Technology in primary schools: Teachers’ perspective towards the use of mobile technology in children education

Abstract

Today technology is progressively being recognized as a significant learning tool for helping young children in developing their cognitive, social and learning skills. Now a day’s even young children are exposed to the latest technology such smartphones, tablets and e-readers as observed by many teachers and parents. The new mode of technology is considered to present some potential as an educational tool.Many new platforms are available for the educational media content. Undoubtedly technology is an important element in the lives of most children now days. Although many schools have also incorporated the use of technology as a learning tool in their curriculum still some researchers and teachers have lots of concerns regarding the use of technology in schools and specifically the use of mobile technology by young children. In this paper we have conducted a survey with the teachers of 12 different primary schools in Pakistan (N = 104). This paper is an attempt to investigate the use of technology in primary schools for children and teachers. The paper also explores the attitude of teachers towards the use of mobile technology for primary school age children and specifically in the context of education by using educational or learning applications (apps) for children both in homes and in school environment. This paper also sheds light on the use of technology in primary schools and also aspires to provide the guidance in order to overcome the concerns of teachers regarding technology usage in schools and to increase the accessibility of mobile technology in education for young children.