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For decades, educational technologies have been distributed to educational arenas, more recently also including early childhood education. However, many problems stem from a less transformative first-order change in the implementation of digital technologies. This study follows the changing states of educational technologies from three case studies spanning 2015-2022, during which early childhood curricular changes occurred in Sweden. Drawing on an ecological framework, three ethnographies of technology-in-use are examined for how technological affordances affect practice, using meta-ethnography comparisons and qualitative ethnographic analysis. Results show how macro-level curricular change interplays with local rules, technological offerings, pedagogical practice, and interaction to influence how technologies are used and pedagogies are shaped. The paper discusses how local negotiations make second-order educational innovation possible considering all ecological change layers and adds how pedagogy-first and child-first models can work to drive critically informed change in early childhood educational environments.

VI LÄRARE DEBATT: Regeringens uppdrag till Skolverket – att göra utbildningen i förskolan skärmfri – riskerar att ge negativa och allvarliga konsekvenser, särskilt för barn som är i störst behov av att möta en digitaliserad värld med stöd av utbildade förskollärare och barnskötare. Det skriver 27 barn- och förskoleforskare i ett gemensamt upprop.

Programming is increasingly becoming a subject across the spectrum of educational environments for preschool children. Concerns have been raised regarding a too instrumental and uncritical implementation of programming. This study follows a preschool and reports on the obstacles infused during a six-month design-based study introducing a programmable floor robot with children, featuring formative focus group sessions and pedagogical development. An activity theoretical approach was taken to examine the various tensions with existing pedagogies that arose during the project and how these led to pedagogical development toward a programming ethos based on making pedagogical materials and tinkering activities, where failure is an inherent part of the educational process. The paper discusses the potential problems of using new subjects with current curricula and how new technologies are part of reshaping childhood pedagogies.

Programming is becoming a key subject in early education globally, with surging problems of how computer science can become a subject for children of all ages and backgrounds. Problems of implementing new technologies in the old curricula have long been noted, and lately, concern over computer science education goals is often too narrow and skills-based without concerns for the critical educational potential. This study follows the change process of two case preschool departments implementing programming with a floor robot across a seven-month design process. Mixed analytical techniques based on activity theory are used to examine the tensions, conflicts and development of pedagogical alternatives. The studies show the strenuous change processes involving local transformations toward a child-centred, inclusive early computer science education and development of projects centring making, children's exploration, tinkering and play as key parts of the learning process. It discusses how the considerable change processes enabled pedagogical solutions coherent with important concepts in computer programming and how computing education can build on child-centred pedagogies through local adaptations and age-appropriate designs. Practitioner notes What is already known about this topic Computer science and programming are becoming part of early education worldwide. Less is known about how to implement computing with ever-younger age groups, especially for those under three. That technological change can be a strenuous change process building on societal, historical and educational tensions, requiring individual learning and organisational change. What this paper adds Two cases of change designing computing education for 1–2- and 3–5-year-olds. Design processes raising critical questions about current standard childhood programming materials being resolved to enable a child-centred computing education. Challenges and potentials specific to early childhood in adopting computer science education. Implications for practice and/or policy Computing education challenges pedagogical notions, such as the role of failure in education. Computing education can be developed for very young children. However, there are considerable critical challenges to resolve in developing a child-centred approach. Childhood fundamentals such as play-based pedagogy can work synergistically with computer science activities, providing educational potential, also relevant for computer science education at large. 

New technologies and subjects are increasingly being added to the agenda of children's education for increasingly younger groups. Such advances are also tied to questions of learning and the educational designs that make this possible. This study follows the evolution of context- and age-appropriate designs during a programming robot project for 1-2-year-olds, a novel technology for children and teachers. The study examines learning design phases featuring instructional, guided play, and free play activities and uses mixed-methods techniques to examine several aspects of children's educational interaction. Results show how all three educational designs offer different potentials for children's learning. Teacher scaffolding supports extended programming actions but limits children's exploratory actions, and guiding play increases time on task. Simultaneously, children's free play increases the frequency of simple programming actions and leads to unexpected learning potentials beyond the guided activities. It is discussed how diverse learning experiences can join in programs balancing instructional needs of novel technologies and subjects with early childhood's exploratory and playful modes of learning.

Video has become a widespread tool for capturing naturalistic behavioral data. While mixed methods show great potential in understanding the active nature of children’s interaction, only a few studies have developed mixed methods for video-based interaction research. This paper presents a mixed methods embodied interaction model appropriate for studying complex embodied interaction and draws on methodological insights from a mixed methods project to capture changes in children’s interaction with touchscreen technologies. The paper details how integrated mixed methods analysis was needed to fully explain the results and how mono-method studies would provide misleading results. The theoretical advancements generated during the project illustrate how mixed methods for video-based studies have valuable properties for understanding complex interactional phenomena, such as learning.

We are rapidly moving into an era where AI and robots are part of everyday interactions in society and education, and there are immense discussions today about current and future technologies. Still, children are often not included in this discussion, while there is much to learn from current uses and children's understandings of AI and robotics. The study is based on a seven-month ethnographical work that details the implementation of a robot in two preschool groups of children aged 1–2 and 3–5 (n = 38). The study descriptively combines a framework for children's play analysis with explorative qualitative child interviews (n = 6) with the 3-5-year-olds to examine how children play with the robot and their thinking about a future with robots and AI. The results show how children's play with robots spans all of Hughes's (2011) sixteen play types and integrates robots into play in ways specific to child-robot interaction. The interviews indicate that children have well-formed knowledge about the current uses of robots and AI and elaborate imaginaries about a future with them, including critical boundaries toward robots and AI agents. The evidence shows emerging ways children relate to these. The potential of including children's actions and voices in the ongoing societal and educational debates on AI is discussed.