This paper gives an overview on current structures and practices in teacher education in Media Education for early childhood in Switzerland. Moreover the paper will mainly focus on German-speaking Switzerland whereas early childhood will be defined as children’s age of about one to six years. This means to focus on children who are in any institutional educational care before entering primary school. Institutions mainly include teaching structures in the various cantons and their universities of teacher education as well as sheds of light on work-based and further education. The principles of media education in these structures vary between “Bewahrpaedagogik”, media education as health care, and tentative careful fostering of early media literacy. Practices in this area are on the one hand shaped by institutions from private economic businesses (day care centres) and their respective apprenticeship model and the obligatory two year Kindergarten and its respective model rooted in the universities of teacher training (Rummler/Signer 2015). The second part of the paper focusses on teaching material for pre-primary media education with the example of “Ulla im Eulenwald” (Hipeli 2015). For most children books are the media they experience first (Feierabend/Plankenhorn/Rathgeb 2015). Before long, they are surrounded by a wide variety of media. It is crucial that children are accompanied by different relevant thirds (like parents, relatives, teachers etc.) while discovering different media at an early age. Focusing on early media literacy becomes increasingly important. This competence can be acquired and fostered in a playful way – at home, in day care institutions and at school (Neuß 2016, Hipeli 2014). Speaking with children about media is an important element in that process. The stories about Ulla the owl and her friends Anna and Peter can help to start that dialogue. Ulla the owl lives in the owl forest. Her friends Anna and Peter often come to visit her. While Anna is already a first grader at school, Peter is a pre-school boy. Together with their friend Ulla children experience lots of funny adventures around different media topics (for example advertisement, age appropriate media use, fiction and reality or computational thinking). The teaching material is designed for children aged three to seven. In our presentation we will provide insights into this project and discuss experiences from different schools that have worked with Ulla since 2015 with special focus on inclusion and diversity.

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