The beginning of primary school is a critical time to create a good basis for the pupils to develop their digital competence. Important premises for creating a school culture for it is seeing pupils as active learners and offering them opportunities for creativity (EDUFI, 2014).  The joy of doing things together and making discoveries, which influences learning motivation, is also vital. However, the use of digital technologies is not often a part of everyday schoolwork during the first years of primary school education. Therefore, to find working approaches and learning paths that are suitable for each pupil to learn digital competence is a demanding but important goal in present day education. Furthermore, since competence in digital learning is rarely studied from the children’s perspective, recognising the core characteristics of pupils’ personal ways of learning digital competence is required.  To respond to such needs, the aim of this research project was to promote digital teaching and learning culture during the early years of primary education. The project was developed as a practical application in implementing visions of curriculum reform in Finland (see Pietarinen et al., 2017). Finnish National Agency for Education has funded the project.

Digital competence has been conceptualized in different ways in educational literature and there is no consensus regarding its definition. It is more evolving than a clearly defined concept underlining students’ ability to apply digital technology tools for various activities, being motivated to engage and participate in digital culture (Ilomäki et al., 2016). This means that in school, pupils are assumed to learn basic technical skills and practices in order to apply digital technologies in a meaningful way and as an appropriate tool for working and studying activities (Ilomäki et al., 2016, EDUFI, 2014). Furthermore, to use digital technology in different interactive situations for various activities in everyday life and to understand the phenomena of digital technologies are also elements of digital competency.

To ensure the continuous learning path from pre-school to primary school, it is imperative to create a school culture that takes the pupils’ previous experiences into account but sufficiently challenges the needs of each pupil. This means, for example, taking into account that young children have often access to digital technologies at home (Livingstone et al., 2017) but they are not necessarily skillful enough to use digital technologies purposefully in their school learning (Chaudron et al., 2015) or to understand how they learn in digital environments (Selwyn 2009, Bjørgen & Erstad, 2015). Moreover, previous experiences in the use of digital technology do not inherently foster the pupils’ learning strategies in a school setting but pre-school experiences do establish a basis for their learning. Therefore, it is important to create digital teaching and learning culture in primary education in which the attention is in considering the pupils’ learning, not digital technology tools per se. Consequently, the main focus of this research project is to find out important starting points for a teacher to consider supporting young pupils’ competence in digital learning.

Altogether 21 pupils (ages 6 to 8) participated into a two year-long (2017-2018) follow-up case study. Both authors of this presentation have worked regularly and intensively together throughout the project by planning, reflecting and redirecting implementation practices of the project, and conducting the research. The first author, the class teacher, was responsible for teaching the class. Written permissions to participate to the study were asked from all pupils’ parents. The pedagogical goal behind the project was to enhance the pupils’ digital competence in the context of phenomenon-based learning. Learning digital competence was integrated to learn the content of a particular subject but also as a long-term project which structured school subjects into meaningful entities (EDUFI, 2014)in order to study “what is needed for growth”. During the project, the pupils used digital devices in versatile ways. For example reading digital texts, playing educational games, searching information, watching and producing videos, taking photos and writing digital texts. All these working methods were applied and integrated into exploratory working practices in line with the idea of phenomenon-based learning. All in all, the objective was to develop holistic learning environments that prove to be pedagogically versatile and flexible by integrating the use of digital technology with traditional learning materials and class activities inside and outside of the classroom. Interaction between the pupils was highly supportive since two students always worked together by sharing the use of a laptop, a Chromebook or an iPad. Methodological triangulation in terms of data sources, theory and analysis were applied in this qualitative research (Carter et al., 2014). Different types of research data including classroom observations, field notes, photos, examples of pupils’ daily work and pupil interviews were collected systematically throughout the project. Classroom observations and field notes formed the framework for identifying the core characteristics of the pupils’ learning which have been explained and confirmed by other types of research data. Guiding theoretical principle in the analysis was to create favorable conditions for the pupils’ growth, development and learning. The focus is on identifying pupils’ engagement regarding behavioral, emotional and cognitive aspects (Fredricks et al., 2004). Additionally, learning digital competence is comprehended as the pupils’ ability to master complex situations by applying knowledge and skills in an active and creative way during school lessons.

According to our results, the pupils were highly engaged in actively learning digital competence during school lessons. When using digital learning environments, pupils’ level of responsibility was high and they focused on learning by concentrating onto the given tasks, helping each other and taking turns equally. Phenomenon-based learning practices create unforeseen situational problems which the pupils solve collaboratively and creatively. Since problems arise spontaneously from learning situations, problem solving and decision making was a natural part of classroom work. During the first school years, the pupils’ independence and courage to work in digital environments increased and their digital competence expanded. As a whole, we argue that implementing instructions that combine teaching digital competence and phenomenon-based pedagogical practices is a demanding task for a teacher. It requires flexibility from the teacher to reconsider what is possible and important for the pupils to learn in the context of single classroom activities and holistically long-term. It also requires creativity, openness, problem solving in combining core objectives, contents of different subjects and digital competence into meaningful entities that pupils learn with the help of digital technologies. In this study, we did not capture how mindful the pupils were in learning digital competence. However, our study clearly shows that the young pupils are capable to master basic digital competence that create a basis to apply digital technologies in a meaningful way and as an appropriate tool for studying. Therefore, in the future, it is important to ensure continuity for learning digital competence and focus on investigating how mindful the pupils are of their own learning. Consequently, a natural progression of this research project would be to support and investigate the pupils' self-assessment skills in the context of learning digital competence.

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