Which Way is Up? Orientation and Young Children’s Directional Arrow Interpretations in Coding Contexts
Mengying Jiang, Jody Clarke‐Midura, Deborah Silvis, Jessica F. Shumway, Victor R. Lee · Proceedings. · 2023
Many coding environments for young children involve using navigational arrow codes representing four movements: forward, backwards, rotate left, and rotate right.Children interpreting these four, seemingly simple codes encounter a complex interaction of spatial thinking and semantic meaning.In this study of how children interpret directional arrows, we found that they interpret each of the arrows as encoding many meanings and that the orientation of the agent plays a critical role in children's interpretations.Through iterative rounds of qualitative coding and drawing on two examples, we unpack some common interpretations.