Employment of Digital Media in Daycare Centers. The Practices and Attitudes of Early Childhood Educators

Media education has become an integral part of the educational mandate of Austrian nurseries (Charlotte-Bithler-Institut, 2009). Using a piloted questionnaire, the present study queried 57 early childhood educators from Austrian daycare centers about their digital equipment, the purpose and the frequency of their (digital) media use with the children as well as their attitudes toward digital media in the daycare center.The results show that there is a significant lack of digital media resources to implement comprehensive media education.The attitudes of early childhood educators toward the use of digital media in nurseries are divided. They point out that digital media is not used because the focus lies on other areas of the development and education of children.