Effects of Early Coding Education on Kindergarteners’ Executive Functioning

Subjects: Psychology >> Educational Psychology submitted time 2024-01-11

Xue Jing Shou Yan-Na

Abstract： Recent studies from international journals indicated the feasibility of early programming education and its effects on children’s cognitive skills and early academic skills. However, there is a paucity that these studies did not examine how early programming education promoted children’s executive functioning (an essential skill for early academic skills and school readiness). Therefore, the present study aimed to examine the effect of early programming activities on children’s executive functioning. Participants were 32 5-year-old and 6-year-old children (16 boys and 16 girls) attending in the third year of kindergarten in Shanghai, and were randomly divided into two groups, i.e., the experimental group and the control group. Children in both groups received a pretest and posttest of executive functioning. Children in the experimental group attended early programming activities that were performed with Bee-Bot (programming tool) lasted for eight weeks, and they were also evaluated on learning outcomes at the end of all activities. Results showed that children in experimental group had a grasp of the programming ideas and could complete most of the activities. Children in experimental group also performed better on an executive functioning task and were rated higher on working memory scale than these in control group, controlling for the pretest.

Peer Review Status:Awaiting Review

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