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“My Cars don’t Drive Themselves”: Preschoolers’ Guided Play Experiences with Button-Operated Robots

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Abstract

Computational thinking (CT) is considered an essential literacy skill for all children to develop, yet conceptual, practical, and empirical work with preschool-age children is scarce. A particular gap in the research is how CT instruction should be enacted (e.g., free play, guided play, levels of scaffolding, degree of child-initiated activities, and structure of programming tasks). Therefore, we aimed to describe what preschool children’s CT experiences are like when button-operated robots are introduced into their guided play. This interpretive phenomenological study applied the Mosaic Approach to explore the emergence of CT skills during guided play with a button-operated robot (Bee-Bot). Participants were 29 preschool-age children from an early childhood education center in the northeastern United States. Data sources included audio-visual recordings, observations, child focus groups, and child-generated artifacts. The findings suggest children constructed meaning across the CT dimensions, connected with others through dialogue and negotiation, and used guidance from adults to extend their learning.

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Notes

  1. All classrooms and participants were assigned pseudonyms.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge Kelsi Carlisle, Tara Grospin, Natasha McCarthy, and Maya Waters (undergraduate research assistants) for helping document and facilitate the guided play experiences and Molly Blinn (graduate assistant) for assisting with the invitations to play. Without their hard work and dedication, this research would not have been realized.

Funding

Partial financial support was received from the SUNY Cortland Research and Sponsored Programs Office.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Childhood/Early Childhood Education Department, State University of New York College at Cortland, P.O. Box 2000, Cortland, NY, 13045, USA

    Jacob A. Hall & Kate I. McCormick

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  1. Jacob A. Hall
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Correspondence to Jacob A. Hall.

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The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

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The SUNY Cortland Institutional Review Board reviewed and granted full board approval for this research (May 2, 2019/IRB Protocol Number: 181930). The procedures used in this study adhere to the tenets of the Declaration of Helsinki.

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The authors obtained informed consent from legal guardians for all individual participants included in the study. Parents signed informed consent forms regarding publishing their children’s data and photographs.

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Hall, J.A., McCormick, K.I. “My Cars don’t Drive Themselves”: Preschoolers’ Guided Play Experiences with Button-Operated Robots. TechTrends 66, 510–526 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-022-00727-8

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