Children’s interactions with technology in teachers’ self-reported activities in Sweden’s preschools

There has been an increasing interest to investigate activities within the field of technology in the preschool setting (e.g. Bairaktarova et al. 2011; Benson and Treleven 2011; Mawson 2013; Thorshag and Holmqvist 2018; Turja et al. 2009). Some of this is due to it being an unexplored research area, although it is also connected to the development of the preschool curriculum for a more subject-related content with clear goals. In recent decades, the directive to support children’s development and learning has been emphasised both in the Swedish preschool (e.g. Broström 2017) and internationally (e.g. Van Laere et al. 2014). Bennett (2005) described it as a slide from the social pedagogic tradition towards teaching children specific subjects. Teaching in the Swedish preschool is guided by specific objectives in accordance with the preschool curriculum (Sheridan and Williams 2018) that are to be led by preschool teachers based on the children’s perspectives and interests. Hence, it is a formalised, but not compulsory education of children, and both planned and spontaneous situations can be regarded as teaching activities. Thus, Sheridan and Williams (2018) emphasise the different competences that preschool teachers need in order to teach. Their own subject knowledge is of importance (e.g. Jones et al. 2013; Sheridan and Williams 2018), as is their ability to design and plan teaching activities (e.g. Turja et al. 2009). The latter has been debated in terms of what teaching in preschool includes, such as well-planned and conducted activities (Ehrlin et al. 2015), free play and the children’s own explorations (Campbell and Jobling 2008; Hallström et al. 2015; Hellberg and Elvstrand 2013). Recently, Sheridan and Williams (2018) analysed the quality of Swedish preschools based on the actual teaching that takes place in them. A large number of preschools show low teaching quality in specific content areas and previous research has highlighted that preschool teachers need to improve their content knowledge and didactical skills in order to develop their teaching. Studies explicitly focusing on teaching as a concept in preschools reveal that practising preschool teachers are uncomfortable about using teaching as a concept (e.g. Jonsson et al. 2017). Also, teachers’ understanding of teaching, as well as how it is applied in the preschool practice, varies from a total repudiation of teaching, based on the idea that everything that takes place in the preschool is teaching, to lesson plans based on scientific grounds and proven experience (Vallberg Roth 2018). In other words, there is no consensus about expected practices. With regard to the implementation of the curriculum in 2010, The Swedish Schools Inspectorate (SSI) (The Swedish Schools Inspectorate 2012; The Swedish Schools Inspectorate 2017) has also reported that preschool staff are insecure about teaching technology, they do not know what content to include and how to teach it. The children are involved in doing activities, but they do not automatically learn technology.

In Sweden, most research is focused on how preschool staff (i.e. child minders or preschool teachers) interpret the concept of technology and the kind of activities that are related to it in the preschool setting (e.g. Elvstrand et al. 2018; Sundqvist 2016; Sundqvist et al. 2018; Öqvist and Högström 2018). This focus stems from the change in the Swedish preschool curriculum, as described above (The Swedish National Agency for Education 2016). With regard to technology, in a general sense, the curriculum states that the preschool should strive to help each child to develop their ability to: (1) identify technology in everyday life and explore how simple technology works and (2) build, create and construct using different techniques, materials and tools. Hence, as stated these goals are broader than for instance digital technology or educational technology. In July 2019 the curriculum was revised again (The Swedish National Agency for Education 2018). It now includes three goals regarding technology, although this study was conducted prior to this revision.

However, an issue that has not been investigated to any great extent is how preschool children interact with technology as they “identify”, “explore”, “build, create and construct”. From such a study, knowledge can be acquired about the interplay between preschool teachers and the children and between children when using technology, as well as how children approach it. The main point here is that the subject of technology in the preschool is more than simply defining the content or identifying artefacts and their function, but also includes children investigating, trying out, constructing and interacting with technology. Therefore, the aim of the study is to investigate what technology teaching includes in authentic preschool settings. The research question is: How do preschool children interact with technology in teachers’ self-reported activities?

This section presents the changes in the Swedish preschool curriculum, previous research on technology education in the preschool and the study’s theoretical framework.

This study has been conducted within a larger project including two research circles conducted over a full year, some results have been published (e.g. Sundqvist et al. 2018). The research circle is a form of action research that is participant-based in character (Stringer 2014). Researchers and practitioners participate in a research circle as equal partners in a common process to investigate and search answers to questions posed by the practitioners (Andersson 2007; Stringer 2014). This forms an interplay in which all the participants contribute and knowledge is shared and developed.

The knowledge that is acquired then helps the participating preschool teachers to deepen their own understanding, in our case of technology, and to see the technology content in their daily activities. However, the research circle also provides opportunities to answer research questions. McKenney and Reeves (2012) call this research through intervention. Even though other forms of methodologies, such as questionnaires with open questions or interviews, can be used in order to understand more about how children interact with technology, it is likely that such methodologies would not have an additional effect on the preschool teachers’ own understanding and practices. However, such methodologies may still be used as a complement to the research circle in order to yield additional data.

The research circles were carried out in two different Swedish municipalities. One circle consisted of six preschool teachers and two researchers. In the other research circle, 13 preschool teachers and two researchers participated. One of the researchers took part in both circles and all preschool teachers are female. All the circle meetings were video recorded and transcribed verbatim. In the larger project each research circle met seven times in the year for approximately 2 h each time. The participating preschool teachers came from different preschools and were all appointed by their managers due to their interest in preschool technology education.

Before starting the research circles the preschool teachers were asked to answer a questionnaire (Collier-Reed 2006) in order to map out the technology inventory profile for the groups. This procedure made it possible to discuss the concept and content of technology in the first meeting of each research circle based on the questionnaire results, statements used in the questionnaire and how the preschool teachers interpreted these statements. Thus, a common understanding of technology was established in the research circles based on Collier-Reed’s categories for technology (e.g. Sundqvist et al. 2018). Prior to the second meeting the participants agreed to document and report on activities from their daily practices in which technology was present. This step was initiated by the researchers for two reasons. Firstly, to gain insight in how the preschool teachers had interpreted the subject area technology in Swedish preschool. Did they for instance report on activities following the curriculum, science activities or did they only focus on information technology? Secondly, to identify what the authentic Swedish preschool practice looked like. The children involved in the activities included groups of younger children aged 1–3, groups of older children aged 4–5, and in some cases children with special needs.

Before each research circle all researchers met to discuss the outline of each circle. Between each meeting the participating researchers discussed how to move each circle forward. The video recordings were watched and clarifying questions were prepared. This was documented by the researcher who participated in both research circles. The discussion resulted in different choices for each circle. Hence, during the research circles more material was prepared by the researchers than could be used.

The data analysed in this study were obtained by the participants themselves between the first and second meetings in each research circle. Hence, all the data were self-reported by the participants based on their own knowledge of technology and views of a preschool activity involving technology. The two category systems developed by Collier-Reed (2006) were used to map the technology content and interactions with technology in the activities. The reason to include both systems is because interaction in this framework concerns interactions with something, namely the technology content. Although the two category systems (Tables 1 and 2) were developed from interviews with year 11 pupils in South Africa, the category systems used to describe the technology have been adopted and tested in a Swedish context for preschool teachers (Sundqvist et al. 2018) and primary school teachers (Nilsson et al. 2016).

In previous studies (Nilsson et al. 2016; Sundqvist et al. 2018), we found that the system of categories describing meanings of technology was functional for the teachers’ own identification of technology activities. In order to take this further we applied Collier-Reed’s (2006) second category system describing interactions with technology. This was done because the curriculum describes interactions with technology in terms of: “identifying”, “exploring”, “building, creating and constructing” (The Swedish National Agency for Education 2016). Also, in their report on pre-service teachers’ interactions with technology, Luckay and Collier-Reed (2012) used a statistically revised category system combining direction and instruction (see Luckay and Collier-Reed 2011). However, from an analytical point of view, Elvstrand et al.’s (2018) argument that children have a spontaneous interest in technology challenges the statistically revised category system. From a preschool practice perspective, there are important differences in how the categories direction and instruction were defined (Collier-Reed 2006).

From the presentations by the preschool teachers during the second meeting in each of the research circles, the first step in the analysis was for two of the researchers to independently categorise 48 identified activities using Collier-Reed’s (2006) categories. This was done by reading through the transcripts several times to become familiar with the content of that activity and the described context and then fitting the actions described by the preschool teachers into the categories. Hence, the analytical process was deductive and the way the preschool teachers explained the context influenced our interpretation of the activity (i.e. the proper category). Only activities with a technology content were analysed; other activities concerning for instance science were removed at this stage. Also, sometimes the activities were so complex that two or more categories could be applied. At the same time, the researchers analysed the type of interactions that were identified in the activities in a similar manner. However, not all the presented activities included an interaction with technology.

After this initial step the two researchers compared their coding and any discrepancies were discussed until consensus was arrived at. In these 48 activities a total of 54 cases, i.e. unique technology-related actions, were found in which a category of technology was identified (artefact—solution to a problem). In total, 40 of these 54 cases included children interacting with technology (direction—engaging). Finally, the 40 cases were mapped in a matrix according to who initiated the self-reported activity (child or preschool teacher initiated) and the kind of technology category/interaction category for each case, thus visualising the core as presented by Collier Reed (2006, pp. 148–149), see Table 4.

As the data generated in this study derives from the research circles, validity and reliability has been considered from the specific aspect of participant-based research (Anderson and Herr 1999). Five aspects of validity can be identified: outcome validity, process validity, democratic validity, catalytic validity and dialogic validity.

Here, the outcome validity in relation to this study’s research questions is discussed. Given this aspect, we looked at the validity in the analytical process by comparing the independent interpretations of two of the researchers (inter-rater reliability) followed by their joint discussion resulting in consensus on all the results. In the research circle, the ongoing process have influenced how different participants chose their activities. In fact, some of the preschool teachers acknowledged it themselves. They said they had used their ‘technology spectacles’. With them on they could identify children involved in technology related activities. Hence, the preschool teachers did pay attention to more advance activities in their daily practice than they typically do. Also, they were influenced by other participants as they explained their activities and learned from each other. However, in order to increase the validity in the analytical process the activities were analysed by the researchers using Collier-Reed’s (2006) framework.

The outcome or findings are results of an ongoing process in the research circle with reflective cycles and problematisations of the practice. As the discussions and questions raised by the participants in the research circle were open and transparent, no restrictions have been applied by the researchers. Thus, democratic validity is also secured. The catalytic validity reflects the reorientation of the research process in its view of reality and also with respect to the researchers’ roles. Here the practitioners’ presentations and their views have led us to our results from an open standpoint. Also, dialogic validity has been upheld in that one researcher participated in both research circles and the three researchers had follow up meetings between the research circle meetings to discuss their experiences of and reflections on them.

The reliability we describe emanates from three aspects taken from Storfors (2014): adaptive reliability, ability to review and interactivity in process. As adaptive reliability is achieved by adapting the method to the context, we can see this as being built into the method of a research circle. The goal and activities were determined by the participants’ own actions. There was an internal ability to review, in that one researcher participated in both circles and all the researchers had research meetings for reconciliation. However, an external ability to review within the framework of the research circles was not present. The possibility for interactivity in the process, i.e. being objective in the work and independent of specific people, has not been explicitly addressed, although as the research circle builds on an active participation of all its members it would not be functional if one person dominated or the circle became dependent on that person.

Throughout the project we have followed the guidelines for good ethical research practice laid down by The Swedish Research Council (2017). For the participating preschool teachers, their managers were responsible for selection to the project, which we as researchers had to accept. The purpose of the research project, methods, how the data was used and stored and how the results would be published were communicated both in writing and orally to all the participants and their managers before the study began. Each participant was also able to choose whether to give consent to the audio recordings, to the video recordings or neither of them. Everyone consented to the video recording of the meetings. Since the participating municipalities were responsible for the children in the activities, they declined our request of obtaining informed consent from the children and legal guardians. From an ethical point of view we could include how the preschool teachers described the activities and what the children did as they participated in them. Hence, from an ethical perspective it was not possible to include what the children learned during the same activity.

The aim of this study was to investigate what technology teaching includes in authentic preschool settings. In a Swedish perspective an authentic preschool practice is guided by different objectives in accordance with the curriculum (Sheridan and Williams 2018). However, the goals to strive for are vague and leaves the preschool teacher to interpret how to act (Jonsson 2016). Also, a large number of preschools show low teaching quality (Sheridan and Williams 2018). Our results show that the children initiate half of the activities within the core, whereas a majority of the activities outside the core are initiated by the preschool teachers. We present them as two clusters. Hence, they show two qualitatively different ways of how children interact with technology. The activities outside the core appears to be connected to the first goal in the Swedish curriculum for the preschool, which is “to identify technology in everyday life and explore how simple technology works”. (The Swedish National Agency for Education 2016).

Here, the main content in the children’s activities is to explore the application of artefacts through instruction or tinkering. However, if tinkering is self-initiated, see Table 2, how is it possible to be teacher-initiated? Concerning instruction the preschool teachers show the children how to use artefacts, but the preschool teachers also provide an educational environment. For us, both these ways provide opportunities for children to interact with artefacts in different ways. This strengthens the picture of a practice with activities that are well-planned and conducted (Ehrlin et al. 2015) and the importance of children’s own exploration and free play (Campbell and Jobling 2008; Hallström et al. 2015; Hellberg and Elvstrand 2013). Hence, in the self-reported activities there seems to be a balance between preschool teachers inspiring and interesting children in technology and the children’s own interests (c.f. Sundqvist 2017). The activities also act as a move from children’s lack of capacity towards capacity (Collier-Reed 2006). It is not uncommon for preschool teachers to, initiate an activity, or for their activities to both inspire and instruct the children to try different applications of artefacts in order to develop capacity. There, the preschool teacher selects and supplies materials and artefacts and makes them available for the children to use, hence they provide an environment in which the children can interact with the artefacts by themselves (tinkering). However, SSI (The Swedish Schools Inspectorate 2012; The Swedish Schools Inspectorate 2017) has reported that although children are involved in doing technology, nearly no teaching in technology takes place. Such results emphasise the importance of relevant activities. For example, Turja et al. (2009) argue that when creating activities in the preschool it is important to lift them to a level above pottering. Hence, with respect to possible learning, such activities do require the presence of a qualified preschool teacher (cf. Jones et al. 2013; Sheridan and Williams 2018).

However, from a methodological perspective, it is important to discuss the outcomes of these activities. We analysed 40 self-reported activities, with second-hand narratives and did not observe the preschool practice ourselves. The context is the research circle in which the preschool teachers’ task was to document activities from their daily practices. The activities were then discussed in order to develop the preschool teachers’ own understanding of what technology is and what possible interactions with technology might look like. Hence, documenting the outcome of the activity for the child (i.e. if the child had actually learned something during the activity) was not part of the task and has therefore not been analysed here. This leads to the fact that we cannot analyse the actual learning that takes place (cf. Mawson 2013; Sheridan and Williams 2018; Turja et al. 2009).

The reason for not including learning is due to the design of the research circle and what the representatives for the municipalities themselves had agreed to. This also refers back to research ethics and the municipalities’ own legal responsibilities towards the children, which we could not violate. So, even though several activities are within the core, the children may not have encountered the concept of technology at all during the activities, or even learned anything with regard to the curriculum goals to strive for (cf. Mawson 2013). So, from a research point of view, the self-reported activities only show that the children are both interested in technology (cf. Elvstrand et al. 2018) and interact with it (Collier-Reed 2006). This second cluster, the core, is connected to the second goal in the Swedish curriculum for the preschool: build, create and construct using different techniques, materials and tools. It indicates that there is a difference in the interaction with technology that can be traced back to the verbs used in the curriculum. Thus, there is a real opportunity to provide activities that make use of the children’s own construction skills and creativity in order to develop an understanding of technology as knowledge and skills and solutions to problems. In fact, based on our data some preschool teachers do that. Therefore, we maintain that the notion of the core is valid in a preschool setting and offers fruitful explanations, although with regard to learning and the theory behind the core (e.g. secondary technology education, engineering programmes, being technological literate) we would not want to equate Collier-Reed’s core with the core that we believe exists, or is possible to develop, in the everyday preschool practice.

Even if we find the core valid in a preschool setting we have already pointed out one issue with the two sets of categories, namely that tinkering and engaging may be organised by the teachers, but then the children act within that educational setting. Another issue concerns the goals to strive for and the work-group’s report (The Swedish Ministry of Education 2010), and the common Swedish preschool practice. There are technology-related activities falling outside Collier-Reed’s analytical framework in which preschool teachers develop young children’s language and vocabulary as a possible first step to introducing an artefact (cf. Sundqvist et al. 2018). From a preschool perspective such activities are important and we argue that an interaction does exist between artefact, child and preschool teacher. It is about the product without the using and the making. It is about labelling and the child’s own interest (cf. Elvstrand et al. 2018) and the child has what Collier-Reed (2006) describes as ownership. Thus, we argue that from a preschool perspective, both using and labelling should be used to describe the children’s interactions with artefacts (product). Hence, a development of the Collier-Reed framework is needed.

The final issue concerns the absence of the category direction. It may be seen as a quality indicator and is in line with the above argument. Collier-Reed (2006, p. 101) describes this kind of interaction as taking place “in a formalised context where pupils are required to respond to the directions of an authority”. However, another explanation may be the task which was given to the preschool teachers between the first and second meeting in each circle. In fact, they did search for an authentic practice and they tried their best to find something they could report back to the other participants.

But, if the children show interest in technology, as they often do (Elvstrand et al. 2018), and have ownership, it is in line with both the Swedish preschool curriculum (The Swedish Ministry of Education 2010) and the social pedagogic tradition (Bennett 2005) for the preschool teacher to use that input when designing activities. Also, even though the preschool teacher may have their own negative experiences of technology (Elvstrand et al. 2018), which Collier-Reed (2006) emphasises as fear in the definition of the category direction (cf. secondary education), this is probably not the first thing a child experiences when encountering a new artefact (cf. Elvstrand et al. 2018). Children, even from young age, seldom lack the capacity to interact with technology. Hence, there is a possibility for preschool teachers to encourage the children and help them to interact with technology in more advanced ways. However, from an analytical point of view, as above with labelling, there is a possibility to develop Collier-Reed’s analytical framework regarding interaction further in order to adapt it to a preschool setting. In fact, if the preschool teacher labels artefacts it is a form of instruction in order to develop the child’s language. Hence, it is about developing capacity and, from a qualitative analytical preschool perspective, we argue that instruction may be something else than defined by Collier-Reed (2006). Hence, even if it is possible in a high-school/university setting to statistically merge the categories direction and instruction (Luckay and Collier-Reed 2011), labelling is needed to describe what takes place in an authentic preschool practice. Hence, the definitions of the categories direction, instruction and labelling are useful in a preschool setting. However, in order to take the discussion further additional data from the authentic preschool practice are necessary.

We conclude that the category system developed by Collier-Reed (2006) can be used in a preschool setting, but that from a preschool perspective a refinement would facilitate covering the common labelling made by the preschool teachers.

The self-reported technology related activities are both teacher and child initiated and fall into two main clusters. The first cluster appears to be connected to the first goal in the Swedish preschool curriculum, which is “to identify technology in everyday life and explore how simple technology works”. Here, the main content in the children’s activities is to explore the application of artefacts through instruction or tinkering. The second cluster is connected to the second goal in the Swedish preschool curriculum: build, create and construct using different techniques, materials and tools. Hence, there is a difference in the interaction with technology that can be traced back to the verbs used in the curriculum. In the presence of a qualified preschool teacher, there is a real opportunity to provide activities that make use of the children’s own construction skills and creativity in order to develop an understanding of technology as knowledge and skills and solutions to problems.

Opportunities for further research open up if we emphasise the core in the everyday preschool practice and develop a picture of what technology teaching in preschool is. More authentic activities focusing on both what the preschool teachers do, how the children interact with technology and what they learn are important features to cover. This is in fact necessary in order to understand the directive to teach Swedish children technology in order to achieve the curriculum goals. The work-group’s report (The Swedish Ministry of Education 2010) provides guidance for preschool teachers, but if we want the children to be involved in activities within the core, we also need to know how they are organised. This is a concern that Sheridan and Williams (2018) also address. What should preschool teachers do in order to provide well-planned activities and at the same time identify and stimulate children’s own explorations and free play?