Digital Competence Development in Early Childhood Professionals

This book examines innovative recent developments in curricula and pedagogical discourses around early childhood professionals' digital competence development via professional development avenues. By expanding the notion of digital technologies integration, teaching perspectives, and educators' practices in early childhood education, the authors not only conceptualise a professional development model, but also apply the model to bring together research across cultural contexts. Presenting findings from four cases, it offers research-informed tangible examples of teacher-centric professional development - one that inspires early childhood professionals, teacher educators, and pre-service teachers to use a variety of multimodal technologies within their repertoire of play-based practices (e.g., STEM-focused play for and with young children, teaching computational thinking). Case studies in this book are evidence of how practitioners can come together to build communities of practice to support their digital competence development as critical pedagogues and integrate a variety of evolving technology-based play (e.g., AI platforms), while engaging in paradigmatic debates. Readers will better appreciate the growth in pragmatic applications of technologies, together with theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. This will be a valuable resource for any academic or practitioner, whether beginning or expert, in understanding how digital competence development occurs through cultural learnings, is inclusive, not discipline-based, is holistic. In reframing early childhood professionals' digital competence development as a naturalistic process, it will inspire educators to integrate a range of digital and multimodal technologies in their everyday practices.

Sarika Kewalramani is a Senior Lecturer in STEM Education at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, and the Department of Education Partnerships Lead. Weipeng Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. Maria Dardanou is an Associate Professor in early childhood teacher education at the Arctic University of Norway. Maria Hatzigianni is an Assistant Professor at the University of West Attica, Greece. Maria's expertise builds on a rich early childhood career with more than 12 years of teaching experience in the Early Childhood sector in Australia and Greece.

Part 1: A case for the development of digital competence among ECE workforce 1. Digital technologies as the third teacher 2. Conceptualising early childhood workforce professional development landscapes for digital competence: Introducing the INSPIRE model Part 2: Educators' professional learning stories for STEM and digital competency development 3. Situating early childhood teachers' STEM and digital competency via robotics play 4. INSPIRE-Driven PlayBot: Empowering Early Childhood Teachers' Digital Pedagogy in Hong Kong Part 3: Creative curation of curricula, policy and teaching practices for ECE workforce DC development 5. Exploring Professional Digital Competence in Norwegian ECEC: Insights from the INSPIRE Model and teachers' perspectives 6. Harnessing the INSPIRE model to navigate AI opportunities and challenges with Greek early childhood preservice teachers 7. University-Community partnership in STEM teacher education through work-integrated immersive professional learning Part 4: Conclusion - Stepping towards transformative ECE classroom practices 8. Conclusion