This thesis, titled Opinions of Parents and Preschool Professionals on Functional Literacy and the Use of ICT in Kindergarten, is divided into two parts: the theoretical and the empirical part. The theoretical part is based on the study of domestic and foreign scientific and professional literature from the fields of functional literacy and information and communications technology (ICT). On the basis of the studied literature, I decided to find out the beliefs that parents and preschool teachers hold regarding the functional literacy and the use of ICT in preschool education.
In the empirical part of the thesis, I present the research goals and research questions, through which I tried to determine the following: how much importance parents and preschool teachers place on functional literacy and the usage of ICT in preschool education, how preschool teachers are coping with technological innovations and in which way they are learning to use new forms of ICT, which forms of ICT are being used for groupwork and whether preschool teachers believe that ICT tools will prevail in the future as the main choice of educational materials, how preschool teachers view the replacement of visual materials (e.g. picture books) with the use of ICT and to which degree parents and preschool teachers are able to demonstrate to the child a safe and correct way of using a smartphone, a tablet, a desktop computer. I then present the analysis of the interviews and an interpretation.
In the conclusion of the thesis, final findings are presented, which put emphasis on the results of the research and provide potential guidelines for the contribution to the field.
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