”En rad ogenomtänkta inköp av beebots” : Förskolepersonals uppfattningar, farhågoroch förväntningar gällande införandet av digitaliseringsbegreppet i förskolans läroplan

Sammanfattning: We live in an increasingly digital world, and as of 2018 this will also be mirrored in the revised curriculum for Swedish preschools, which will include the concept of digitization. Digitization is a much discussed topic in current politics and debate in Sweden, but it seems somewhat unclear how the concept should be understood; is it a mere matter of providing the preschools with iPads and computers, or is further action required for a successful implementation? The aim of this essay is to examine the attitudes and views of preschool staff concerning the concept of digitization in the preschool curriculum, comparing the views of a sub-group that has been educated in digitization to one that has not. It also seeks to identify the participants’ long- and short-term hopes and concerns regarding digitization, and to examine what role prior education in digitization plays in the participant’s understanding of the concept of digitization. The study isvconducted through a digital survey, with open-ended questions. Both a content analysis, with thevuse of a superlative word cloud-model, and a phenomenographic theoretical approach have been utilized for the purposes of the study. The findings include a surprising lack of education concerning digitization among current preschool teacher students, which might conflict with the ambition to offer every preschooler equal opportunities now and for the future. Other findings deal with the duality of time—that is, time,which is at once seen as both a scarce commodity and something to be gained through the means offered by digitization—as well as issues surrounding educational possibilities for positively changing participants’ perceptions of digitization so that digitization is seen as broad and empowering, where focus is on the child here-and-now.