Computational thinking in early childhood education, beyond floor robots

Abstract

Educational robotics, programming and computational thinking are being incorporated in the classrooms of many educational centres and at any age. In many cases, this incorporation in the curricula is well-argued and documented, but in other cases, it is done in a rash manner and without prior reflection. In Early Childhood Education, the development of computational thinking seems to have found in floor robots a tool that allows its improvement and progress. To verify if this is so, 50 experts (active teachers, trainers of future teachers and commercial technicians of educational robotics) from all over Spain were tested. The results show that although there is a high percentage of considering floor robots as an excellent tool for the development of computational thinking in Early Childhood Education, there is no consensus when using other types of practices that go beyond and also benefit this learning process. Therefore, we consider it necessary to establish a common framework and guidelines that allow the correct implementation of robotics, programming and computational thinking in Early Childhood Education. Furthermore, this is based on offering quality training to develop these concepts.