Background: In the digital age, fostering young children's computational thinking (CT) and executive functions (EFs) through programming has emerged as a significant research issue. While unplugged programming activities are commonly adopted in preschools, robot programming activities have recently gained attention for the potential to enhance…

The use of natural and non-natural play materials in early childhood education is a critical facilitator to children's learning and development. Different materials vary in their affordances for sophisticated play, imagination, and creativity, which contribute to children's complex thinking; with the current focus on technology, it has been…

The same and different routine offers an opportunity to build a strong foundation for future grades while also deepening the experiences of prekindergarten and transitional kindergarten students. Students have opportunities to make sense, share ideas, and engage in the ideas of others. We conjecture this type of experience supports students and…

Policy emphases on early childhood and elementary computer science education have led to the development of many developmentally appropriate computer science and robotics tools, pedagogies, and high-quality curricula. One example is the integrated Coding as Another Language pedagogy for coding, literacy, and social and emotional learning. The…

This research report is on fostering young children's metacognitive skills. The study was conducted at a private early childhood education center in a Midwestern city in the United States in 2020. The design of the study was a mixed approach including Time Series experimentation, naturalistic observation, and interviews. Children aged 3-4 years…

Yulin Normal University preschool education major existing children's game course instructional model more in passing test knowledge and practice test skills, students used to passively accept knowledge, rarely use critical thinking to treat knowledge, with a critical eye to question, thinking, and discovery, long-term students will not be able to…

Engaging in design thinking activities has been increasingly viewed as important for the craft of teaching for early childhood practitioners. However, reliable and valid measurements for this are lacking. As such, this research aims to develop and validate a design thinking engagement scale (DTES) to assess teachers' engagement in design thinking.…

Educational robotics has been adopted to create interactive and engaging learning environments to develop computational thinking (CT) in K-12 learners. This study systematically examined 22 peer-reviewed empirical research articles on the use of educational robotics to develop CT in young learners (pre-kindergarten to 6th grade) published between…

The purpose of the study was to explore the effect of the Montessori Method integrated with cooperative learning on mathematical reasoning skills in the preschool period. In this study, an experimental design with a pretest-posttest control group was used. The study group included a total of 30 children, 15 of whom were in the experimental group…

An international contemporary challenge for early childhood teachers is to integrate digital media in preschool. Research indicates that teachers have concerns regarding the use of digital media in preschool, especially in relation to play. In this study, we explore how an early childhood education and care (ECEC) work team takes on this challenge…

When implemented appropriately, computational thinking (CT) experiences in early childhood settings build essential literacy skills and foster initial explorations of sequencing, engineering design principles, and cause-and-effect relationships. While existing research explores CT in K-12 settings, there is insufficient research documenting the…

In the study reported on here we aimed to investigate the mediating effect of pre-school teacher candidates' cognitive flexibility between creative thinking tendencies and problem-solving skills. The relational model was used to examine the direct and mediation relationship between the variables. The sample consisted of 516 pre-school teacher…

Our study documents how a Spanish-English bilingual elementary teacher learned computational thinking while working to incorporate it into mathematics and language arts lessons in a bilingual classroom. We classified the elements of the teacher's process into two practices: intentional and unintentional use of computational thinking. Intentional…

The concept, development and assessment of computational thinking have increasingly become the focus of research in recent years. Most of this type of research focuses on older children or adults. Preschool age is a sensitive period when many skills develop intensively, so the development of computational thinking skills can already begin at this…

Purpose: This study aims to describe the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of a kindergarten educator who implements a lesson plan about informal inferential reasoning designed in a lesson study group. Design/methodology/approach: To this end, we analyzed teaching interventions in two kindergarten lessons focused on the playful task of tossing…