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  • ISLSBlending Everyday Movement and Representational Infrastructure: An Interaction Analysis of Kindergarteners Coding Robot Routes
Title: ISLSBlending Everyday Movement and Representational Infrastructure: An Interaction Analysis of Kindergarteners Coding Robot Routes
If we want to design for computer science learning in K12 education, then Kindergarten is the place to start. Despite differing formats, early childhood coding tools rely heavily on a similar representational infrastructure. Grids and arrows predominate, introducing a nested series of directional symbols and spatial skills children must learn in order to code. Thus, learning to think computationally is entangled with learning to think spatially and symbolically. This paper analyzes video of Kindergarten students learning to use robot coding toys and examines how they navigated programming’s representational infrastructure. We found that children drew on conventional notions of how objects move, creating a “conceptual blend” for programming robot routes (Fauconnier & Turner, 1998). We argue that coding in Kindergarten requires mapping a series of correspondences from the domain of everyday movements onto the resources available in the representational domain.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1842116
PAR ID:
10288751
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Proceedings of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) Annual Meeting
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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