Abstract:

The present work is the result of quantitative research undertaken at Christian and Catholic private nursery schools located in Milan and Monza Brianza.

In July 2023, Milan Education Office carried out a survey about digital skills of headmasters/coordinators and teachers. By analyzing the collected data, two additional anonymous surveys were carried out for AMISM coordinators and teachers.

This research was meant to report digital skills in the schools belonging to the Association. Specifically, the project focused on four objectives.

First, detecting coordinators and teachers’ knowledge of relevant documents and tools, so that they could interact with technologies and digital contents both at a personal and a professional level. Particularly, we refer to several documents of the European Commission, to support digital skills development (European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators: DigCompEdu (2017); MyDigiSkills (2021); SELFIE. Discover the digital potential of your school (2022)). Second, verifying any potential investment in digital infrastructures and equipment in AMISM schools. Third, ensuring the use of digital tools for teaching and learning methods for children from 3 to 6, especially enhancing playing practices with digital technologies. Finally, comparing data on digital skills of headmasters’ (in public schools), educational coordinators (in private schools) and teachers (in public and private schools). This data was collected by the local Education Office (UST) in Milan, together with the data relating to the digital skills of coordinators and teachers in AMISM schools.

The afore mentioned investigations highlighted that teaching nowadays can’t help considering how fast digital development is spreading. In addition, it cannot be denied that teachers are called to be specialists of an educational design and a method, mastering new media and multi-dimensional research.

Keywords:

Digital skills, management and teaching staff, digital technologies, nursery school, teaching and learning practices.