In this study we dive deeper into the ever-advancing world of digital tools and their role and place within preschool teaching. The focus being the opinions and views of fully educated pedagogues working within the early years of children’s education. These being seven teachers with a large variety of time working in the profession, some being recently educated with a fresh outlook while others having many years of experience. A qualitative method was used to obtain the views of these pedagogues in relation to digital tools within the preschool environment through semi-structured interviews. Discussing areas such as the tools practical implications within preschool and the skills required to be able to use them.
The results showed a surprising amount of the teachers expressing their discomfort when using digital tools as a teaching method, due to reasons such as their own in experience with the different forms of digital technology. Expressing how they would like more help from the workplace and education system to solve this problem of inexperience, rather than everything falling solely on the individual to educate themselves in their own time and outside of the workplace. The results not only show the pedagogues own competence of digital tools as a defining factor for their use in their teaching, but also things completely out of their control such as the preschools not having a large enough budget to be able to supply new digital tools to the teachers to use. The findings even showed how some pedagogues where less willing than others to use digital tools, expressing that more traditional methods of teaching are more reliable. Some teachers stating a concern for there not being enough research yet on the affects these new technologies have on the children’s learning and social behaviours. In conclusion this study highlights how digital tools and technologies are becoming a larger part of our society and teaching. Meaning that pedagogues need more assistance in becoming prepared and able to not only understand but use these tools in the correct way to best benefit the children’s education.