From technological distribution to educational innovation: How context, curriculum, and local practice frame educational technology use in early childhood education

Abstract For decades, educational technologies have been distributed to educational arenas, more recently also including early childhood education. However, many problems stem from a less transformative first-order change in the implementation of digital technologies. This study follows the changing states of educational technologies from three case studies spanning 2015–2022, during which early childhood curricular changes occurred in Sweden. Drawing on an ecological framework, three ethnographies of technology-in-use are examined for how technological affordances affect practice, using meta-ethnography comparisons and qualitative ethnographic analysis. Results show how macro-level curricular change interplays with local rules, technological offerings, pedagogical practice, and interaction to influence how technologies are used and pedagogies are shaped. The paper discusses how local negotiations make second-order educational innovation possible considering all ecological change layers and adds how pedagogy-first and child-first models can work to drive critically informed change in early childhood educational environments.