Play with Coding Toys in Early Childhood Education and Care: Teachers’ Pedagogical Strategies, Views and Impact on Children's Development. A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

This paper presents a systematic literature review that aims to portray an overview of pedagogical strategies that Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) teachers adopt to support children’s play with coding toys. In addition, the article synthesizes findings about teachers’ views in relation to the use of coding toys in ECEC and describes the outputs that the existing literature identifies as children’s development after play activities with coding toys. The systematic literature search was performed in accordance with the PRISMA-2020 statement, and the initial search across four databases (Eric, Scopus, Web of Science, and Academic Research Ultimate) for papers published between January 2010 and May 2022 yielded 2672 peer-reviewed articles. Following the first evaluation, the application of the inclusion and exclusion criteria resulted in a shortlist of 22 papers. The results show different strategies that the teachers can use during play activities with coding toys, assuming the roles of facilitators and mediators through collaborative work, allowing children to try and fail.Moreover, the results revealed that ECEC teachers largely hold positive and constructive attitudes towards the use of coding toys. Findings also highlight positive outcomes regarding children’s development across various cognitive and socio-emotional skills such as problem solving, computational thinking and communication. As an improvement, future studies should focus on identifying appropriate pedagogies that may be applied in tandem with the technology to maximise the pedagogical benefits for the children as well as adequate training for teachers.