This paper examined the effect of the Unplugged Programming Teaching Aids (UPTA) on students' computational thinking and classroom interaction. A set of UPTA was created and used in a primary school in southern China. A total of 48 students aged 6-8 were assigned to two classes, with the same instructor and learning materials, but only the…

Coding ability has become an essential digital skill for young children. The graphical programming environment is valuable carrier for cultivating children's coding ability. The purpose of this study is to develop a coding ability test for children, to conduct a graphic coding intervention, and to further explore the impact of multiple factors on…

Modern preschool education is seen as an essential foundation for nurturing children's digital literacy. Early childhood education environments have witnessed increased emphasis on integrating programming activities in combination with digital tablets. However, little is known about how preschool teachers implement programming as part of…

We explored the potential of a robotics application in education as a measurement tool of child executive functioning skills. Sixty-five kindergarteners received assignments to go through a maze with a programmable robot, the Bee-Bot. Via observation we quantified how they solved these tasks. Their performance was successfully aggregated into a…

The development of programming skills is currently promoting from an early school age, trying to get children to take an active and creative role in the use of technologies. The objective of this article is to verify the repercussion of educational robotics activities on kindergarten students in the acquisition of computational thinking and…

Digital competence and programming are actively highlighted areas in education worldwide. They are becoming part of curricula all over the world, including the Swedish elementary school curriculum, Children are expected to develop "computational thinking" through programming activities, mainly in mathematics--which are supposed to be…

Thirty years ago, when personal computers were first becoming available in homes and schools, a large group of primary school-age children were asked to share their attitudes about computers, their conceptions regarding how computers function, and their beliefs concerning computers' agency. The researchers wanted to gather baseline data regarding…

Educational robotics are commonly present in kindergarten and primary school classrooms, particularly Bee-bot. Its ease of use allows the introduction of computer programming to young children in educational contexts from a science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics (STEAM) perspective. Despite this rise, there are still few…

Programming tools are being used in education to teach computer science to children as young as 5 years old. This research aims to explore young children's approaches to programming in two tools with contrasting programming interfaces, ScratchJr and Lightbot, and considers the impact of programming approaches on developing computational thinking.…

Early childhood education in Australia is currently undergoing a period of change and renewal. Times of change offer opportunities to revisit the perspectives of the past, to respond to current choices and challenges, and explore future opportunities within the national provision of early childhood care and education. Such opportunities also exist…

Australian "Play School" is a children's television programme developed in collaboration with early childhood educators. It is screened free to air across Australia. Two hundred and twenty-four adult carers of young children aged 1-8 years completed an online survey via a link on the "Play School" website. The survey addressed…

Many schools across the United States and Canada are now implementing response-to-intervention (RTI) as a means to address the needs of students who struggle with reading, writing, or math by using dual discrepancy (i.e., low ability and little to no progress over time with targeted intervention programming) as a means to classify for learning…

Electronic Blocks are a new programming environment designed specifically for children aged between 3 and 8 years. These physical, stackable blocks include sensor blocks, action blocks, and logic blocks. By connecting these blocks, children can program a wide variety of structures that interact with one another and the environment. Electronic…

The 9th International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2016) is held under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society at the Sheraton Raleigh Hotel, in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, in the USA. The conference, held June 29-July 2, 2016, follows the eight previous editions (Madrid 2015, London 2014, Memphis…

The 12th iteration of the International Conference on Educational Data Mining (EDM 2019) is organized under the auspices of the International Educational Data Mining Society in Montreal, Canada. The theme of this year's conference is EDM in Open-Ended Domains. As EDM has matured it has increasingly been applied to open-ended and ill-defined tasks…