Kayla Willemse

PhD, Lecturer, Department of Early Childhood Education, University of Pretoria (South Africa)

Dr Kayla Willemse (PhD) is a lecturer in the Department of Early Childhood Education at the University of Pretoria, where she teaches across multiple undergraduate programmes and coordinates several key modules, including Teaching and Learning Coding and Robotics in the Foundation Phase and Science and Technology in the Foundation Phase. She supervises Honours, Master’s, and Doctoral students whose research spans early childhood education, teacher development, and educational technology.

Her emerging scholarly work is situated at the intersection of education, technology integration and teacher professional learning. It explores how coding, robotics, artificial intelligence, and play-based pedagogies can transform teaching and learning in linguistically and culturally diverse contexts. Her research foregrounds transdisciplinary approaches that link language, mathematics, science, and technology, with a focus on developing children’s problem-solving, creativity, and computational thinking.

Selected sources (URLs):

UP staff profile: https://www.up.ac.za/early-childhood-education/view/staffprofile/37997

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=aKwRWOgAAAAJ&hl=en

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2824-943

Keynote report: