Evgeny E. Krasheninnikov-Khait

Background. Digital technologies are playing an increasingly important role in various fields, including education. However, despite their widespread use, the specific characteristics of the digital environment and its impact on preschoolers remain insufficiently studied at the theoretical level. It is important to understand the place and role of gadgets in kindergarten settings, how they can enrich a child’s social development situation, and what the adult’s role should be.

Objective. To examine 6-7 year-old children’s perceptions of their ideal personal phone (appearance, functions), and to analyze the relationship between these perceptions and actual phone use in groups with fundamentally different pedagogical approaches to gadgets.

Sample. The study involved 47 children aged 6-7 (25 girls and 22 boys) fr om 9 preschool groups across 3 educational institutions. Educators in these groups had different approaches to using digital devices.

Methods. The research was conducted using the mosaic approach, where children participated as co-researchers. Primary methods included drawing with commentary and interviews. For quantitative analysis, the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U-test was applied.

Results. Qualitative analysis of children’s responses and interpreted drawings revealed that smartphones are significant objects for preschoolers, children are aware of its possible and real applications. Children demonstrated awareness of real-world applications, primarily planning to use phones for entertainment/games and communication, less for information-seeking. In groups where teachers didn’t use phones, children focused more on appearance (cases, phone-as-pet designs with ears/tails), while in gadget-positive groups, they emphasized more diverse functions, including child-task-oriented imaginary features. Gender differences were minimal, though girls more frequently mentioned calling and service/purchasing apps, while boys emphasized gaming.

Conclusions. Gadgets are relevant to preschoolers, with children’s phone-use conceptions ranging from predominantly reproductive (e.g., pretend phone play) to rare productive uses (e.g., creating self/friend videos) and institutional integration. The adult’s role is crucial: in groups wh ere educators actively used gadgets as cultural tools, children’s drawings showed greater app diversity and productive applications for situational problem-solving (e.g., information searches).

 

The article presents an analytical review of the systems of external independent evaluation of preschool education quality in the United States and Singapore. Special attention is given to the specifics of National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) as well as programs like STARS (Pennsylvania, USA) and SPARK (Singapore). The key characteristics of external quality assessment in these countries include voluntary participation, the presence of a PR component (so that parents understand how to navigate in a variety of kindergartens), support of leadership qualities and training managers within organizations, the use of standardized rating scales (e.g., ECERS-R), which have been recognized by the international community and focus more on evaluating environmental performance rather than children’s results. So the review of the foreign practices of organizing pre-school education quality assessment helps us to better understand how to form our national system of independent expert examination of pre-school education in the most productive way. This is all the more relevant now that Russia is engaged in laying down a new regulatory framework and elaborating a social mandate for high quality educational services.

The article provides an analytic review of the Swedish and German independent preschool education quality assessment systems. Special attention is paid to the role of the founder of a kindergarten in organizing expert examination of the work and training of managers and educators, as well as the use of standardized assessment scales (KESR and KRIPSR, which are modified ECERS scale versions). Despite their specific educational conditions such as decentralized control over nurseries, the Swedish and German systems of independent preschool education quality assessment may serve as an interesting example for local specialists. International experience shows that the external quality assessment by the founders can be combined with both independent evaluation carried out by a special expert community, and with the self-assessment of organizations involved. If the expert community has developed substantive priorities and quality perceptions, including those based on analyzing the standardized international assessment scales, the head of a kindergarten may apply a monitoring procedure which is the most convenient at the moment in order to obtain a wide range of opportunities to improve the educational environment in the daycare center.

Introduction. The paper examines the necessity of public urban playgrounds for children. Psychological and pedagogical studies reveal that the quantity and quality of outdoor play areas do not cover the needs of children. The authors monitored playgrounds in different areas of Moscow, Russia in order to explore the actual situation in the urban space from the perspective of well balanced development and spontaneous outdoor learning of children of different ages. They looked into how existing public playgrounds covered the needs of children, and if the outdoor learning was possible.

Methods. The study had two stages. The data was collected by structured non-participant observation with interview elements in which 24 public playgrounds in Moscow were involved, 417 adults were interviewed. The authors carried out an analysis of the equipment of playgrounds, and children activities to determine whether and how far playgrounds were used for communication in mixed age groups.

Analysis and Results. The authors analyzed characteristics of playgrounds, including: location, observation time, age and number of visitors, equipment and its arrangement, presented play areas and infrastructure, surface materials, individual and group activities of children and adults. The observation discovered that children of three different ages (early, preschool and school age) were using public playgrounds at the same time. The vast majority of the playgrounds near apartment blocks (76.9%) and almost a half of the playgrounds in parks (45.5%) had separated play areas for children of different ages, which largely meets the needs of parents. The qualitative analysis revealed that the equipment of the park playgrounds was more diverse, while almost a half of the playgrounds near apartment blocks (53.8%) showed one and the same type of equipment. The authors emphasize that, both playgrounds near apartment blocks and playgrounds in parks, were more focused on active exercises; most components of the equipment were of the same type and had closed character. The authors discovered lack of equipment for experimenting. The infrastructure of the playgrounds of both types showed that the playgrounds were considered as a space for children only, the interests and needs of adults coming with children were not taken into account.

Conclusion. The study indicates the need to create additional conditions for supporting and developing of children’s game, and increasing educational capacity of playgrounds. Among the measures proposed by the authors is increasing the educational capacity of playgrounds, and creating a citywide digital resource with a map and description of psychological and pedagogical characteristics of outdoor areas for children. An important role is given to educational work with families, that will increase the parental competence and responsibility in the field of educational structuring and outdoor learning.

The article is devoted to the practice of using problem situations for educational purposes when working with preschoolers. Currently, problem situations are more often used in the education of schoolchildren or adults, although studies demonstrate that preschoolers have the necessary prerequisites for the perception of ambiguous problems that do not have a direct answer, and their subsequent solution. The article analyzes studies that demonstrates the ability of preschool children to understand scientific problems, formulate hypotheses, and operate with the opposites. The ability of preschool children to solve problems without a direct answer and with ambiguous conditions in other ways than an adult solves them is considered not as a lower level of thinking than an adult, but as a specific form of thinking that works according to its own laws, but allows you to effectively achieve a new, creative result. Research shows that problem situations is an effective tool for the development of children’s thinking, in particular, studies of the Russian scientific school of dialectical psychology (structural-dialectical approach) present an idea about the value of judgments and reflections of a preschool child for his/her development, as well as for an adult who is in interaction with him.