Young Children Learning to Code: A Digital Technologies Framework for the Early Years

Abstract

The role of digital technologies in early childhood education is increasingly discussed and negotiated in learning centres. It is emerging from research that educators’ technological pedagogical content knowledge is key to the quality of learning experiences with digital technologies for young children. The aim of the research was to use a grounded theory-based approach to identifying and documenting how educators see and understand learning opportunities for young children as they play with tangible coding technologies (TCT’s) or ‘robots’. This action research project involved four early childhood educators working in a University’s Early Years Centre that provides long day care and a kindergarten program. In collaboration with the educators, the researcher investigated and compared how children learned through play with two types of TCT’s; BeeBots and Cubetto. It was evident that educators’ technological pedagogical content knowledge was key to the quality of children’s learning experiences with the digital technologies. An outcome was the development of an innovative early year’s digital technologies (DigiTech) framework, that positioned young children’s digital literacy as a multi-faceted construct located at the intersection of computational thinking, digital technology skills and social-emotional capabilities. The participating educators reported that the framework assisted them to see and respond to learning opportunities for the children as they played with the tangible coding technologies.