While, as outlined earlier, the findings of this research project enabled the research questions to be addressed, these same findings also brought to light several areas of investigation for future research. These investigations are summarised under the following headings.
• Investigating ICT in ECE from the perspectives of children and families; • Exploring how early childhood teachers notice, recognise and respond to
the impact of ICT on young children, through a series of case studies • Examining early childhood teacher education students’ perspectives of
ICT in ECE.
The perspectives of children and families in relation to ICT in ECE
The first, area for further inquiry could focus on ICT in early childhood education, from the perspective of children and families. This study could investigate how children and their families perceive the place of ICT in ECE and what value they consider ICT plays in this context. There is some evidence pertaining to the way ICT can increase connections between home and centres, and further investigations into this relationship would be useful. Furthermore, several studies indicate that there can be a miss match between what young children know and experience in relation to ICT in the home, compared to what is recognised in the early childhood setting (Downes, 2002; Zevenbergen, 2007). Undertaking, research pertaining to these aspects would contribute to increasing teachers’ understandings of these experiences and enable them to provide more effective and meaningful teaching and learning environments.
As Brooker (2002), cited in Clark (2005) urges, “unless adults [teachers] are alert to children’s own ways of seeing and understanding and representing the world to themselves, it is unlikely that children will ever manage to identify with the school’s [early childhood’s] and teacher’s ways of seeing” (p. 47). Therefore, an investigation such as this could create a place where teachers are more in tune with how young children see and understand their worlds.
Exploring how early childhood teachers’ notice, recognise and respond to the impact of ICT on young children, through a series of case studies
Further research into the specificities of how ICT is utilised would be useful, particularly to explore how teachers understand and recognise the impact of these technologies on young children’s lives. By increasing teachers understandings in relation to children’s visual literacy, for example, may enable the possibilities for learning that are presented within the early childhood setting to be noticed more clearly.
The potential of new technologies is considered by some authors (for example, Hill, 2007) to be significantly unrecognised and underestimated by teachers, particularly in relation to the notion of multi literacies. Hill (2007) suggests that, teachers need to recognise these new forms of literacies (visual), moving beyond the traditionally considered forms of literacy (written and oral), in order to engage more effectively with children’s visual worlds. ICT is considered to offer many valuable opportunities for this to occur. An inquiry such as this may also enable teachers to be more aware of the ways in which young children interpret, translate and are influenced by the imagery presented through this medium.
These insights can encourage young children to become more critical and discerning users of the array of technological resources that they are increasingly confronted with. Therefore, a case study project, which focused more explicitly on the actual application of these resources within the early childhood context, could provide useful data for professional development facilitators, for example, and more importantly for the teachers themselves to draw upon and consider more closely, when confronted with these resources within their teaching and learning environments.
Examining early childhood teacher education students’ perspectives of ICT in ECE
A final area for future research is from the perspective of student teachers undertaking their early childhood qualification in teacher education contexts, with the Aotearoa New Zealand context. Whilst my study was centred on teachers in the field (whose teaching experiences ranged from a period of four to twenty five years plus), all of these teachers held a teaching qualification gained from a teacher education site. Due to the era in which this teaching qualification was gained, probably meant that the degree to which ICT was promoted (and how this was presented) within these teacher education settings, may well have varied over the past one or two decades. Research undertaken by Laffey (2004), described how student teachers understandings of ICT were highly influenced by their experiences whilst undertaking their practicum placements, therefore, it is crucial that research is undertaken to examine their understandings further.
Furthermore, with the recent and rapid expansion of technology into the worlds of young people it is important to ascertain what attitudes and views student teachers hold towards ICT in ECE, and how their attitudes facilitate or hinder their subsequent application of ICT in early childhood education settings when they are qualified teachers. It would also be valuable to explore what position teacher education sites take in relation to ICT in ECE, and how they see their role in the preparation or guidance of student teachers for working in technological early childhood teaching and learning environments. A research project such as this could contribute to gaining a deeper understanding of these issues and provide useful data for both the teacher education and the early childhood education contexts to consider.