Teachers’ Needs for Digital Learning Media Integrating Local Culture to Support Early Literacy

Early literacy is an essential foundation for children's reading and writing development. Meaningful literacy experiences require learning media that align with children's developmental characteristics and learning contexts. This study aimed to analyze teachers' needs for digital learning media integrating Palembang local culture to support early literacy among children aged 5–6 years. A descriptive quantitative survey was conducted involving 66 kindergarten teachers in Palembang from schools with A, B, and C accreditation levels. Data were collected using a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire and analyzed through frequencies, percentages, and mean scores. The findings revealed that literacy stimulation planning was relatively high, while maintaining children's attention remained challenging. The availability and accessibility of literacy media were limited. Teachers expressed strong needs for engaging, developmentally appropriate, interactive, multimodal, and flexible learning media. The highest needs across early literacy components included vocabulary enrichment (M = 4.48), letter knowledge (M = 4.41), and story comprehension (M = 4.38). Furthermore, 89.4%–90.9% of teachers gave positive responses to integrating Palembang local culture into literacy learning. These findings highlight the need for contextualized digital media supporting multiple early literacy components and provide an empirical basis for developing an interactive e-storybook incorporating Palembang local culture. Further research is needed to develop, validate, and evaluate its effectiveness in supporting children's early literacy.