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1. Examining Longitudinal Patterns of Special Education Service Receipt

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0014402920960655  

   Woods, Adrienne D. (October 2020, Exceptional Children)

   null (Ed.)

   It is important to understand how longitudinal patterns of special education placement differ from cross-sectional incidence estimates in order to improve measurement precision and better target assistance to students with disabilities. This study used latent class growth analysis in a national-level data set to classify four trajectories of special education service receipt from kindergarten to eighth grade (Never, Persistent, Delayed, and Discontinued) and to predict which kindergarteners follow these trajectories of service receipt ( N = 3,970). This study is among the first to identify which kindergarteners with disabilities may experience persistent special education services, which may exit special education, and what patterns of sociodemographic, achievement, and behavior covariates distinguish these groups. Results both align with prior work and offer a fresh perspective for researchers and policymakers as to how placement changes across schooling and for whom. 

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2. Objects to debug with: How young children resolve errors with tangible coding toys

   Silvis, D.; Clarke-Midura, J.; Shumway, J.; & Lee, V. R. (January 2021, Proceedings of the International Society of the Learning Sciences (ISLS) Annual Meeting)

   Debugging is an important skill all programmers must learn, including preliterate children who are learning to code in early childhood settings. Despite the fact that early learning environments increasingly incorporate coding curricula, we know little about debugging knowledge in early childhood. One reason is that the tangible programming environments designed for young children entail a layer of material complexity that we have yet to account for in terms of learning to debug. In our study of young children learning to program, we found that in the midst of solving programming tasks and learning to debug, tangible toys presented bugs of their own. This paper analyzes video of Kindergarteners learning to debug errors in the program and errors in the physical materials. We argue that concurrent physical and programming bugs present opportunities for young children to learn about the broader computational system in which they are learning to code. 

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3. Kindergarteners’ Understandings and Representations of the Additive Inverse

   López, M; Strachota, S; Brizuela, BM; Pérez-Martos, MC; Gardiner, AM; Blanton, M (June 2024, Inženernotehničeskoe obespečenie APK)

   Lindgren, R; Asino, T I; Kyza, E A; Looi, C K; Keifert, D T; Suárez, E (Ed.)

   This study involved a 7-lesson generalized arithmetic classroom teaching experiment (CTE) with kindergarten students. We interviewed four students individually before and after the seven weeks to explore their understandings and representations of arithmetic properties. Here, we report on students' responses to questions on the additive inverse property. Using Skemp’s framework of relational and instrumental understandings (2006), our analysis revealed that most of the interviewed kindergarteners could understand the additive inverse relationally by the end of the CTE. Our interviews revealed that tables and number lines enabled students to articulate more sophisticated understandings of the additive inverse. 

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4. Every Glass Ceiling Has a Floor (of Interaction): Studying Body Position as an Index of Social Position in Kindergarten Classrooms.

   Silvis, D.; Clarke-Midura, J.; Shumway, J.; and Lee, V.R. (January 2022, International Conference of the Learning Sciences)

   Classroom environments have been hot spots for studies of conversational “floor maintenance,” or the ways in which people establish interactional rights and obligations through turn-taking or topical cohesion. We know less about how the physical floor of interaction is negotiated when activities literally take place on the floor, as in Kindergarten classrooms. In floor-based learning activities, body movements, body positions, and proximity are key modalities for establishing rights and obligations for participating in tasks. This paper analyzes video of Kindergarteners engaged in a floor-based learning activity, where children moved around and positioned themselves (and others) to participate. We found that while children often leaned in to the task-space, there were occasions where they sat back, but were nonetheless productive. Referring to these latter forms of participation as “zones of productive exclusion,” we analyze how body positioning indexed children’s rights and obligations in-task. We discuss implications for analyses of the powered relations between differently-positioned bodies. 

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5. Kindergarteners’ Strategies and Ideas When Reasoning with Function Tables and Graphs

   López, M; Strachota, S; Brizuela, B M; Gardiner, A M; Blanton, M (June 2025, Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2025)

   Rajala, A; Cortez, A; Hofmann, H; Jornet, A; Lotz-Sisitka, H; Markauskaite, L (Ed.)

   This study investigated the seeds of algebraic thinking that Kindergarten students use when engaging with function tables and graphs. Through interviews with three Kindergarteners, we explored how they reasoned about functional relationships. Our results illustrate how the Kindergarteners used seeds of algebraic thinking when using function tables and graphs to represent and reason about functional relationships. Building on the seeds of algebraic thinking and Knowledge in Pieces frameworks, we categorized these seeds as either strategies (classify, pair, and compare) or ideas (seeds of covariation). Strategy seeds were goal-oriented, and seeds of covariation were elicited without any goal and reflected a broader understanding of change between quantities. 

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