Peer-reviewed article
Debugging in Programming as a Multimodal Practice in Early Childhood Education Settings
Mia Heikkilä, Linda Mannila ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This peer-reviewed article examines how programming and debugging can be taught in preschool settings, analyzing video recordings of 25 programming sessions with 4-5 year-old children in Finland. The study takes a multimodal approach, combining educational and computer science theories to understand how children learn debugging through speech, pointing, and gaze. The research identifies the role of instructional artifacts in supporting learning and demonstrates that basic programming concepts can be explored with young children.
Key points
- Debugging is presented as a multimodal activity involving speech, pointing, and gaze in early childhood settings
- Instructional artifacts are identified as central to learning debugging in preschools
- Basic programming concepts and principles can be explored with 4-5 year-old children
- The study combines social science and computer science theories in a multidisciplinary approach
- Data comes from 25 video-recorded programming sessions in a Finnish preschool during 2017-2018
Limitations
The document does not evaluate whether programming or debugging instruction improves child outcomes, skills, or well-being measures. The study is descriptive and analytical rather than evaluative, so it cannot tell us about the effectiveness or impact of programming education on children's development.
Abstract
The aim of this article is to broadly elaborate on how programming can be understood as a new teaching scope in preschools, focusing specifically on debugging as one of the phases involved in learning to program. The research question How can debugging as part of teaching and learning programming be understood as multimodal learning? has guided the analysis and the presentation of the data. In this study, and its analysis process, we have combined a multimodal understanding of teaching and learning practices with understandings of programming and how it is practiced. Consequently, the multidisciplinary approach in this study, combining theories from social sciences with theories and concepts from computer science, is central throughout the article. This is therefore also a creative, explorative process as there are no clear norms to follow when conducting multidisciplinary analyses. The data consist of video recordings of teaching sessions with children and a teacher engaged in programming activities. The video material was recorded in a preschool setting during the school year 2017–2018 and consists of 25 sessions of programming activities with children, who were four or five years old. The results show how debugging in early childhood education is a multimodal activity socially established by use of speech, pointing and gaze. Our findings also indicate that artefacts are central to learning debugging, and a term ‘instructional artefacts’ is therefore added. Finally, the material shows how basic programming concepts and principles can be explored with young children.