Michail Kalogiannakis

By Stamatios Papadakis and Michail Kalogiannakis

Coding is a new literacy for the twenty-first century, and as a literacy, coding enables new ways of thinking and new ways of communicating and expressing ideas, as well as new ways of civic participation. A growing number of countries, in Europe and beyond, have established clear policies and frameworks for introducing computational thinking (CT) and computer programming to young children. In this chapter, we discuss a game-based approach to coding education for preservice kindergarten teachers using Scratch. The aim of using Scratch was to excite students’ interest and familiarize them with the basics of programming in an open-ended, project-based, and personally meaningful environment for a semester course in the Department of Preschool Education in the University of Crete. For 13 weeks, students were introduced to the main Scratch concepts and, afterward, were asked to prepare their projects. For the projects, they were required to design their own interactive stories to teach certain concepts about mathematics or physical science to preschool-age students. The results we obtained were more satisfactory than expected and, in some regards, encouraging if one considers the fact that the research participants had no prior experiences with computational thinking.

Part of the book: Early Childhood Education

By Camelia Delia Voicu, Maria Ampartzaki, Zuhal Yilmaz Dogan and Michail Kalogiannakis

This chapter presents a survey focusing on pre-primary and primary STEAM education in six countries. The survey sought to identify: (a) the perceptions of teachers, parents, and professionals from STEM and the Arts (hereafter STEAM professionals) about the STEAM approach; (b) teachers’ training needs; (c) teachers’, parents’, STEAM professionals’ perceptions of the value of the STEAM’s role in increasing the participation of young girls and disadvantaged students in STEM. Data was collected through focus-group interviews and were qualitatively analyzed. Results showed that teachers, STEAM professionals, and most of the parents had positive perceptions of the STEAM approach; they believed that it increases children’s motivation and engagement in learning, regardless of the child’s gender; it increases creativity, self-confidence and offers good learning opportunities for both boys and girls, taking into consideration their emotional and social abilities. The main difficulties identified were related to curriculum limitations, school infrastructure, and lack of resources, experience, and training in the STEAM approach. Teachers highlighted the need of training on the STEAM philosophy, essential concepts, and specific methods; access to STEAM-specific digital resources/software; practical training/seminars or blended learning training. Student teachers emphasized the need for more STEAM lessons in their initial training.

Part of the book: Early Childhood Education