Early childhood teachers’ perceptions and management of parental concerns about their child’s digital technology use in kindergarten

Abstract

Young children use, engage with, and experience digital technologies in their home and early childhood settings, yet their presence and use can be fraught with tensions and uncertainties. This paper reports on an Australian study focusing on how early childhood teachers perceive and manage parental concerns about their child’s digital technology use in kindergarten. Grounded theory was the methodological approach used to give insights into the early childhood teachers lived experiences. The findings revealed that early childhood teachers who taught kindergarten children, aged three-and-a-half to four-and-a-half years of age, experienced parents voicing concerns about their child’s digital technology use and made requests for mediation. Differences were identified between the children’s home environment and kindergarten setting regarding children’s access to digital devices, expectations for use and digital mediation practices. To manage the concerns parents raised, early childhood teachers endeavoured to educate and reassure parents about the nature of digital technology use in kindergarten. This paper invites early childhood professionals to reflect on how they respond to parental concerns about digital technology and to consider the role they play in educating parents about how digital technologies are used in kindergarten.

Psychological Interventions for Early Life Trauma in the Digital Age Childhood

“…Early life trauma encompasses a broad spectrum of adverse experiences that occur during the early stages of childhood and possess the potential to disrupt a child's fundamental sense of safety and security. These experiences, which may manifest in the form of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, neglect, household dysfunction, exposure to violence, and various other forms of adversity, constitute the diverse range of events that fall under the umbrella of early life trauma (Schriever, 2020(Schriever, , 2021. Notably, there is a higher prevalence of early-life trauma in relation to experiences of interpersonal violation, specifically emotional, sexual, and physical abuses.…”

“…Moreover, the integration of digital technologies in kindergarten settings has presented early childhood educators with a multitude of uncertainties and complexities to navigate (Schriever, 2020). Furthermore, parents have expressed concerns about their children's utilization of digital technology in kindergarten, thereby underscoring the tensions and uncertainties surrounding the presence and utilization of digital technologies in early childhood settings (Schriever, 2021). In addition, researchers have delved into the implications of young learners' attitudes towards the use of digital technologies in modern early childhood environments, emphasizing the necessity of comprehending child-computer interactions and the role of digital technologies in facilitating learning and development (Miller et al, 2019).…”

“…The effective management of digital technologies in early childhood settings has been a subject of inquiry, with early childhood teachers navigating changing roles and perceptions regarding the integration of digital technologies in kindergarten settings. The perceptions and management of parental concerns about their child's digital technology use in kindergarten have also been examined, shedding light on the tensions and considerations surrounding children's access to digital devices in early childhood settings (Schriever, 2020(Schriever, , 2021.…”

Habits, norms and use of technologies in early childhood households from a gender perspective

“…in our society; such diversity has implications in the relationships with the school. The literature identifies clear differences between the access of children to digital devices in their home environment and their early learning environment, i.e., educational centres (Schriever, 2021). Dashti and Yateem (2018) revealed that 78% of children in their study used mobile devices at home, whereas only 18% of them used mobile devices in their early learning environment.…”

“…There are tensions when parents and schools have different meanings regarding the purpose of technologies and how children experiment with them. Parental control expands beyond the household and reaches the school, intervening and mediating the experiences of their children with technologies with the aim of preventing greater exposure and use of ICTs (Schriever, 2021). Furthermore, early childhood teachers, on the one hand, attend to and manage the concerns of the parents (Smith, 2020), and, on the other hand, they must make decisions on the digital technologies that are used by the children, renegotiating their meaning and guaranteeing that they are used with educational purposes, based on playing and active learning (Schriever, 2021b).…”