Teachers' Use of PowerPoint in Kindergarten: An Empirical Investigation in China

Nowadays, with the rapid progress of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the integration of ICTs in education has attracted more and more attention of educators and researchers. However, there are different situations between developed and less-developed nations both in ICT application and in ICT research. PowerPoint is a readily available and most popular tool for teaching in some less-developed countries. Under this particular circumstance, it is not an outdated issue to explore teachers' use of PowerPoint in teaching. Thus, this paper systematically looked at teachers' PowerPoint use in the setting of Chinese kindergartens. Specifically, four questions were explored: (i) the status of PowerPoint-related infrastructures in the kindergartens; (ii) teachers' use of PowerPoint in teaching; (iii) teachers' design, competences and training related to PowerPoint; (iv) teachers' perceptions and attitudes toward PowerPoint in teaching. A sample of 62 kindergarten teachers was investigated with a self-created questionnaire. Finally, it was found that the kindergartens had been well equipped with PowerPoint-related equipments; teachers frequently implemented teaching activities with PowerPoint and in an intelligent manner; the majority of teachers had positive perceptions and attitudes toward PowerPoint's general effects, but there was an imbalance of perceptions and attitudes toward children' emotional-social aspects and children's cognitive aspects. Besides, the influencing factors of the availability and access to PowerPoint equipments in kindergartens, PowerPoint's location, teachers' using years of PowerPoint, teachers' knowledge and skills, teachers' training were also emphasized by this study.