• Korean Journal of Child Education & Care
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.177-196
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• 2019

Objective: This study aims to analyze research trends related to software education for young children, focusing on studies published in Korea from 2016 to 2019 March. Methods: A total of 26 research publications on software education for young children, searched from Korea Citation Index and Research Information Sharing Service were identified for the analysis. The trend in these publications was classified and examined respectively by publication dates, types of publications, and the fields of study. To investigate a means of research, the analysis included key topics, types of research methods, and characteristics of the study variables. Results: The results of the analysis show that the number of publications on the topic of software education for young children has increased over the three years, of which most were published as a scholarly journal article. Among the 26 research studies analyzed, 16 (61.5%) are related to the field of early childhood education or child studies. Key topics and target subjects of the most research include the curriculum development of software education for young children or the effectiveness of software education on 4- and 5-year-old children. Most of the analyzed studies are experimental research designs or in the form of literature reviews. The most frequently studied research variable is young children's cognitive characteristics. For the studies that employ educational programs, the use of a physical computing environment is prevalent, and the most frequently used robot as a programming tool is "Albert". The duration of the program implementation varies, ranging from 5 weeks to 48 weeks. In the analyzed research studies, computational thinking is conceptualized as a problem-solving skill that can be improved by software education, and assessed by individual instruments measuring sub-factors of computational thinking. Conclusion/Implications: The present study reveals that, although the number of research publications in software education for young children has increased, the overall sufficiency of the accumulated research data and a variety of research methods are still lacking. An increased interest in software education for young children and more research activities in this area are needed to develop and implement developmentally appropriate software education programs in early childhood settings.