YOUNG CHILDREN USE CONSTRUCTIVE APPS: A NEW GENERATION OF TECHNOLOGY SUPPORTED LEARNING

Back to Page Authors: Monika Tavernier, Xiao Hu

---

Keywords: early childhood education, technology, pedagogy, m-learning

---

Abstract: This article examines factors that impact young children’s motivation to think deeply while using a constructive application. Intrinsic motivation is needed to bring about meaningful deep thinking. In contrast to other playful educational apps this constructive app lacks external motivators (e.g. rewards). This allows children to focus on their thinking, doing and its outcome (creating a digital artifact that captures their thinking), instead of focusing on winning a game. An interpretive approach is used to assess factors that motivated fifteen 4 to 5 years old children to think more or less deeply during the creation of a total of 247 artifacts over the course of 16 activities. The findings indicate that the individual’s need to experience high levels of autonomy, competence or relatedness impacted their motivation more than the idea of using technology to learn.

---