Media Education in Dialogue

The four-year project "Media Education in Dialogue between Day-care Centre and Family" is located at the intersection of research and practice. It aims to investigate media education in day-care centres and to sound out how media-educational support in early childhood education can be successfully structured.

While media-educational topics are now to a large extent an integral part of the curricula of primary schools, they often become a sensitive topic in day-care centres. Although they are politically required, many parents and educators are sceptical about media education in day-care centres . Meanwhile, various studies show that media - including digital mobile media - play a major role in the everyday lives of small children and pre-primary school children: due to the intuitive operability of devices and applications as well as a growing range of infant apps and other formats, even the youngest children come into contact with media from very early on.

Practice and literature have shown that educational and parental partnership between pedagogical specialists and parents plays a central role. For this reason, the project focuses on cooperation and dialogue between day-care centres and parents. Which formats of cooperation exist and how can they contribute to a successful media education?

The project consists of three modules based on each other: The focus of the first module is a literature research that investigates the scientific status quo in the field of media education in early childhood education and the formats of cooperation between institutions and families. In the second module, a catalogue of criteria for the conditions of success will be developed on the basis of the state of research and an initial qualitative survey. The third module enters the field phase in which selected day-care centres - with both advanced and early media educational concepts - are accompanied and their procedures evaluated.

The project results shall result in recommendations for the design of media-educational guidance in dialogue between early educational institutions and families. These recommendations will apply both to the practical work in day-care centres and to the conceptual design of media-educational content in the training of educators and will be aligned with the curricula of the German federal states.