This study explores young children's abstraction of the rules underlying a robot's emergent behavior. The study was conducted individually with six kindergarten children, along five sessions that included description and construction tasks, ordered by increasing difficulty. We developed and used a robotic control interface, structured as…

Presents a framework characterizing cognitive models generated by sixth-grade students for simple opening/closing control mechanisms, like the elevator door. The students' conceptions, missing conceptions, and misconceptions are analyzed at three levels: device knowledge; perception of the control process; and perceptions of information flow. (LAM)

Describes an exploratory study on the acquisition and use of knowledge representation skills and structures by sixth-graders, supported by a computer-based learning environment. Results indicated that symbolic structures can be taught successfully, and that students using them in the context of instructional tasks perform at the higher band of…