Early Development of Technological Stance in Kindergarten Children

1. Tel-Aviv University | School of Education | satec | ktl Early development of technological/engineering stance by Kindergarten children Children perceptions of artifacts with adaptive behaviour David Mioduser & Asi Kuperman PATT 25 & CRIPT 8 - London, July 1-5

2. Rationale: perspectives and definitions ☞ On studying the encounter between children and the artificial world: ‘curricular perspective’: technological [literacy, content knowledge, PCK, curricular differentiation/integration, STEM, ...] ‘with the child in mind’ cognitive perspective: technological/engineering/design ‘stance’ ‘Design Stance’ [Dennett, 1987] ‘Human intelligence and Technology [Sternberg; Cole and Derry, 2002] ‘Intuitive engineering’ [Pinker, 2002] ☞ ☞ ☞

3. Rationale: perspectives and definitions ‘Intuitive engineering’ - [Pinker, 2002] “the world is an heterogeneous place, and we are equipped with different kinds of intuitions and logics, each appropriate to one department of reality ... intuitive physics ... intuitive biology ... spatial sense ... number sense ... mental database and logics ... language ... [and]... intuitive engineering - which we use to understand artifacts - [objects] with a purpose, designed by a person to achieve a goal” design stance [Dennett, 1987] “an abstract explanatory schema that captures the relationship between features of an entity (e.g. its material, shape and activities) in terms of a coherent organizing notion: the purpose for which its designer created it” what is innate ? what develops? when "it" develops? what conditions support "its" development [education question]

4. not apples but artificial minds

5. artificial minds ☞ A robot as many microprocessor-based artifacts in our everyday environment, is a unique artifact: it is characterized by purposeful functioning and autonomous decision-making (it 'behaves'?), programmability and knowledge accumulation capabilities (it 'learns'?), and adaptive behavior (it 'makes decisions'?) This new category of creaturesaffectsthe traditional and intuitive distinctions between thealiveandnot-alive, animateandinanimate, human-operatedandautonomous. natural & artificial minds ☞ ☞

6. research questions Question 1: What are kindergarten children's perceptions of programmable adaptive artifacts in terms of the stance adopted (i.e., engineering vs. psychological)? Question 2: Do these perceptions vary as a function of the complexity of the task and involvement in programming the artifact's behaviour? ☞ ☞

7. method ☞ Participants: 10 children, 5 boys and 5 girls, age ranging from 5:4 years to 6:3 years, arbitrarily chosen from a group of 25 children attending a kindergarten of average socio-economic status in the central region in Israel. Instruments: the robotic environment (programming interface and physical robot) and a progression of tasks of increasing complexity. Procedure: Data collection lasted two months. All sessions and interviews took place in the kindergarten's robotics corner and were videotaped. ☞ ☞

8. setting

9. Question 1: explanatory stance Explanatory language

10. Question 1: explanatory stance ☞ Predominance of the technological/engineering stance ☞ Example of typical (expected in age level) use of anthropomorphic language: "He's walking only on the white area because it feels warm … he wears a hat and he knows that he is wearing the hat" ☞ Functional use of anthropomorphic language when children felt that is perfectly natural to use human-related terms for an explanation, even if they are explicitly aware that they report about an artifact's behaviour

11. Question 2: explanatory stance by activity or task

12. Question 2: explanatory stance by activity and task

13. Question 2: explanatory stance by activity and task A first glance on the data unveils several facts: The number of statements increased with the complexity of the tasks In all tasks, about two thirds of the statements were phrased using technological language Most of these statements were generated by the constructors, who generated five times more statements than the observers In all tasks, the percentage of observers' statements using anthropomorphic or technological language was similar (~50%), while two thirds of the constructors' statements were phrased using technological language With the increase in tasks' complexity, the use of anthropomorphic language by the observers increased and by the constructors decreased. At the same time the use of technological language by the constructors remained at constant level - about two thirds of the statements ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞

14. [preliminary] Discussion ☞ Technological language is needed for addressing tasks of increasing complexity, both for understanding and explaining the artifacts behaviour and more evidently for programming it While approaching the "breed" of behaving and adaptive artifacts children very rapidly adopt appropriate (even if not accurate or correct) language and explanatory approach. In contrast with previous findings, which reported on kindergarten-age children's tendency to adopt animistic and psychological perspectives, we have observed that the engagement in constructing the anthropomorphic artifacts' behaviour promoted the use of technological language and indicated the early development of the engineering stance Children's involvement in tasks integrating symbolic (i.e., working with the iconic interface) and physical (i.e., manipulating and observing a real artifact) activities supports their thinking and acting beyond the expected at this age level ("concrete-abstractions"). ☞ ☞ ☞

15. Implications and future work Research-based: Definition of contents: foci, scope and pace Pedagogical design of developmentally appropriate learning opportunities, learning materials and learning environments Formalization of developmentally appropriate pedagogical solutions Design of teacher formation plans and contents Design of comprehensive implementation plans: sustainability, transferability and scalability prospects ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞ ☞

16. Tel-Aviv University | School of Education | satec | ktl Thank you !!! David Mioduser & Asi Kuperman