The effect of design-based activities on pre-school children's computational thinking skills

This study aims to reveal the effect of design-based activities on computational thinking skills. The study sample consists of classrooms from two independent kindergartens in Istanbul, Bağcılar. In the study, a school from the same socioeconomic region was selected, and the experimental and control groups were selected by random sampling as one class from different schools. A total of 39 5-year-old children attending preschool education, nine girls, 11 boys in the control group, and ten girls and nine boys in the experimental group, formed the research sample. The "Computational Thinking Scale in Early Childhood TechCheck-K," which was developed by Relkin and Bers (2021) and adapted into Turkish by Metin, Başaran, Yıldırım-Seheryeli, Relkin, and Kalyenci (2023), was used as a data collection tool in the research. The "Design Based Activity Program," which is developmentally appropriate and integrated with the preschool education program, was prepared by the researcher. The activities applied researcher to the experimental group three days a week for eight weeks, and the control group continued the normal education program. It was found that design-based activities prepared according to the findings of the study had a significant effect on computational thinking skills, but no gender-related differences were found.