Coding education and computational thinking for children

Coding has become one of the major focuses in education recently. Some countries have started to integrate coding in their formal curriculum. Meanwhile, computational thinking is the thought process involved in formulating problems and their solutions, and it can be considered as a new literacy of the 21st Century. By engaging in construction-based robotics activities, children will be able to develop their computational thinking and problem-solving skills and also enrich knowledge in robotics and coding. Under these circumstances, we conducted a case study in a primary school on using Robotics kits for teaching young children how to code and developing their computational thinking. In the first stage, the teachers in the project school collaborated with the research team to design the coding activities for their pupils. In the second stage, the project teachers conducted a coding lesson for all classes in the same form. Upon completion of the first lesson, a group of pupils were invited to join a focus group to share their learning experience in the coding activities. Besides, the project teachers and the research team also evaluated the design of learning activities and decided the changes for the next coding lesson. The whole process has been repeated for the next cycle. In this regard, the study adopted design-based research approach. The findings show that it is feasible to introduce coding concepts and computational thinking skills to young children. Copyright © 2018 ACEID.