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FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren

DiCoTe: Increasing professional Digital Competence in ECTE with focus on enriching and supporting children’s play with coding toys

Alternative title: DiCoTe: å øke profesjonelle digitale kompetanse i barnehagelærerutdanning med fokus på å berike og støtte barns lek med kodeleker

Awarded: NOK 12.0 mill.

This project has as main goal to increase Norwegian preschool teacher students’ and preschool education teachers’ professional digital competence by developing resources for the preschool teacher education and implementing these resources in all institutions that provide such education in Norway. These resources will be developed with the aim of enriching and supporting children's play with technology in preschool. The focus will be on play with coding toys that children aged 3-5 years, in cooperation, can programme by giving logical messages to a robot via direct interaction with the toy, without the use of screens. The resources will be developed in partnership among preschool education teachers, preschool education students, preschool teachers, preschool owners, and researchers. A wide range of methods will be used, such as surveys, focus group interviews, discourse analysis, systematic reviews, and observations. The resources will be initially tested out at the University of Stavanger and at Queen Maud University College in Trondheim, with the goal of establishing a national standard for increasing Norwegian preschool teacher students’ professional digital competence. The resources will be available for all preschool education institutions through a secure server. In addition, The Norwegian Centre for Mathematics Education and the Science Factory will contribute to convey the project’s results to a broader and non-specialist public. Partners in the DiCoTe project are: University of Stavanger (UiS), Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Western Norway University of Applied Science, Aalborg University (Denmark), Queen Maud University College, Sandnes Municipality, Røros Municipality, Melhus Municipality, The Science Factory in Sandnes, Didactic Digital Workshop at UiS and The Norwegian Centre for Mathematics Education in Trondheim.

DiCoTe meets the urgent need to enhance professional digital competence in Early Childhood Teacher Education (ECTE). Digital professional competence in ECTE and in ECECs has been highly prioritised by the Government during the last decade. Despite these efforts, it has been reported that teachers in Norwegian ECECs do not have the professional digital competence that is required for adequately supporting children’s play with technology. DiCoTe aims to increase Norwegian ECTE teachers’ and ECTE students’ professional digital competence by developing resources for ECTE and implementing these resources in Norwegian ECTE. These resources will focus on enriching and supporting children's play with technology in ECEC. These will be centred around play with coding toys that children aged 3-5 years, in cooperation, can programme by giving logical messages to a robot intuitively via direct interaction with the toy, without the use of screens. The resources will be developed in partnership among ECTE teachers, ECTE students, ECEC teachers, ECEC owners and researchers. A wide range of methods will be used, such as surveys, focus group interviews, discourse analysis, systematic reviews, and observations. Research-based resources for the ECTE will be designed and piloted in the LTM course at UiS and DMMH. After the piloting, there will be an evaluation of the project, to adjust the resources. The resources will be disseminated in the network of teachers in LTM, through DiCoTe webinars, and will be available through a secure server with FEIDE encrypted login. The Norwegian Centre for Mathematics Education and the Science Factory will contribute to distribute a description of the project, research findings and considerations about results nationally, to a broader and non-specialist public.

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FINNUT-Forskning og innovasjon i utdanningssektoren