The First Exploration Of American Early Childhood Programming

The United States is the birthplace of the computer and it is one of the most developed countries in computer science.Besides,the United States is the first country to propose and develop programming education.After Seymour Papert put forward the preliminary idea of programming education in 1968,programming education in the United States has formed a relatively complete curriculum system in the development of fifty years,which has been constantly updated with the progress of times and the development of pedagogy as well as the research of computer science.In today's world,the development of programming education in the United States is at the forefront of the international world,which early childhood programming education has a wide range of influence in the world and KIBO curriculum is the representative to a certain extent.While China has realized the importance of developing programming education in recent years and has issued a series of policies to incorporate programming into basic education.Nevertheless,programming education starts lately in China,and there is few related researches in the field of early childhood programming education.This study will explore the content and implementation path of early childhood programming education by combing through the basic context and development status of American early childhood programming education in order to broaden the vision,enrich the curriculum model,and provide the basis for the implementation of early childhood programming education in China.This study is divided into four parts:The first chapter elaborates the background,the purpose,the significance,the main content and relevant research methods of this study.The second chapter points out that the influence of Constructivism,the rise of STEAM education and the emphasis of the American society have promoted the development of early childhood programming education by analyzing the early childhood programming education in the United States.And its current developmentsituation is manifested as the maturity of the visual programming language and the perfection of programming robot.The basic goal of American early childhood programming education is to cultivate computational thinking and its basic characteristics are the interdisciplinary teaching method and the learning method with pleasure.The third chapter takes KIBO curriculum as an example,studying focus on the KIBO curriculum from several aspects,including the theoretical basis,curriculum objectives,the curriculum content,the implementation and themes,the curriculum assessment,and course characteristics,discussing the content and implementation path of early childhood programming education.This study summarizes that the KIBO curriculum adopts Erikson's theory and PTD framework as theoretical basis,based on the rich-content curriculum objectives,establishing the content-rich curriculum objectives according to national standards.The well-exploited curriculum themes and curriculum content are in accord with of the powerful ideas of computational thinking.And also,its curriculum implementation mode is of simple replication.Besides,it has diversified curriculum assessment and much curriculum characteristics,which is worth to be used for referring and learning easily.The fourth chapter discusses that the development of American early childhood programming education and the KIBO curriculum gives Chinese early childhood programming education some inspirations,and puts forward its shortcomings.This part points out that our country should set up the concept of early childhood programming education,constructing early childhood programming education system,developing our own early childhood programming education according to local conditions.