STEAM Story Coding Workshop: Exploring Young Children's Computational Thinking Skills

• In Event: Equity in Engineering, STEM, and STEAM

Abstract

This is an exploratory case study to investigate children’s computational thinking skills when they participated in unplugged coding activities during a six-week STEAM Story Coding workshop. In collaboration with the local science museum, the research team developed and conducted workshops and examined field notes and researcher memos to record emergent themes in relation to the three participants. Using children’s work products (story coding mats, photographs of embodied coding and use of coding tools, work samples) and parent comments, we traced each child’s participation across all workshops attended. We used a constructivist grounded theory analytical methodology to conduct an inductive analysis based on our data gathered throughout the workshops and found the progression in children's early computational thinking skills.

Authors

• Joohi Lee, University of Texas - Arlington

• Candace Joswick, University of Texas - Arlington

• Kathryn Pole, The University of Texas - Arlington

• Robin Jocius, University of Texas - Arlington