Digital Competencies in the Context of Preschool Music Education

Abstract

Given the digitalization of modern society and the way a child acquires musical experiences, practitioners are expected to apply various media in everyday educational praxis. The theoretical framework of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is an approach that connects the knowledge of educators with Information and Communications Technology (ICT), concurrently developing technology-supported pedagogical knowledge and integration of technology into education. The paper aims to investigate educators’ self-assessment of their digital competencies and their implementation in musical activities with preschool children. The respondents are full-time and part-time graduate students of the Early Childhood and Preschool Education study program from faculties of teacher education in Croatia. The obtained results indicate that 91,1 % of respondents didn’t have any formal ICT education while 59,5 % didn’t have any additional type of music education except during their studies. Nevertheless, the greatest knowledge participants have shown on the competencies for using digital tools (CFUDT) scale succeeded by a technological knowledge (TK) scale of the adapted TPACK-TCCMA survey, thus the respondents rated their digital and ICT competencies exceedingly high unlike music and pedagogical competencies. Considering the results obtained, it can be concluded that additional attention should be given to the development of digital, music, and pedagogical competencies during studies that will be applicable in both music and other areas of education.