Abstract:

Many countries around the world have introduced programming curriculum at K-9 level. For a number of years, a lot of studies have surfaced demonstrating enactments of programming education, for instance through the use of visual programming languages as Scratch in different contexts. However, these studies have had a dominating focus on students of age 7 and older and there are few studies reporting on implementation of programming activities for younger children at preschool. This gap is addressed by this study that focus exclusively on learning of programming in a preschool class of six year olds. We have followed one teacher during six months conducting both classroom observations and interviews. In this paper we report on the didactical methods the teacher used when teaching programming through unplugged (analogue) means, with BlueBot robots, and through Scratch Jr. We end the paper by a discussion reflecting on challenges and lessons learned in relation to introducing programming for young children.

Keywords:

Programming education, preschool, didactical strategies.