The Role of Technology in Early Childhood

Abstract

Today, children are acquainted with technological devices such as tablets, smartphones, and computers at an early age; they often use these devices both at home and school for educational and entertainment purposes. The age at which children should start to use technological devices has been discussed for a long time. Both parents and teachers should assume great responsibilities in this regard. Teachers need to consider curricula and decide on the use of technological devices within the framework of the objectives and achievements they determine. In addition, they should use technological devices together with traditional materials in educational activities. They should also guide parents and children about using technological devices effectively.

Effectiveness of educational technology in early mathematics education: A systematic literature review

“…Reviews and meta-analyses in older children and students point to the effectiveness of ET for improving mathematical learning outcomes (e.g., [5,6,7]). Similarly, literature reviews focusing on early childhood education underscore the potential of ET for supporting early mathematical development as well [9,10,11,12,13,14]. However, as these reviews in the domain of early childhood education suffer from serious weaknesses, a systematic and comprehensive literature review on the topic is currently lacking.…”

“…In line with reviews in older children (e.g., [5,6,7]) these literature reviews point to the potential of ET for improving young children's mathematical development. Notwithstanding their importance, these reviews suffer from theoretical and methodological weaknesses as they are outdated (i.e., [9,10]), especially taking into account the evolutions in ET applications, focus on a specific subgroup of children (i.e., [11,12]), or are not systematically conducted, and thus, not comprehensive (i.e., [9,10,12,13]). The recent review of Griffith and colleagues [14] addresses these major concerns, but is limited in terms of scope (i.e., only 15 included studies on mathematics) and in terms of depth of the analysis, as it does not distinguish between studies adopting a media comparison versus a value-added approacha criticism that also applies to all previous literature reviews in the domain.…”

“…Although research also provides increasing evidence that ET can be an effective tool for supporting early mathematical development [8], a recent and comprehensive systematic literature review synthesizing this growing body of evidence is currently lacking. Previous literature reviews on the topic suffer from several theoretical and methodological weaknesses as they are outdated, especially taking into account the evolutions in ET applications (i.e., [9,10]), focus on a specific subgroup of children (i.e., [11,12]), are not systematically conducted, and thus, not comprehensive (i.e., [9,10,12,13]), and do not take into account differences in the study designs, especially with respect to the activities that were conducted in the control conditions [9,10,11,12,13,14]. We aimed to address these weaknesses by conducting a systematic and comprehensive literature review on the effectiveness of ET for stimulating children's development in the domain of early mathematics, with explicit attention for the insights coming from media comparison studies versus value-added studies in the domain.…”