The main factors of the attitudes of Greek kindergarten teachers towards information and communication technology

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to examine the main factors of Greek kindergarten teachers’ attitudes towards information and communication technology (ICT) in kindergarten. This two-phase survey was carried out in 2007 and 2012 and used 383 and 295 participants respectively. The participants in both groups were drawn from kindergarten teachers in the areas of Athens and Crete (Greece). In the first phase a 5-point Likert scale questionnaire designed to assess the main factors of kindergarten teachers' attitudes towards ICT. Varimax with Kaiser Normalisation was applied to extract the main five factors of kindergarten teachers’ attitudes which are: (1) how ICT helps the child universally in the teaching process;(2) the use of ICT by the children as cognitive tool; (3) the changes caused by ICT in regards to the role of the kindergarten teacher in the classroom; (4) the use of ICT to organise kindergarten teachers' administrative work; and (5) the conditions under which ICT may integrate into the kindergarten classroom. A paired T-test was coordinated among the main factors of each phase in order to classify them into ascending order. Then three 2-way MANOVA were performed between the two phases to see the interactions of these main factors on: (1) the ICT knowledge of kindergarten teachers; (2) the frequency of using ICT at home by the kindergarten teachers; and (3) the ICT use in the teaching process. Finally, the changes of the five main factors of recent years were discussed in the hope that they may provide useful information on the kindergarten curriculum.