Preservice teachers’ opinion about developing computational thinking in preschool

Abstract

"Computational thinking is important not only for the study of some disciplines, but also in everyday life. Research show that this competency should be developed starting from preschool. The research presented in this paper aimed to study Primary and Preschool Pedagogy specialization students’ opinion and experience about including technological knowledge in preschool activities, emphasizing on developing computational thinking. The results show that even if the respondents consider that the preschool activities can develop a positive attitude towards technological knowledge, they don’t consider teaching the technology domain important in preschool and they have no experience with this. They have selected lack of methodological preparation and lack of necessary didactical tools as the main barriers in integrating technological knowledge in preschool activities. Only few respondents have a deeper insight into algorithms and one third of the respondents could give a correct algorithm for building a snowman. Respondents consider important to develop computational thinking in preschool using screen-free activities. One of the main methods to develop CT in preschool is using robots, but none of the participating students used a robot in their activities and only less than one fourth of the participants heard about educational robots."