Examining Early Childhood Education Students’ Attitudes Toward Educational Computer Games in Kindergarten.
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| Title: | Examining Early Childhood Education Students’ Attitudes Toward Educational Computer Games in Kindergarten. |
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| Authors: | Manessis, Dionissios1 manesis_d@yahoo.com |
| Source: | Proceedings of the European Conference on Games Based Learning. 2021, p369-377. 9p. |
| Subject Terms: | *COVID-19 pandemic, *Active learning, *Educational games, *Cognitive development, *Kindergarten |
| Abstract: | Pre‐service early childhood educators are in a position where they will be expected to help and support infant pupils to use computer and computer games. Unless teachers believe that the role of computer games with educational features is essential neither to their own nor to their students’ needs, they will be unable to introduce Games Based Learning (GBL) methods into their teaching. Therefore, it is important to gather information about which factors may influence Early Childhood Education (ECE) students’ attitudes toward using digital games in nursery school. The purpose of this study was to investigate ECE students’ attitudes toward educational computer games in Kindergarten. The data were collected from 200 freshmen and senior students attending a Bachelor in Education degree at the department of ECE, University of Athens, Greece. Questionnaires were given to the participants at the end of a 13‐week Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) course. The results of the study revealed that the majority of the ECE students had very positive attitudes toward using educational digital games in their future teaching and expressed great willingness to use GBL to benefit children in learning environments. They also appeared to have high levels of self‐efficacy in the ability of using computer games, which is linked to their behavioral intensions about integrating such innovative instructional methods into a kindergarten classroom. There are considerable parameters which affect pre‐service Early Childhood teachers’ attitudes towards digital games: year of study, frequency of computer usage per day, previous experience in playing computer games, experience in a pre‐school classroom, previous computer use in any environment and previous courses about the use/integration of ICT in early childhood classroom. The findings of the research suggested that attitudes were significantly affected by all the above variables. Given that computer games, when appropriately designed, can enhance young children’s learning and cognitive development and at the same time ECE teachers’ role is crucial, more research should be conducted in order to predict ECE students’ preparedness to successfully implement games based learning methods in their classroom, as future teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
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| Database: | Education Research Complete |
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