Browsing by Author "Alanen, Kristiina"

Goals: The goals of the newly reformed national core curriculum of pre-primary education 2014 are broad based competence refers to the total of knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, capacity and will. The main point of pre-primary education is to have fun while learning and for the child to participate. One of the main goals of broad-based competence is to improve children's knowledge- and communication skills. Digital learning games are used as one way of practicing broad- based competence. In this study, it was examined, what kind of digital math learning games are used during pre-primary education and that do they correspond the pre-primary education curriculum of mathematical contents. To addition to this, it was also figures out what kind of experiences the teachers have of using digital education games in pre-primary education and how does the use of these digital games benefit the basic of pre-primary education curriculum and the goals of broad-based competence. Methods: The data of the research consist of digital math learning games, as well as of four interview given by pre-primary teacher. The data of the study was collected by theme interviews and the content of these interview were analysed by using theory guiding content analysis. For the research of learning games, I chose eight different mathematic digital games, which teachers had used in preschool groups in the spring of 2015. I analysed the digital learning games by using theory based content analysis. The results and conclusions: The use of digital learning games as teaching material supports the improvement of mathematical skills along with many other skills. According to teachers, digital games brought happiness and functionality to pre-primary education as well as good practice to children's developing social skills. Learning games supported children's self-esteem, when they got positive feedback of their learning experience. The digital learning games were seen as motivating and as a way to bring more chances to ability grouping and interaction. According to teachers, the challenges in using learning games were to chosen the proper game for the situation and to guarantee the quality of the game. By using the digital learning games, you can support the goals and curriculum of pre-primary education and board-based competence, in many ways.