Systematic mapping of computational thinking in preschool children

Abstract

This study characterizes the literature on teaching computational thinking (CT) to preschoolers aged 4 to 5 years. Previous research and published systematic studies have provided important contributions about CT teaching to elementary and high school children. However, to date, there is no systematic overview of CT education for preschoolers. For this reason, this systematic mapping synthesizes 82 studies on CT teaching, through the implementation and evaluation of tools and activities to teach, improve or measure the CT knowledge acquired by children. Furthermore, studies on courses or training offered to preschool teachers related to the teaching of CT were also considered. From the selected studies, the following information was collected: year of publication; recovery sources and databases; vehicles and places of publication; temporal delimitation of research, research approach, nature and research method; CT teaching approaches; tools used to teach CT and how they are classified according to their physical characteristics and, finally, participants and individuals responsible for the research. The results suggest an increase in the number of publications in recent years, revealing the interest of researchers in the topic. Furthermore, we observed a trend towards the use of physical artifacts and the use of the disconnected computing approach to teaching CT skills to preschool children. The results also exposed that preschool teachers have little autonomy in implementing CT teaching activities because those are mostly implemented by computer professionals (researchers, teachers, etc.). This is because preschool teachers are still discouraged from teaching computer and technology-related content to children, considering them complex and disconnected from basic curricula. However, when teachers are trained to teach CT, they become interested in the content and become more active during the teaching process. We argue for integrating CT-related content into education curricula and supporting preschool teachers to implement it autonomously in their classrooms.