Computer Science in Early Childhood Education: Pedagogical Beliefs and Perceived Self-Confidence in Preschool Teachers

Abstract

Preschool teachers play an important role in making complex environments such as technical devices and the computational concepts behind digital devices understandable for children. By creating child-oriented learning environments, they foster the child's understanding. For the selection of treated topics, pedagogical beliefs and self-confidence of preschool teachers play a crucial role. In our field-study we examine the influence of previous computing experiences during on pedagogical beliefs and self-confidence in computer science of future preschool teachers. Our results suggest that pedagogical beliefs are especially important for including computer science as a kindergarten topic. Furthermore, there seems to be a connection between self-confidence of preschool teachers and their experiences with computer science and digital media during their own childhood. Further research has to focus on the causes and mechanisms for changing pedagogical beliefs and self-confidence in computer science, so that more preschool teachers include computer science in their daily work.