A Qualitative Study Of Pre-service Preschool Teachers' Attitudes Toward Children's Use Of Information Technology

Under the background of educational informationization reform,the informationization of preschool education is also making great strides forward.Information Technology has been closely related to children's life and study,although children are widely exposed to information technology in their families and kindergartens,however,the current research on children's information technology use is still very scarce.It has been found that teachers are "important others" to promote the development of children's information literacy,and their own beliefs about the use of information technology have a direct impact on their actions and decisions in educational practice.Most of the current pre-service teachers are "digital natives" who grow up with the development of information technology.Their understanding of children's information technology use will have a profound impact on their subsequent professional practice.Therefore,to explore the pre-service teachers' attitude towards children's use of information technology is helpful to expand the relevant research on children's Information Literacy and promote the exploration of the practice of information education in kindergartens.Based on the information reception model and Gofman frame theory,this study conducted an in-depth interview with eight senior students majoring in preschool education in a local university in Xi'an,these students have just finished their senior year's kindergarten internship.They have more observations and reflections on the application of information technology in kindergartens.Moreover,the places and classes where these students practice are not all the same,it can reflect the use of information technology in a comprehensive way.Through subject coding analysis of qualitative research data,to understand the current situation of children's use of information technology and teachers' attitude towards it,and on this basis,from the orientation of protection,education and comprehensive development,this paper discusses the attitude of pre-service teachers towards children's use of information technology,and constructs the framework of teacher attitude analysis.The results show that information technology plays an assistant role in kindergarten,and it can be divided into two categories according to its function and children's participation:Assistant Teaching and Assistant Games.In addition,pre-service Preschool teachers have significant differences in their treatment of information technology use.Pre-service preschool teachers generally support their own use of information technology and give more consideration to issues related to children's use of information technology.Specifically,pre-service preschool teachers'attitude towards children's use of information technology has three orientations:firstly,the attitude orientation is based on the protective concept,under which preschool teachers focus on the protection and care of children,negative attitudes towards the use of information technology by children.The second is the attitude orientation based on the educational concept,under which the preschool teachers focus on children's development,think that information technology can promote children's development,and hold a positive attitude towards children's use of information technology.The third is the attitude of giving priority to comprehensive development.Under this framework,preschool teachers not only see the favorable side of information technology,but also see the harmful side of information technology,that is to take certain strategies to reduce the obstacles of information technology to children's development,so as to maximize the promotion of information technology to children.