The presentation is based on the results of a German study analyzing the role of media education expressed in curricula of early childhood education. The focus is on early childhood curricula in Germany. Recent studies reveal that both media education and the use of digital media like a tablet computer are seldom seen in the educational work of day-care centres respectively kindergartens (e.g. Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach 2014; Brüggemann et al. 2013; mpfs 2015; Kammerl & Thumel 2016). The researcher understands media education in early education as the way to encourage a productive and creative use of digital media and to reflect media content with children (cf. GMK 2017, Büsch & Demmler 2017; Eder & Roboom 2016). By doing media education, media literacy, which is a key element for children’s inclusion in a mediatized society, can be promoted. Media education is not only a question of age and the capacity to deal with digital media, also future educators (those who are still in apprenticeship) who use a lot of media in leisure time, are often skeptical towards the use of digital media in early education and assume other educational fields as more important). According to an empirically based model by Friedrichs-Liesenkötter (2016), the media-educational practices of future educators can be explained with two dimensions: a) conditions relating to the future educator like the specific media-educational habitus and b) framing working conditions like the integration of media education in educator training. The presentation sheds light on both dimensions and describes the role of media education in comparison to other fields of early education. It focuses on the results of a document analysis of three different kinds of curricula carried out in 2018. First, it includes an analysis of educational manuals (‘Bildungspläne’) for the 16 federal states in Germany, which describe the educational mission for a child (cf. Kratsch 2016; Neuß 2016). Second, it takes into account the curricula for dual training of educators and third, there is an analysis of curricula for study programmes of early education. The results of the curriculum analysis are combined with further research data on media education in day-care centres. Going away from there, implications for the design of educators’ apprenticeship and study programmes in the field of early education can be discussed.

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