Early Childhood Educators TPACK & Remote Learning Experiences

• In Event: Digital Media Use for Learning During COVID-19

Abstract

Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic forced many early childhood educators into unknown territory of using technology to support student engagement and academic skills. This study seeks to examine how early childhood educators adjusted to teaching very young children remotely and how teachers’ Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) may be related to their experiences. TPACK is a framework that is used to understand what knowledge teachers should have to effectively integrate technology into student learning- a task that now all educators must do effectively due to remote learning (Mishra & Koehler, 2006). This two-part study seeks to describe the experiences of early childhood educators providing remote learning education to their young students.

Methodology
In survey 1, data was collected from 55 early childhood educators reporting on their experiences remote teaching in Spring 2020. A second survey has been sent to those same 55 teachers as well as to the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) to get a greater response rate. All teachers were asked questions to assess their technology knowledge (TK), technological content knowledge (TCK), and their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) based on the survey questions designed by Schmidt and colleagues (2009). Educators were also asked demographic questions about their classroom, attitudes toward remote learning, and their expectations for how remote learning would impact student academic and social emotional skills.

Results
Most of the respondents taught in a public school (73%) had had more than 7 years or teaching experience (67%). About 60% of educators reported teaching remotely for more than 12 weeks last spring. Overall, educators’ TK was high (M=3.51, SD= .68) yet there TCK was considerably lower (M=3.04, SD= .76) and their TPACK score was in the middle (M=3.33, SD= .76). Educators had concerns about student outcomes as a result of remote learning, specifically 63% of teachers reported that they thought their students' academic skills would be worse and 67% reporting their students' social emotional skills would be worse compared to if they had been in the classroom. Less than half (46%) of the teachers reported that they attended professional development workshops to support their use of educational technology during remote learning.

Discussion
Data for the fall remote learning survey is still being collected, but based on the data from our spring survey, there is evidence that teachers’ technological skills are pretty good but that early educators struggle with connecting the use of the digital tools with teaching specific content areas particularly, math, literacy, and social emotional skills, which are three critical areas for school success in early childhood. It will be important to look at the relationships between TPACK scores and teachers’ attitudes about how well students are doing with remote learning and their own confidence to effectively teach in the remote learning context with our next round of data collection, this fall.

Authors

• Alexis R Lauricella, Erikson Institute
  Presenting Author

• Morgan Russo, Erikson Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jenna Herdzina, Erikson Institute
  Non-Presenting Author