International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction最新文献

This article aims at exploring how to support students' awareness on gender stereotypes and the development of gender literacy through the making process of interactive toys. I present a case study with 22 primary students (11–12 years) from a public primary school in Barcelona, Spain who were involved in a maker workshop series. Building on principles of transformative feminist pedagogy, the article shows exemplary design activities for children to create a space for dialogue and reflection upon gender stereotypes. To this end, the activities were used as a means to spark critical reflections among the students and to guide them in the design of prototypes of cross-gendered interactive toys. By analyzing students’ artifacts and verbal expressions during the discussions, the study illustrates how they gradually discover their own assumptions on gender stereotypes and were enabled to propose cross-gendered alternatives for interactive toys focusing on movement-based and collaborative activities. Finally, the article presents a set of educational activities that support students to reflect upon gender stereotypes in the making process and guidelines for teachers to integrate these strategies into their educational practices.

Virtual learning companions, or pedagogical agents situated as “near peers”, have shown great promise for supporting learning, but little is known about their potential to scaffold other practices, such as collaboration. We report on the development and evaluation of a first-of-their-kind pair of virtual learning companions, designed to model good collaborative practices for dyads of elementary school learners, that are integrated within a block-based coding environment. Results from a study with fifteen dyads of children indicate that the learning companions fostered more higher-order questions and promoted significantly higher computer science attitude scores than a control condition. Qualitative analyses revealed that most children perceived the virtual learning companions as helpful, felt that the companions changed their interaction with their partners, and wanted to have the companions in their future work. These results highlight the potential for virtual learning companions to scaffold collaboration between young learners and provide direction for future investigation on the role that near-peer agents play in collaborative and task support.

While digital fabrication has been closely linked to narratives of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education and design thinking, it can provide a gateway to reimagining mathematical teaching and deepening the understanding of both mathematical content and pedagogy. In this paper, we present a workshop series that engages teacher students in the creation of their own mathematical manipulatives using digital fabrication tools. Manipulatives are tangible objects that can be used to support children’s learning of mathematical concepts, such as numbers, fractions, or geometry. The workshops included activities for finding, adapting, creating, and sharing manipulatives (FACS) using 2D and 3D modeling and fabrication techniques. Our in-depth analysis of video recordings presents how teacher students successfully acquire digital fabrication skills and reflect on the use of customized manipulatives to support children’s mathematical learning. The findings suggest that introducing digital fabrication in teacher education programs can shift the focus from consuming ready-made manipulatives to creating customized materials that better suit the teaching context. The authors propose FACS as a specific approach for introducing digital fabrication to teacher students.

Puzzles are a core component of many videogames. While research has explored the potential of using puzzles in games to provide players with challenges they enjoy, little is known about how children seek information while solving puzzles in videogames. Using a constructivist grounded theory method, this study examines children's (ages 11–14) puzzle-solving approaches within a game titled GEM of the Forest [name anonymized]. The results show that children relied on two sources of information to solve puzzles: (1) information from the out-of-game world including players' prior game experiences, and (2) information within the game world including instructions, hints, inventory, and feedback. We present an empirically grounded theoretical model to understand children's information seeking behaviors while solving in-game puzzles. This paper contributes a theoretical understanding of children's information seeking behavior and strategies to solve puzzles in games. Additionally, we provide a description of the utility of this framework through design implications for the design of information in technologies that seek to engage children in puzzles.

Youth are being exposed to technological and algorithmic bias daily, even if they are not using devices themselves. Drawing from a series of cooperative inquiry co-design sessions with youth designers (ages 8 to 13), this paper investigates how youth who have been introduced to these biases design learning experiences about technological and algorithmic bias for their peers. After having more covert biases revealed to them, when designing to teach peers about technological bias, the youth focused on ways to make the invisible visible using four methods: highlighting or explaining a bias, utilizing an adaptive technology, engaging learners in experiential or interactive learning, and modeling how to have conversations about technological and algorithmic biases. These methods provide a basis on which learning experiences about technological and algorithmic biases can be built to ensure these biases are made visible to the youth they are affecting.

This research investigates the potential of gamified tools to enhance motivation as well reading and writing skills in pupils, from 8 to 11 years old. The study compares the impact of gamified applications to traditional pen-and-paper activities, utilizing standardized reading and writing tests. The training duration spans 12 h within the school setting, and the sample comprises 113 children with typical development, evenly distributed across two groups. The results indicate significant improvements in reading and writing speed and accuracy for each group, with a slightly higher effect observed in the experimental gamified training group, although this difference was not statistically significant. Although motivation did not directly mediate performance in either group, students in the experimental training groups expressed greater enthusiasm for the activities. These findings emphasize the importance of comprehensive training and pave the way for future investigations into the effects of gamified tools on other real-life skills and motivational aspects. Such studies would prove fundamental to understand the limitations and benefits of gamification, enabling its effective integration into school programs.

Children's engagement during shared reading of ebooks and paper books (reading medium) has been compared in numerous studies. Findings vary, making it difficult to advise caretakers and educators in selecting reading materials for children. The primary purpose of this systematic review is to synthesize the prior findings on reading medium engagement in children to ascertain the overall effect of reading medium on behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. The secondary purpose was to examine which characteristics of ebooks and reading contexts may possibly better support three forms of engagement. A systematic review of experimental reading medium comparisons on children's engagement during shared reading was conducted. Studies needed to compare the same book or books in both paper and ebook form to be included. The systematic search yielded 15 eligible studies with 27 behavioral engagement effect sizes, 16 emotional engagement effect sizes, and 24 cognitive engagement effect sizes. Based on meta-analyses, there were no reliable differences between reading medium on any form of engagement. Based on a narrative synthesis, narrated ebooks appeared to foster greater levels of behavioral engagement in terms of visual attention than paper books. Parents and children demonstrated similar patterns of emotional and cognitive engagement with each other. Enhancements to ebooks may possibly foster all three forms of engagement. Overall, the results provide some insight into why enhancements may facilitate reading comprehension as well as why static ebooks comprehension is typically less than paper book comprehension.

A growing number of studies have shown that the exploratory, collaborative, and contextualized nature of maker activities create opportunities for learners to engage with knowledge in a uniquely different way from traditional education which largely relies on de-contextualized instructions. The increased integration of making into K-12 curricula has enormous implications not only for instructional design but also for assessment practices. Maker-oriented activities have the potential to shed light on types of learning that previous assessment systems have not captured and examined. Nevertheless, little is discussed on how making can contribute to the assessment and instructional practices at large. This case study investigated educators' experiences with assessment in classrooms integrating maker activities. Through a qualitative analysis of interviews with six K-12 educators in Canada, the researchers examined: (1) in what ways does making activities create opportunities for assessment and instruction in K-12 classrooms? (2) in what ways does maker learning become a challenge for assessment and instruction in K-12 classrooms? Our analysis revealed several ways in which teachers experienced the advantages of the making approach for understanding student learning and for helping students become further aware of their own progress. The results also revealed challenges to conducting assessments for maker learning, including administrative challenges like continuing to gain support from the administration, and literacy challenges such as students’ obsession with letter grades. This study provides insights into how making may help improve assessment and instructional practices in K-12 classrooms.

Research on children’s initial conceptions of AI is in an emerging state, which, from a constructivist viewpoint, challenges the development of pedagogically sound AI-literacy curricula, methods, and materials. To contribute to resolving this need in the present paper, qualitative survey data from 195 children were analyzed abductively to answer the following three research questions: What kind of misconceptions do Finnish 5th and 6th graders’ have about the essence AI?; 2) How do these misconceptions relate to common misconception types?; and 3) How profound are these misconceptions? As a result, three misconception categories were identified: 1) Non-technological AI, in which AI was conceptualized as peoples’ cognitive processes (factual misconception); 2) Anthropomorphic AI, in which AI was conceptualized as a human-like entity (vernacular, non-scientific, and conceptual misconception); and 3) AI as a machine with a pre-installed intelligence or knowledge (factual misconception). Majority of the children evaluated their AI-knowledge low, which implies that the misconceptions are more superficial than profound. The findings suggest that context-specific linguistic features can contribute to students' AI misconceptions. Implications for future research and AI literacy education are discussed.