A Framework For Identifying And Developing Children'S Creative Thinking While Coding With Digital Technologies

We present research that explored digital coding in an Australian early years learning centre and how it impacted on a focus group of 3 and 4-year-old children's creativity. The questions that guided the design experimental method were: (1) how do young children develop and demonstrate creativity when learning through play with digital coding technologies? and (2) what does creativity look like in young children's engagement with digital coding technologies? After firstly discussing the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) context of the research, we explore the meaning of creativity in the early years and establish the conceptual framework for analysing children's play and learning with a BeeBot coding toy and iPad app. Importantly, our review and synthesis of significant literature led to the development of an innovative framework, the A' to E' of children's creativity. This framework includes five proposed characteristic clusters of children's creativity, including agency, being curious, connecting, daring and experimenting. Using critical episodes in an illustrative learning journey analysed through the framework, the children's use of a BeeBot and a BeeBot iPad application showed that creativity can be largely impacted by digital coding. We conclude by proposing pedagogical principles that could better enable children's creativity when learning, especially when coding with digital technologies.