Browsing by Author "Punakivi, Pia"

Media is part of the living environment of today's children since the early years. Children's media experiences are also evident in early childhood education. Children's media culture appears for example on children's discussions, plays, toys and clothing. Media and media culture can no longer be excluded from early childhood education. Children need help from educators to develop the media skills. Goal-oriented media education in early childhood education is necessary and can not be separated from other education. The purpose of this study was to find out the views of preschool teachers about media education and their experiences from implementing it in preschool education. In addition, the aim was to find out what kind of potential obstacles the preschool teachers perceived in implementing media education. The research was carried out with a qualitative research method. The research material was collected in June 2016 on the advent of a new preschool curriculum by interviewing six preschool teachers. The interviews were conducted following the principles of theme interviews. The analytical method used was data-based content analysis. Defining media education was not easy for interviewees. In the interviews the teachers were speaking partly overlapping with media education methods, practices and goals. Preschool teachers, however, had an understanding of media education. It was seen as taking into account children's media culture, exploring different media and media devices, a way to protect children, developing children's own thinking skills, developing critical capacity, developing children's own media production and cooperating with parents. Three ways to implement media education was formed: discussion of media contents, project work and the use of various digital media. Challenges in media education were the negative attitudes towards media education, lack of media education skills and knowledge and lack of digital media devices.