In the following research review, 57 articles were analysed to get an insight into research in the field of computational thinking and programming in K–12. The results show that empirical research regarding programming and computational thinking is prevalent in the USA and Greece. The articles were published in 43 different academic journals. A fast-growing number of articles published in the research field during 2006–18 indicate growing interest. The articles were analysed and clustered into seven strands: 1) Evaluating digital resources, 2) Assessment, 3) Improving students’ academic performance through programming, 4) Gender and equity, 5) Games – as a method to learn programming, 6) Attitudes and motivations, and 7) Teachers’ competencies and teaching. An extensive focus is on the evaluation of different technical solutions as well as pedagogical methods. Implications for teaching and learning programming and developing computational thinking skills are discussed.

This article illustrates a research project in a Swedish elementary school where young students are engaged in a project on ecology. Species, digital resources and nature contribute to place-based exploration of ecological issues, relevant in learning for sustainability. Since children grow up in a digital era, their meaning-making is transversed by oral, digital and physical modes. By launching the terms relations, gaps, stand fast and chain of transduction as an analytical apparatus and connecting video ethnography to pragmatic theory and multimodal analysis, we contribute to the body of knowledge on students’ participation and meaning-making featured in digital and physical representations. Specifically, ecological and sustainability learning takes place in the transduction displaying students’ drawings, texts, digital images and biological arrangements. The article concludes with several education concerns: the teacher’s responsibility in supporting agency-processes, the growth of ecological literacy in a blurred ‘digital-ecology’ environment and the educational need to support students’ attachments and care for the living and nonliving.

In this article, we show empirically how preschool childrens’ creative, physical, and digital leaps, provide new perspectives concerning childrens’ engagement in ecology related questions in the domain of Sustainability Education. The metamorphosis of insects is explored by children digitally, embodied and 'hands-on', and the children move through the digital and analogue interfaces. Childrens’ embodied explorations through instant encounters with nature has an obvious place where the digital world and nature become intersected forming a whole. We introduce a transduction chain, a didactic design-theoretic analysis tool, which supports teachers and researchers to get to hold of childrens’ digital and analogue meaning-making sign use. We draw attention to the preschool children's contribution in the area, which is made visible through transduction processes. We do not yet have the answers to the complex questions of sustainability, implying the need of all citizens’ participation and contributions. In anthropocene, it is also important to strengthen agency processes by paying attention to children's own course of actions and proposals. In light of this study, preschool teachers need to provide rich opportunities where children can explore and process what is happening around them.

Den utbildningsvetenskapliga kärnan är gemensam för alla lärarstuderande i Sverige och ska innehålla de grundläggande kunskaper och färdigheter som blivande förskollärare och lärare behöver. Den fungerar därmed som en gemensam bas och utgör i förlängningen grunden för ett gemensamt professionsspråk. Antologin Den utbildningsvetenskapliga kärnan för förskolan är en kursbok för blivande förskollärare och organiserad utifrån kärnområdena:

·       utbildningens historia, organisation och villkor samt demokratins grunder

·       läroplansteori och didaktik

·       utveckling och lärande

·       sociala relationer, konflikthantering och ledarskap

·       bedömning

·       utvärdering och utvecklingsarbete.

Bokens kapitel sätts in i en samhällelig kontext med globalisering, mångfald, digitalisering, hållbarhet, demokrati och jämlikhet som bärande begrepp. Förskolan beskrivs som en arena för socialt samspel i denna kontext och sammantaget förmedlar boken perspektiv och kunskaper viktiga för förskollärares uppdrag.

Digital competence and programming are actively highlighted areas in education worldwide. They are becoming part of curricula all over the world, including the Swedish elementary school curriculum, Children are expected to develop computational thinking through programming activities, mainly in mathematics—which are supposed to be based on both proven experience and scientific grounds. Both are lacking in the lower grades of elementary school. This article gives unique insight into pupils’ learning during the first programming lessons based on a group of Swedish pupils’ experiences when entering school. The goal of the article is to inform education policy and practice. The large interdisciplinary, longitudinal research project studies approximately 1500 students aged 6–16 and their teachers over three years, using video documentation, questionnaires, and focus group interviews. This article reports on empirical data collected during the first year in one class with 30 pupils aged 6–7 years. The social semiotic, multimodal theoretical framework “Design for Learning” is used to investigate potential signs of learning in pupils’ multimodal representations when they, for example, use block programming in the primary and secondary transformation unit. We show that young pupils have positive attitudes to programming and high self-efficacy, and that pupils’ signs of learning in programming are multimodal and often visible in social interactions.

Digital technology has become increasingly central in curriculum plans during the last decade, but there is hardly any research about the curriculum in the digital age, nor about 'digital competence' as a newdidactic area that has entered the educational field. In this article, we discuss and analyse two interrelated issues: first, on recent trends in curriculum developments in Norway, Sweden and Finland concerning digital competence; and, second, on related research initiatives of relevance for digital competence as an educational field. The article is based on a theoretically informed review of policy documents during the last decade and research initiatives in this field. The outcome of our study show that digital competence has become an increasingly complex concept, with a key emphasis in recent curricula, and is strongly linked to 21st century education. The article contributes to the ongoing debate about digital competence as part of contemporary educational strategies.

The paper presents a systematic examination of data from two early math interventions, involving 188 children aged 3,5-6,5 and their teachers. The aim is to cast light on how a digital early math game can be spontaneously extended into the physical environment by children and by teachers. Questions were: i) how the math content was extended to the physical room, ii) which elements of the game and the interventions inspired and provided affordances for the extensions iii) implications for children’s learning of early math. The analyses revealed a great variety of ways in which children and teachers – acting on their own or together – brought the game out to the physical room. Among the underlying factors for this were everyone’s experiences with the game, familiar narratives, and simple game design in terms of rules and visual features. Finally, positive influences on early math learning from the extensions were identified.