Empowering children for the cities of the future: integrating computational thinking in early childhood education through tangible technology toolkits
Sara Patrícia Abreu · 2025
The transformation of urban environments and the rising presence of technology in daily life has shed some light over the importance of integrating computational thinking (CT) into early childhood education. This research explores the use of a tangible technology toolkit (TTT) to introduce CT in children aged 4 to 9. The project has been developed following a child-centered approach, thus putting at the heart of it principles of active learning and playfulness. A pilot study was conducted, comparing traditional methods and the use of the TTT to approach the theme of intelligent cities, which revealed improvements of CT skills within groups but no significant differences when comparing both methods. The TTT addresses concerns of accessibility, cost and the need for teacher training that were highlighted in previous studies. Future work will include an increase in the number of participants, a refinement of methodologies and improvement of the TTT.