The effect of coding training on the mathematical reasoning skills of preschool children

This research was conducted to determine the effect of the coding training programme on preschoolers' mathematical reasoning skills. The sample consisted of 29 children who were attending kindergarten classes in a primary school in Çukurova a district of Adana province in the 2020-2021 academic year. In this study, the pre-test – post-test control group design was used. The participants of that study are 17 children in the experimental group and 12 children in the control group. The general information form prepared by the researcher and the "Evaluation Instrument for the Early Mathematical Reasoning Skills" developed by Ergül (2014) were used as data collection tools in the study. Before the intervention, the evaluation instrument was applied to both groups as pre-test procedures, then, while the "Coding Training Program" was applied to the experimental group, the children in the control group were continued to be taught by the application of the regular education curriculum. At the end of the intervention, the evaluation instrument was applied to both groups as a post-test. Afterwards, the data obtained from the instruments were analyzed primarily by descriptive statistics and normality tests. At the end of the research, it was determined that the coding training programme has a statistically significant effect on children's mathematical reasoning skills. Moreover, there was a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and control group in the post-test, while there was no significantly difference between the groups according to the pre-test outcome. This finding shows that according to the post-test outcome, the children in the experimental group performed better than the children in the control group. Keywords: preschool period, mathematic education, mathematical reasoning, coding