Squishing Circuits: Circuitry Learning with Electronics and Playdough in Early Childhood
Squishing Circuits: Circuitry Learning with Electronics and Playdough in Early Childhood
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挤压电路：幼儿时期用电子设备和橡皮泥进行电路学习
DOI：
10.1007/s10956-018-9752-2
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发表时间：
2018
影响因子：
4.4
通讯作者：
AnnMarie P. Thomas
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
K. Peppler;K. Wohlwend;N. Thompson;Verily Tan;AnnMarie P. Thomas
虽然电路课程传统上首先在小学后期引入，但对于物理和工程课程的本科生来说，它们在概念上仍然具有挑战性。寻求提供一个更高的质量和早期介绍电路学习的幼儿（3-5岁），本文探讨了利用软电路工具包，电路套件，结合电路组件和橡皮泥，作为第一个介绍的启示。我们的研究让45名儿童在三所幼儿园的教室里进行开放式游戏，使用Squishy Circuits工具包，为期两周，共七次。在这里，我们专注于六个孩子在一个重点教室，以说明的概念，孩子们在游戏和开放的探索与工具包和一系列的手工制作材料的发展。研究结果表明，软电路工具包使儿童能够探索电路学习的重要概念，包括电流，极性和连接。此外，在电路探索之前和之后对全班对话的分析表明，在研究过程中，儿童讨论电路概念的能力有了显着提高。通过个别案例研究，我们说明了孩子们如何通过他们的游戏制定这些概念，以及工具包提供的透明度如何使电路的大想法可见。这项工作旨在说明非常年幼的孩子如何能够成功地开始参与通常在小学后期引入的科学主题，当这些主题通过游戏和发现透明和可塑性材料的框架。
While circuitry lessons have traditionally been first introduced in late elementary school, they remain challenging conceptually for undergraduates in physics and engineering courses. Seeking to provide a higher quality and earlier introduction to circuitry learning for young children (ages 3–5), this paper investigates the affordances of utilizing the Squishy Circuits toolkit, a circuitry kit that combines circuit components and playdough, as a first introduction. Our study engaged 45 children across three nursery school classrooms in open-ended play with Squishy Circuits toolkits for seven sessions over a period of 2 weeks. Here, we focus on six children in one focal classroom in order to illustrate the concepts that children are developing during play and open exploration with the kits and a range of crafting materials. Findings indicated that the Squishy Circuits toolkit enabled children to explore concepts important to circuitry learning, including current flow, polarity, and connections. Additionally, analysis of whole class conversations before and after the circuitry explorations indicated significant gains in children’s ability to discuss circuitry concepts over the course of the study. Through individual case studies, we illustrate how children enacted these concepts through their play and how the transparency afforded by the toolkit make the big ideas of circuitry visible. This work serves to illustrate how very young children can successfully begin to engage with science topics commonly introduced in later elementary school when those topics are framed through play and discovery with transparent and malleable materials.