This study aims to examine whether there are differences in teaching creativity, digital capabilities, and digital play support capabilities of infant teachers according to background variables of infant teachers, and to find out the impact of infant ...
This study aims to examine whether there are differences in teaching creativity, digital capabilities, and digital play support capabilities of infant teachers according to background variables of infant teachers, and to find out the impact of infant teachers' teaching creativity and digital capabilities on digital play support capabilities. In this regard, the following research questions were set up.
1. What is the difference in teaching creativity, digital competency, and digital play support competency according to the background variables of Early Childhood Teachers'?
2. What is the correlation between teaching creativity, digital competency, and digital play support competency of Early Childhood Teachers'?
3. What is the impact of Early childhood teachers' teaching creativity and digital capabilities on digital play support capabilities?
For this study, a survey was conducted on 266 infant teachers nationwide. Lim Jin-sook (2021)'s "Professor Creativity" test tool, which was revised and supplemented by referring to Cropley, A. J. (2004)'s "Professor Creativity" test questions, was used. For digital competency, the ICT competency framework for teachers proposed by UNESCO (UNESCO, 2018) and the 'digital competency' measurement tool developed by Park Joo-yeon, Park Nam-soo, and Seo Hee-jeon (2022) referring to previous studies related to digital competency research were used. For the digital play support capabilities, the "digital play support capabilities" tool modified by Lee Eun-young (2021) was used by deriving the composition of play support capabilities measurement tools developed by Cho Woon-joo (2020) and guidelines for digital media use by Kang Yuna and Lee Young-shin (2020).
The data collected in this study were analyzed using the SPSS 21.0 program. Frequency analysis was conducted to find out the background variables of the study subjects, and Cronbach's α value coefficient was calculated to verify the reliability of the measurement tool. In order to find out the differences in teaching creativity, digital competency, and digital play support competency according to the background variables of infant teachers, an independent t-test and a one-way ANOVA were conducted before Scheffe post-test. Pearson's ratio correlation coefficient was calculated to find out the correlation between teaching creativity, digital competency, and digital play support competency of infant teachers. Regression analysis was conducted to find out the effect of early childhood teachers' teaching creativity and digital competency on digital play support competency.
The following is a summary of the research results of this study.
First, there was a statistically significant difference in teaching creativity, digital competency, and digital play support capabilities according to the background variables of infant teachers (workplace, institutional type, class age in charge, teacher age, teacher education, and digital play-related educational experience). In detail, there was a significant difference in teaching creativity according to the background variables of infant teachers according to institutional type and teacher education. Cognitive creativity, a sub-factor of teaching creativity, differed significantly depending on institutional type, and differences in personality creativity differed significantly depending on work place, institutional type, and teacher education. In addition, it was found that the digital competency according to the background variables of infant teachers differed significantly depending on the workplace, institutional type, and digital play-related educational experience. Differences in digital citizenship, a sub-factor of digital competency, were found to be significant depending on institutional type and teacher education, while differences in digital thinking skills were found to be significant depending on work place and institutional type. Differences in digital content production and platform utilization, which are sub-factors of digital competency, were significant in workplace, institutional type, teacher age, teacher education, and digital play-related educational experience. In addition, there was a significant difference in digital play support capabilities according to the background variables of infant teachers depending on the workplace and institutional type. Digital play understanding, digital play operation, and digital play response and communication, which are sub-factors of digital play support capabilities, showed significant differences in work place and institutional type, and digital play observation showed significant differences depending on work place.
Second, it was found that there was a statistically significant static correlation between the teaching creativity, digital competency, and all and sub-factors of digital play support capabilities of infant teachers. This means that the higher the teaching creativity and digital capabilities of infant teachers, the higher the digital play support capabilities of infant teachers.
Third, looking at the influence of infant teachers' teaching creativity and digital capabilities on digital play support capabilities, it was found that infant teachers' teaching creativity and digital capabilities affect digital play support capabilities. In other words, the higher the teacher's teaching creativity and digital competency, the higher the teacher's digital play support competency. Cognitive creativity, a sub-factor of teaching creativity, had a significant impact on digital play support capabilities, which had a statistically significant impact on digital play understanding, digital play observation and digital play operation, and digital play response and communication. In addition, a regression analysis was conducted to find out the effect of sub-factors of digital competency on digital play support capabilities, and as a result, digital pedagogy of digital competency had a statistically significant effect on digital play support capabilities. In addition, digital play understanding, a sub-factor of digital play support capabilities, had a statistically significant impact on digital play understanding, digital content production, and platform utilization, and digital play observation and digital play response and communication were statistically significant. It was found that digital pedagogue and digital citizenship had a statistically significant effect on digital play operation.
In this study, it was found that the teaching creativity and digital competency of Early childhood teachers had a statistically significant effect on the digital play support competency. This study has significance in providing basic data for the promotion of digital play support capabilities of Early childhood teachers living in the era of great digital transformation.