1 ADOPTION OF IT IN THE FINNISH EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION Jonna Järveläinen, Timo Kestilä, Eija Koskivaara, Päivi Pihlaja*, Hannu Salmela, Jarmo Tähkäpää. Turku School of Economics and Business Administration *Turku University 1 ABSTRACT Prior research on information technology use in early childhood education has focused primarily on assessing the impact of educational games on children’s learning. Information technology can, however, be also seen as an instrument to support the transformation of the larger pedagogical context. It can improve the human resource management of pre-schools, support early detection of learning problems, and facilitate interaction between teachers and parents, to mention only a few examples. This paper draws from both early childhood education research and information systems research in order to identify objectives for, and obstacles to, the adoption of IT in the early childhood education. The empirical part of the paper reports the results of a one-year action research project carried out in South-West Finland. The practical aim of the project was to produce an initiative for the development of early childhood education practices and information systems. Out of the nine municipalities that received the initiative, four committed to the project. This paper identifies some of the key requirements for achieving progress in the early stages of IT adoptions, such as the ability to illustrate the usefulness of IT for key stakeholder groups. By doing so, the article also provides a high-level description of the ways how different IT applications can be related to the overall objectives of the early childhood education. 2 INTRODUCTION Prior research on the use of information technology (IT) in early childhood education (ECE) has focused primarily on the role of educational games. Because these games are directly related to individual child’s learning, they constitute an important challenge for research. Research should not, however, ignore other areas where IT could support more effective and better quality education.