Computer games in pre-school settings: Didactical challenges when commercial educational computer games are implemented in kindergartens.

The purpose of this study is to investigate participation by early childhood educators in situations in which computer games are used by five-year-olds. The study focuses on the didactical challenges faced by early childhood educators when commercial educational computer games are implemented in daycare facilities.

The study shows that the early childhood educators consider computer games as part of the children’s “free play”, and that the early childhood educators are often not present when the children play computer games. The early childhood educators take part in the game in 10.7% of the observed situations. In cases in which they do take part, they find it difficult to maintain the dialogue which they consider a key element in exploring and learning. Through the analysis, the researchers found that there are two dramaturgical factors in play: 1) the built-in interactive dramaturgy in the game materialised in the playing situation itself, and 2) the dialogic dramaturgy that the early childhood educator tries to create in the didactic situation. This indicates that there is a didactic dissonance between the learning environment the game is trying to create and the learning environment the early childhood educator is trying to create and control. This is seen by the early childhood educators constantly trying to get the children to talk about and explain what they are doing in the game, whereas the children who are playing are deeply involved in the game and are not receptive to the communication the early childhood educators want to create. The strongest interactive bond is between the player and the game, and not between the player and the early childhood educator. The researchers point out that there may be many reasons that children who are playing are not receptive to “interruptions” from the outside. This may be because the tasks they are to solve in the game require deep concentration. Moreover, the results show that the early childhood educators consider pedagogical computer games as a tool to learn and understand social rules in addition to providing technical insight and skills.

Eight early childhood educators and the five-year-old children they work with took part in this study. The data collection comprises semi-structured interviews, 15 hours of video footage and a document analysis of government documents such as general curricula for daycare facilities and documents regarding quality and ICT (information, communication and technology) in daycare. These were used as background material for interviews and observations.

Vangsnes, V., Økland, N.T.G. & Krumsvik, R. (2012) Computer games in pre-school settings: Didactical challenges when commercial educational computer games are implemented in kindergartens. Computers & Education 58, 1138–1148.