EECERA Conference 2025 – Guest Blog # 18: Digitizing Care
Posted 16th August 2025
One of a series of short blog posts by presenters who will be sharing their work at the upcoming annual conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. Any views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of their affiliated institution or EECERA.
Digitizing Care: How Digital Tools Are Redefining What ‘Good Care’ Means in Early Childhood Education
Written by dr. Leen Dom and dr. An Piessens
“I was putting children to sleep while using the iPad to register their nap times, but at the same time, there was a child next to me who could not sleep. It feels contradictory.”
— Childcare professional
Digital media have quietly become embedded in the daily routines of early childhood education and care (ECEC). While much attention has been paid to screen time by children, our recent research at the Research Centre Pedagogy in Practice (Karel de Grote University for Applied Sciences and Arts) looks instead at the digital tools used by childcare professionals for registration, documentation of care and communication with parents — and the often-overlooked ways these tools shape how care is given, documented, and perceived.
What happens when care meets digital media?
In two Flemish childcare centers for children aged 0 to 3, we did observations, worked with smartphone diaries and conducted photo-elicitation interviews with professionals and parents. We asked:
- How do apps used for registration and communication shape the enactment of care?
- What expectations do they create?
- And what kind of care is made visible — or invisible?
The answers are anything but straightforward.
Digital tools both enhance and hinder care
Our findings show a dual reality:
Enhancing care:
Digital apps offer real-time reassurance to parents, foster trust, and help childcare professionals showcase their professionalism. A photo of a happy child or a notification about nap time brings peace of mind to busy parents. For professionals, positive feedback via the app can be energizing and rewarding.
Complicating care:
Apps also increase workload and introduce a new kind of emotional labor. Childcare professionals report pressure to respond instantly to parent messages, even while physically caring for children. The need to document everything in real time can pull attention away from the children themselves. Meanwhile, parents admit they sometimes check the app obsessively — and feel stressed when updates are delayed.
Moreover, and maybe quite contradictory, these practices enhance the presence of screens in children’s daily lives. Perhaps most strikingly, children are ever-present in the system but rarely participants in it. They are observed, photographed, recorded — but do not get a say. The apps center the adult gaze, not the child’s voice.
Let’s talk about it — join our session at EECERA 2025
If you’re curious to explore these questions further, I warmly invite you to my presentation at EECERA 2025. We’ll discuss how digital media act as nonhuman actors in the caregiving environment, reshaping relationships between parents, professionals, and children. Expect a critical, practice-based dialogue about the promises and pitfalls of “digitizing care.”
Session: Digitizing care: the role of communication and registration apps in early childhood education and care.
Time: Symposium set F14 – TECHNOLOGY USED FOR DOCUMENTATION, COMMUNICATION AND RELATIONSHIP BUILDING/Wednesday 27th of August – 14.50 – 16.10
Location: EECERA 2025 Conference, Bratislava
Interested in collaboration? Let’s connect: leen.dom@kdg.be or an.piessens@kdg.be
Leen Dom is a sociologist and she obtained her PhD in 2006, which involved research on parent involvement in primary education. Since 2013, she has worked at the Karel de Grote University of Applied Sciences and Arts as a practice-based researcher in the Research Centre Pedagogy in Practice and as a lecturer in the Early Childhood Education Programme. At the research centre, she immersed herself in a variety of topics related to children and families: parent participation, sustainability and nature experience, school lunch breaks, digital media and young children.
Research gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Leen-Dom?ev=hdr_xprf
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leen-dom-94b4bb5/
An Piessens is a social pedagogue with a PhD from Ghent University (2007), where she studied patterns in general welfare work. Since 2016, she has worked at Karel de Grote Hogeschool as a practice-based researcher with a strong focus on participation and social vulnerability. She collaborated on projects such as GOTALK and AMIF (on child participation), PACE (on access to childcare), and ‘On the road with children on the run’. Her recent work includes research on digital media in early childhood (e.g. DIGIPED, DIGIPIP).
Research gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/An-Piessens
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anpiessens/
