Unplugged Robotics Curriculum to Support Computational Thinking: A Qualitative Case Study With Five-Year-Old Korean Children

• In Event: Computing and Robotics in Early Education

Abstract

This qualitative case study investigated how unplugged activities with robots provide young children with opportunities to develop concepts related to computational thinking in naturalistic settings. The participants were 5-year-old children (N=18) enrolled in a child care center located in South Korea. Participation observations and informal interviews with the teachers over five weeks indicate that incorporating unplugged robotics curriculum in an early childhood classroom created a developmentally appropriate and playful environment for children to collectively learn the basic concepts of computational thinking through teacher and peer scaffolding. The findings suggest that screen-free, unplugged robotics can help children learn the foundational concepts and skills they need for our increasingly digital and technological society.

Authors

• Soyeon Park, San Francisco State University

• Hui Young Chun, Kosin University

• So Jung Kim, University of Texas - El Paso