Similarities and Differences in Norwegian and Swedish Early Childhood Preservice Teachers’ Responses to the Use of Digital Technologies for Supporting Mathematical Explorations
摘要
Although early childhood curricula in the Nordic countries require the use of digital technologies with young children, there has been much discussion about their value, both within the early childhood education field and the wider society. In this paper, we describe the similarities and differences between Norwegian and Swedish preservice teachers’ responses to an online survey about integrating digital technologies into young children’s mathematical explorations. Our analysis shows that preservice teachers in Norway and Sweden had different experiences with using digital technologies in ECEC. However, these experiences seem to have only some effect on their responses to how digital technologies can be used with children to explore mathematical ideas. Similarly, different emphases in the curricula and the social debates about using digital technologies in the two countries only seemed to affect some results.