagogy, where the subject of technology has been given a more prominent place. Still, studies on how individual preschool staff members perceive and teach technology is scarce. This study shows how seven preschool staff in Sweden describe their work with the subject of technology and how technology education is characterized in these descriptions. The data was produced by means of semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire and analyzed with narrative analysis. The results show very diverse practices of technology education, implying the learning possibilities for children in different preschools are not equal. Some of the staff describe a clear and conscious teaching of technology, while others describe teaching what can be viewed as a limited and/or shallow technology education, where technology is sometimes used as means for learning other subjects or contents rather than being the learning objective. Six ways to characterize technology education was found, namely: technology education (1) concerns technological objects and systems in children’s environment, (2) concerns learning to handle technological objects, (3) is doing experiments, (4) involves developing abilities, (5) is naturally included in children’s play and (6) departs from digital technology.

You Don’t Have to Re-invent the Wheel to Implement Technology Activities in Early Childhood Education

“…A case study conducted by Mawson (2013) concerning 3-4-year-old children's technological experiences in early childhood settings in New Zealand indicated that children developed a higher level of understanding of the technological process in an activity when the activities were planned and organised by the teacher. Some recent studies from Sweden (Sundqvist, 2020(Sundqvist, , 2021Thorshag & Holmqvist, 2019) emphasise that in play-based collaborative learning activities, the teacher's role is crucial, since how technological knowledge is mediated by teachers in such activities is imperative for the kind of technological knowledge that is made available for the children to develop. On the same note, the findings of an observational study by Johansson (2020) involving a Swedish preschool class indicate the importance of directing the children's focus to the companion meanings (described as value judgements on what knowledge is and what kind of knowledge is worth knowing) as means for teachers to organise technology education.…”