Vaiopoulou Julie, Papadakis Stamatios, Sifaki Eirini, Stamovlasis Dimitrios, Kalogiannakis Michail
Department of Education, University of Nicosia, 2417 Nicosia, Cyprus.
Department of Preschool Education, Faculty of Education, University of Crete, 74100 Crete, Greece.
Behav Sci (Basel). 2021 May 27;11(6):82. doi: 10.3390/bs11060082.
Contemporary mobile technologies offer tablets and smartphones that elicit young children's active participation in various educational apps, dramatically transforming playing, learning, and communication. Even the most knowledgeable users face difficulties in deciding about the value and appropriateness of the so-called educational apps because of many factors that should be considered. Their importance for children's attitudes is affected by the perceived positive and negative aspects, which vary across a multiplicity of criteria. Filling the gap in the relevant literature, a new instrument, named PEAU-p (Perceptions about Educational Apps Use-parents), was developed and validated in the present study designed to measure parents' perception of educational apps for kindergarten pupils. Data ( = 435) were collected via online procedures, and the psychometric properties of PEAU-p were studied via exploratory and confirmatory methods. Principal Components Analysis extracted six factors, namely Usability, Enjoyment, Involvement, Learning, Worries, and Values, which explained 72.42% of the total variance. Subsequently, by implementing Latent Class Analysis based on the above factors, four Clusters (i.e., parents' Profiles) were extracted corresponding to their perceptions and attitudes towards the educational apps used for kindergarten pupils. Those were named as 'mild attitude', 'negative attitude', 'positive attitude', and 'indifferent attitude'. This categorization, besides the statistical support, is fully interpretable, and the profiles were associated with certain covariates, such as age, the number of children, knowledge on new technologies, or distal outcomes, e.g., the frequency of using apps, the general position towards apps or their intention to recommend apps use. The findings are discussed within the current research field, investigating the influential role parents play in young children's media selection and use.
当代移动技术提供了平板电脑和智能手机，这些设备能促使幼儿积极参与各种教育应用程序，极大地改变了玩耍、学习和交流方式。由于需要考虑诸多因素，即使是知识最渊博的用户在判断所谓教育应用程序的价值和适用性时也会面临困难。它们对儿童态度的重要性受到感知到的积极和消极方面的影响，这些方面在多个标准中各不相同。为填补相关文献的空白，本研究开发并验证了一种名为PEAU-p（关于教育应用程序使用的家长认知）的新工具，旨在衡量家长对幼儿园学生教育应用程序的认知。通过在线程序收集了数据（n = 435），并通过探索性和验证性方法研究了PEAU-p的心理测量特性。主成分分析提取了六个因素，即可用性、趣味性、参与度、学习、担忧和价值观，这些因素解释了总方差的72.42%。随后，基于上述因素进行潜在类别分析，提取了四个类别（即家长概况），对应他们对幼儿园学生使用的教育应用程序的认知和态度。这些类别被命名为“温和态度”、“消极态度”、“积极态度”和“冷漠态度”。除了统计支持外，这种分类完全可以解释，并且这些概况与某些协变量相关联，如年龄、孩子数量、对新技术的了解程度或远端结果，例如应用程序的使用频率、对应用程序的总体态度或推荐应用程序使用的意图。在当前研究领域内对研究结果进行了讨论，并探讨了家长在幼儿媒体选择和使用中所起的影响作用。
