Early Childhood Computational Thinking through Tangible Floor-Robot Programming in an eTwinning Community of Practice

Abstract

This study explores how early-years teachers evaluate and implement Computational Thinking (CT) through tangible floor-robot activities within an eTwinning Community of Practice (CoP), with attention to gender-related participation patterns. Although CT is increasingly recognised as an essential dimension of Early Childhood Education (ECE - referring to ages 4-6 according to the Greek Education System), there is still limited empirical evidence on how teachers transform CT concepts into developmentally appropriate practice and how gender may shape children’s engagement in such activities. Addressing these gaps, the study focuses on teachers’ evaluations and classroom implementation of CT, their experiences with tangible programming tasks, and their perceptions of gender-related patterns in participation, support needs, and CT performance. The research was conducted over a 24-week asynchronous professional-learning programme hosted on Moodle and involved one national cohort of Greek early-years educators (N = 473). During the professional-learning programme, participants engaged in weekly STEAM-oriented CT activities and collaboratively designed classroom learning scenarios using floor robots (e.g., Bee-Bot). Survey instruments captured teachers’ perceptions of CT, educational robotics, STEAM pedagogy, and gender-related classroom observations, while focus-group discussions provided complementary insights into classroom enactment. Following a DBR-informed exploratory mixed-methods approach, the research combined iterative engagement in the CoP with descriptive analysis of survey and focus-group data to identify patterns in teachers’ experiences and reported classroom practices. Findings indicate consistently high levels of participation for both girls and boys, with only small gender differences. Boys appeared slightly more often in the highest engagement band but were also more likely to require ongoing support, whereas girls were more frequently described as working independently and showed a modest descriptive advantage in problem solving, sequencing, and simple algorithm design. In addition, the learning scenarios were rated as useful or very useful for cultivating CT and for fostering collaboration, communication, and problem solving in early-years classrooms. Qualitative findings identified three design features as particularly effective in supporting children’s engagement: explicit sequencing supports, structured testing and debugging cycles, and the use of cooperative roles. Taken together, these findings underpin a set of practical learning-design principles for implementing CT through floor-robot activities in early childhood. More broadly, the research illustrates how an online CoP can support the adaptation of CT-focused designs into everyday classroom practice. It also contributes to e-learning research by illustrating how developmentally appropriate robotics activities within a Community of Practice may support equitable opportunities for young children to engage with foundational CT practices from the earliest years of schooling.