Implications of the imposed and extensive use of online education in an early childhood education program

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic forced universities to engage in a transformation regarding how education is provided. The pandemic led to education being pushed in a new direction regarding digital practices. This paper discusses the implications related to this transformation by asking the following research question: After being subjected to the imposed and extensive use of online education due to the pandemic, what implications can be found when we examine pre-service teachers' digital competence and attitudes towards and use of digital technology? This study is based on data from Norwegian pre-service teachers in their third year of an early childhood education program. Data was collected during the spring semester of 2020 and 2021. The data were subjected to regression and correlation analyses to investigate how the pre-service teachers' use of technology, attitudes and digital competence may have been affected 10 months into this educational transformation. The main difference found between the two groups of pre-service teachers is related to their attitudes and how these attitudes relate to the use of digital technology. Our findings indicate the importance of not neglecting attitude as an important component of professional digital competence. Attitude seems to be the component that is most affected by pandemic-related consequences for education, when looking at the dynamics between use of technology, professional digital competence and attitudes.