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Bringing Computational Thinking to Life Through Play

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Design, Learning, and Innovation (DLI 2022)

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Abstract

Digital tools and solutions are increasingly used in society, creating a need for more digital skills in the workplace and everyday life. As society becomes increasingly digital, computational thinking becomes a fundamental skill for the 21st century. This paper examines play’s role in young children’s CT development in early childhood education. This paper presents a narrative review and uses forward snowballing to extend the search result. Twenty-two articles met the criteria and were manually collected. The publications were categorized into five categories: programming tools, robotics, unplugged activities, making and exploring, and guided vs. free play. For CT activities to be social and communicative, concepts such as mutuality and scaffolding must be incorporated into operational pedagogical CT frameworks. As such, CT can be designed as a play-oriented activity in that children coordinate and develop themselves, with or without educators’ guidance. As a co-creator, an educator can mediate CT and support the children in guiding activities forward.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University College of Northern Denmark, Hjørring, Denmark

    Camilla Finsterbach Kaup

  2. Aalborg University, 9220, Aalborg, Denmark

    Camilla Finsterbach Kaup, Anders Kalsgaard Møller & Eva Brooks

Authors
  1. Camilla Finsterbach Kaup
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  2. Anders Kalsgaard Møller
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  3. Eva Brooks
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Camilla Finsterbach Kaup .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Eva Brooks

  2. Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden

    Jeanette Sjöberg

  3. Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Anders Kalsgaard Møller

  4. Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden

    Emma Edstrand

Appendix A

Appendix A

 

Authors

Title

Journal

1

Abreu, Lucia & Pires, Ana & Guerreiro, Tiago. (2020)

TACTOPI: a Playful Approach to Promote Computational Thinking for Visually Impaired Children

The 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (pp. 1–3)

2

Angeli, C., & Valanides, N. (2020)

Develo** young children’s computational thinking with educational robotics: An interaction effect between gender and scaffolding strategy

Computers in Human Behavior, 105

3

Bers, M. U. (2012)

Designing digital experiences for positive youth development: From playpen to playground

OUP USA

4

Bers, M.U. (2018)

Coding and Computational Thinking in Early Childhood: The Impact of ScratchJr in Europe

European Journal of STEM Education

5

Bers, M.U. (2019)

Coding as another language: a pedagogical approach for teaching computer science in early childhood

Comput. Educ. 6, 499–528

6

Bers, Marina & Flannery, Louise & Kazakoff Myers, Elizabeth & Sullivan, Amanda. (2014)

Computational thinking and tinkering: Exploration of an early childhood robotics curriculum

Computers & Education. 72. 145–157

7

Brackmann, C. P., Román-González, M., Robles, G., Moreno-León, J., Casali, A., & Barone, D. (2017)

Development of computational thinking skills through unplugged activities in primary school

Proceedings of the 12th workshop on primary and secondary computing education (pp. 65–72)

8

Critten, V., Hagon, H. & Messer, D. Can (2022)

Pre-school Children Learn Programming and Coding Through Guided Play Activities? A Case Study in Computational Thinking

Early Childhood Educ J

9

Flannery, L. P., Silverman, B., Kazakoff, E. R., Bers, M. U., Bontá, P., & Resnick, M. (2013)

Designing ScratchJr: Support for early childhood learning through computer programming

Proceedings of the 12th international conference on interaction design and children (pp. 1–10)

10

González, Y.A., & Muñoz-Repiso, A.G. (2018)

A robotics-based approach to foster programming skills and computational thinking: Pilot experience in the classroom of early childhood education

Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality

11

Hall, J.A. & McCormick, K.I. (2022)

“My Cars don’t Drive Themselves”: Preschoolers’ Guided Play Experiences with Button-Operated Robots

TechTrends 66, 510–526

12

Kotsopoulos, D., Floyd, L., Dickson, B.A. et al. (2022)

Noticing and Naming Computational Thinking During Play

Early Childhood Educ J. 50, 699–708

13

Lee, J., Joswick, C. & Pole, K. (2022)

Classroom Play and Activities to Support Computational Thinking Development in Early Childhood

Early Childhood Educ J

14

Maloney, J., Resnick, M., Rusk, N., Silverman, B., & Eastmond, E. (2010)

The scratch programming language and environment

ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), 10(4), 1–15

15

Martinez, S. L., & Stager, G. (2013)

Invent to learn. Making, Tinkering, and Engineering in the Classroom

Torrance, Canada: Construting Modern Knowledge

16

McCormick, K. I., & Hall, J. A. (2022)

Computational thinking learning experiences, outcomes, and research in preschool settings: a sco** review of literature

Education and Information Technologies, 27(3), 3777–3812

17

Murcia, K., & Tang, K.-S. (2019)

Exploring the multimodality of young children’s coding

Australian Educational Computing, 34(1)

18

Olmo-Muñoz, J., Cózar-Gutiérrez, R., & González-Calero, J. A. (2020)

Computational thinking through unplugged activities in early years of Primary Education

Computers & Education, 150, 103832

19

Vossoughi, S., Escudé, M., Kong, F., & Hooper, P. (2013)

Tinkering, learning & equity in the after-school setting

FabLearn conference. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University

20

Wang, D., Wang, T., & Liu, Z. (2014)

A Tangible Programming Tool for Children to Cultivate Computational Thinking

The Scientific World Journal

21

Zhang, L., & Nouri, J. (2019)

A systematic review of learning computational thinking through Scratch in K-9

Computers & Education, 141, 103607

22

Yang, Weipeng & Ng, Tsz Kit & Hongyu, Gao. (2022)

Robot programming versus block play in early childhood education: Effects on computational thinking, sequencing ability, and self-regulation

British Journal of Educational Technology. 1–25

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Kaup, C.F., Møller, A.K., Brooks, E. (2023). Bringing Computational Thinking to Life Through Play. In: Brooks, E., Sjöberg, J., Møller, A.K., Edstrand, E. (eds) Design, Learning, and Innovation. DLI 2022. Lecture Notes of the Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering, vol 493. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31392-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31392-9_9

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