Tiny thinkers! A campaign to educate and empower parents to kickstart their child's computational thinking learning through everyday activities

Abstract

Against the backdrop of Singapore’s commitment to achieving a Smart Nation, this paper explores how Computational Thinking (CT) learning can be made equally accessible to children aged four to seven across all family backgrounds. The paper will first make a case for the importance of Computational Thinking for young children and for the integration of CT learning into daily activities. As the pioneering project for the Digital Readiness component of Our Singapore Fund, Tiny Thinkers seeks to educate and empower parents with the necessary tools to kickstart their child’s journey in Computational Thinking. This early exposure places children in a better position to leverage further opportunities to learn CT at an older age. To assess the effectiveness of our education and empowerment efforts, the paper uses quantitative and qualitative research to analyse the effects of our activities on children. Our results demonstrated that accessible and comprehensible resources were effective in increasing behaviour adoption, which translated into significant CT knowledge gains in children. These results create new knowledge in the Computational Thinking field and contribute to the development of CT pedagogy in Singapore.