Designing formative assessments of early childhood computational thinking

• Published in: Early childhood research quarterly Vol. 65; pp. 68 - 80
• Main Authors: Clarke-Midura, Jody, Lee, Victor R., Shumway, Jessica F., Silvis, Deborah, Kozlowski, Joseph S., Peterson, Rebecca
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01.01.2023
• Subjects: Assessment design; Computational thinking; Formative assessment; Kindergarten; Tangible coding toys; Computational thinking; Assessment design; Formative assessment; Kindergarten; Tangible coding toys
• ISSN: 0885-2006; 1873-7706
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ecresq.2023.05.013

•This paper presents a framework for designing formative assessments of computational thinking in early childhood that starts by observing the errors that children make when engaging in coding tasks.•The errors children make while learning how to code serve as indicators of knowledge refinement opportunities and provide information about how their computational thinking knowledge is still developing.•Our identification of indicators of knowledge refinement opportunities provide insight into very early understandings of what potential patterns and levels of thinking may look like in early childhood computational thinking. With growing interest in supporting the development of computational thinking (CT) in early childhood, there is also need for new assessments that serve multiple purposes and uses. In particular, there is a need to understand the design of formative assessments that can be used during classroom instruction to provide feedback to teachers and children in real-time. In this paper, we report on an empirical study and advance a new unit of observational analysis for formative assessment that we call an indicator of a knowledge refinement opportunity or as a shorthand, KRO indicators. We put forth a new framework for conceptualizing the design of formative assessments that builds on the Evidence Centered Design framework but centers identification and analysis of indicators of knowledge refinement opportunities. We illustrate a number of key indicators through empirical examples drawn from video recordings of Kindergarten classroom lessons.