Empowering Young Children in the Digital Age
Digitalisation is transforming education as well as social and economic life, with implications for childhood. Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), with its immense potential to shape children’s early development, learning and well-being, can play a major role in addressing the opportunities and risks that digitalisation brings to young children. Digitalisation also creates new ways of working that have the potential to lead to quality improvement in the ECEC sector. This report provides a 360-degree view of the challenges of digitalisation in ECEC and possible policy responses.
Promoting equity and inclusion in the digital age through early childhood education and care
This chapter explores differences in risks and opportunities relating to digital technologies among young children. It focuses on the exposure to digital risks and the development of emergent digital literacy skills in home environments before turning to differences in access to and the use of digital technologies in early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres, and particularly to the role of ECEC in mitigating digital divides among young children. Moreover, this chapter discusses ways in which digital technology may support a quality provision of ECEC as well as inclusion, thus strengthening the quality of ECEC for disadvantaged children in particular. The chapter concludes with a review of current funding structures aimed at reducing digital divides and issues policy pointers for promoting equity and inclusion in ECEC.
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