Abstract
This investigation concerns two questions: i). is simple educational programming with children, compared to working on mathematical tasks, more effective in increasing scores in mathematical abilities, spatial awareness and working memory? ii), is educational programming on a digital device, compared to similar paper and pencil programming activities, more effective in increasing mathematical abilities, spatial awareness and working memory? Forty-one 5 to 6 year olds from a UK infant school were randomly allocated to one of three groups: programming+iPad technology, programming using paper and pencils, and a comparison condition involving pencil and paper mathematical addition and subtraction tasks. Two 10-min intervention sessions took place each week, over a period of six weeks, with pre-intervention and post-intervention tests administered to assess children’s mathematical abilities, spatial awareness and working memory. A series of mixed analyses of variance revealed that all three groups increased their mathematical abilities and spatial awareness. However, there were no significant increases in working memory, and there were no significant differences between any of the groups. These findings suggest that even a relatively short period of experience with programming can benefit other abilities and that the effects are similar to more directly targeted interventions. It was not found that programming using iPads resulted in higher scores than programming with paper and pencils.
Highlights
Educational research documenting the use of iPads in schools has been concerned with supporting children’s story-making and writing (e.g., Rowe and Miller 2016), creativity and literacy (e.g., Dezuanni et al 2015) or multiple outcomes for specific groups of children
In the light of these considerations it was decided to include a second intervention that involved the same Beebot programming operations, but which took place using paper and pencil tasks, to investigate whether programming on iPads was more effective in increasing mathematics, spatial awareness and working memory than similar paper and pencil tasks
Inspection of graphs of these data suggested that the scores were normally distributed apart from the programming group’s working memory pre-tests, which showed some positive skew
Summary
Educational research documenting the use of iPads in schools has been concerned with supporting children’s story-making and writing (e.g., Rowe and Miller 2016), creativity and literacy (e.g., Dezuanni et al 2015) or multiple outcomes for specific groups of children (e.g., children with autism, Allen et al 2015). It was through the simple educational programming of the Turtle (e.g. instructions such as forward 4, right 3) and through peer conversations that children tapped into community knowledge This model provides a useful theoretical orientation for our work because it focussed on the way simple programming involving mathematical calculations could develop general abilities in children, and the context ensured that children’s learning was intrinsically motivated and yet, open enough to incorporate novel, periodically added, concepts. In the light of these considerations it was decided to include a second intervention that involved the same Beebot programming operations, but which took place using paper and pencil tasks, to investigate whether programming on iPads was more effective in increasing mathematics, spatial awareness and working memory than similar paper and pencil tasks. Is educational programming on iPads more effective than similar programming with paper and pencil tasks? We tentatively predicted that the motivating properties of iPads might result in higher post-test scores in the group who programmed with an iPad
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