The purpose of this study was to explore how kindergarten students (aged 5-6 years) engaged with mathematics as they learned programming with robot coding toys. We video-recorded 16 teaching sessions of kindergarten students' (N = 36) mathematical and programming activities. Students worked in small groups (4-5 students) with robot coding toys on…

Primary school children frequently use digital devices, which can be infected by computer viruses. In this mixed methods paper with two studies (N = 278 + 114), we examined 8-year-olds' preconceptions about computer viruses and protection against them; how to teach these children about said topics using three different, 30-min-long,…

This paper explores how primary teachers might be prepared through their pre-service training to feel more confident to include engineering in their teaching. Prompted by concerns about young people's lack of interest in STEM subjects and careers, engineering is gradually gaining visibility in the primary curriculum in several forms, particularly…

SCRATCH, developed by the Media Lab at MIT, is a kid-friendly visual programming language, designed to introduce programming to children and teens in a "more thinkable, more meaningful, and more social" way. Although it was initially intended for K-12 students, educators have used it for higher education as well, and found it…

Computer programming for young children has grown in popularity among both educators and product developers, but still relatively little is known about what skills children are developing when they code. This study investigated N = 57 Kindergarten through second grade children's performance on a programming assessment after engaging in a 6-week…

There is a growing need for STEAM-based (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) knowledge and skills across a wide range of professions (Brazell 2013). Yet students often fail to see the usefulness of mathematics beyond the classroom (Kloosterman, Raymond, and Emenaker 1996), and they do not regularly make connections between…

Prior work demonstrates the importance of introducing young children to programming and engineering content before gender stereotypes are fully developed and ingrained in later years. However, very little research on gender and early childhood technology interventions exist. This pilot study looks at N = 45 children in kindergarten through second…

These proceedings contain the papers of the 16th International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2019), held during November 7-9, 2019, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS) and co-organised by University Degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy.…