Teachers' Role in Fostering Young Children's Computational Thinking: An Exploratory Case Study

• In Event: Fostering Young Children's Computational Thinking

Abstract

Computational thinking (CT) has drawn considerable attention in early education in recent years (Jung & Won, 2018; Toh, Causo, Tzuo, Chen, & Yeo, 2016; Xia & Zhong, 2018). However, little is known about how teachers should approach or support CT learning in early childhood classrooms. Most of the existing research on CT tends to overlook the role of teachers (Barron et al., 2011) or to focus only on after-school enrichment programs (e.g., Harlow, & Leak, 2014; Pugnali, Sullivan, & Bers, 2017). To address this gap, we conducted an exploratory case study to investigate how a teacher supported preschoolers’ (ages 3-4) development of CT in the classroom using an interactive, programmable toy.

In contrast to Papert’s constructionism (1980), which at times places too much emphasis on the experience and perspective of the child to the neglect of other perspectives, we adopted a Vygotskian sociocultural framework that employs the idea of a zone of proximal development to examine teachers’ roles in supporting CT development. According to Vygotsky (1978), “An essential feature of learning is that it creates the zone of proximal development; that is, learning awakens a variety of internal development processes that are able to operate only when the child is interacting with people in this environment and in cooperation with his peers” (p. 90).

The exploratory case study was conducted in a university-based preschool in the United States. In the fall of 2018, the preschool adopted Fisher-Price’s “Think & Learn Code-a-pillar” (“Code-a-pillar” for short), a programmable toy that is shaped like a caterpillar and has interchangeable body segments that program the caterpillar to move and behave in multiple ways. For this case study, the participants included Mr. Samuel (all names pseudonymous), an African-American teacher, and a group of preschoolers—Claire (age 3), Emma (age 4), and Tanner (age 3). There was a total of 12 video recorded sessions for this group. We used discursive open coding to identify teacher’s strategies and scaffolding moves related to CT (see Table 1, Column 2, for example) and adopted existing codes (e.g., Shute, Sun, & Asbell-Clarke, 2017; Wing, 2011) to analyze which components of CT were addressed, discussed, and achieved in our data (see Table 1, Column 1, for example).

Our analysis revealed that the teacher, Mr. Samuel, used different strategies to model or scaffold (see Table 1, Column 2) the children’s development of four components of CT in his group sessions (see Table 1, Column 1).

[insert Table 1 here- See PDF version for the Table]

Theoretically, this study shows the value of sociocultural perspectives in understanding and supporting children’s learning of computational thinking, beyond that provided by constructionism (Papert, 1980). Practically, the strategies the teacher employed can be adopted by other early childhood classroom teachers. This is especially significant given that previous studies reported on difficulties and challenges that teachers faced in integrating CT into their curricula (Strawhacker & Bers, 2018; Shute et al., 2017; Sullivan, Kazakoff, & Bers, 2013).

Authors

• X. Christine Wang, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Youngae (Young) Choi, Nevada State College

• Keely Ann Benson, University at Buffalo - SUNY

• Corinne Eggleston, Ph.D., Fisher-Price, Inc.

• Deborah Weber, Fisher-Price, Inc.