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With growing interest in supporting the development of computational thinking (CT) in early childhood, there is also need for new assessments that serve multiple purposes and uses. In particular, there is a need to understand the design of formative assessments that can be used during classroom instruction to provide feedback to teachers and children in real-time. In this paper, we report on an empirical study and advance a new unit of observational analysis for formative assessment that we call an indicator of a knowledge refinement opportunity or as a shorthand , KRO indicators . We put forth a new framework for conceptualizing the design of formative assessments that builds on the Evidence Centered Design framework but centers identification and analysis of indicators of knowledge refinement opportunities. We illustrate a number of key indicators through empirical examples drawn from video recordings of Kindergarten classroom lessons. 

Many coding environments for young children involve using navigational arrow codes representing four movements: forward, backwards, rotate left, and rotate right. Children interpreting these four, seemingly simple codes encounter a complex interaction of spatial thinking and semantic meaning. In this study of how children interpret directional arrows, we found that they interpret each of the arrows as encoding many meanings and that the orientation of the agent plays a critical role in children’s interpretations. Through iterative rounds of qualitative coding and drawing on two examples, we unpack some common interpretations. 

This study illustrates how Cognitive Diagnostic Modeling (CDM) can be used to assess fine-grained levels of computational thinking (CT). We analyzed scored responses to the Computational and Spatial Thinking assessment (CaST) from 271 children. We identified four key attributes required to solve tasks: sequencing of codes, fixing a program, spatial orientation of an agent, and rotation on a point. Results indicated that younger children did not master all the attributes, particularly spatial orientation of an agent and rotation on a point. We identified four common mastery profiles of children that were associated with age. Our findings illustrate that mastering spatial orientation is critical to CT ability. Finally, the nuanced information about children’s mastery levels has potential to provide teachers with useful information about what concepts and skills their students are struggling with so that they can adjust instruction to emphasize those concepts. 

In this chapter, we share observations from a multiyear design-based research project exploring how to teach developmentally appropriate coding concepts and skills in kindergarten. We focus on coding toys that fit within a genre we call “grid- agent” robot coding toys. These are robots that are specifically for early childhood, commercially available, screen-free, tangible, moveable and programmable. Grid- agent robot toys invite children to explore mathematics through precise movements across a grid space. 

Planning a path from an origin to a destination is a common task for studying children’s spatial thinking and a foundational part of many early programming environments. This paper examines children’s means of abstraction between the grid space and the program domain through an exploration of the strategies they used to plan a robot’s routes in 2-D space. Qualitative analysis focused on ways children used materials to aid in spatial planning and programming, advancing previous work on material anchors for concepts (Hutchins, 2005). Through an elaboration of several path planning strategies, we illustrate how children varied in their use of materials in space to represent a path-program relationship. We argue that these strategies represent multiple ways of contextualizing and abstracting in a programming task, with implications for design of equitable CT assessments in early childhood. 

Purpose Much remains unknown about how young children orient to computational objects and how we as learning scientists can orient to young children as computational thinkers. While some research exists on how children learn programming, very little has been written about how they learn the technical skills needed to operate technologies or to fix breakdowns that occur in the code or the machine. The purpose of this study is to explore how children perform technical knowledge in tangible programming environments. Design/methodology/approach The current study examines the organization of young children’s technical knowledge in the context of a design-based study of Kindergarteners learning to code using robot coding toys, where groups of children collaboratively debugged programs. The authors conducted iterative rounds of qualitative coding of video recordings in kindergarten classrooms and interaction analysis of children using coding robots. Findings The authors found that as children repaired bugs at the level of the program and at the level of the physical apparatus, they were performing essential technical knowledge; the authors focus on how demonstrating technical knowledge was organized pedagogically and collectively achieved. Originality/value Drawing broadly from studies of the social organization of technical work in professional settings, we argue that technical knowledge is easy to overlook but essential for learning to repair programs. The authors suggest how tangible programming environments represent pedagogically important contexts for dis-embedding young children’s essential technical knowledge from the more abstract knowledge of programming. 

Programming activities have the potential to provide a rich context for exploring measurement units in early elementary mathematics. This study examines how a small group of young children (ages 5–6) express their emergent conception of a dynamic linear unit and the measurement concepts they found challenging. Video of an introductory programming lesson was analyzed for evidence of preconceptions and conceptions of a dynamic linear unit. Using Artifact-Centric Activity Theory as a lens for the analysis, we found that social context, gesturing, and verbal descriptions influenced the children’s understanding of a dynamic linear unit. Challenges that students encountered included developing a constructed conception of a unit, reconciling preconceptions about the meaning of a code, and socially-influenced preconceptions. This study furthers the exploration of computational thinking and mathematics connections and provides a basis for future exploration of dynamic mathematics and programming learning in early elementary education. 

Performance assessments can provide meaningful insights into young children's knowledge; however, documenting assessment responses as incorrect or correct limits our understanding of students’ abilities. One method of improving our ability to measure student understanding is by documenting the strategies students use to engage with assessment tasks. In this study, we describe how purposeful assessment design can provide insight into students’ thinking by qualitatively examining how students solve performance assessment items using multimodal strategies.