ABSTRACT
Coding is a playground. It offers many opportunities for learning and personal growth, exploration and creativity, mastery of new skills, and ways of thinking. This chapter explores the role of coding in early childhood. It draws on the framework of Positive Technological Development (PTD) to understand the developmental milestones and playful learning experiences that children can have while developing computational thinking and exploring powerful ideas from computer science. Coding is a literacy. As such, it invites new ways of thinking and carries the ability to produce an artifact detached from its creator, with its own meaning. Coding, like writing, is a medium of human expression. The chapter takes a stance against problem solving as the primary goal of teaching young children to code. Coding can be studied not only as a problem-solving mechanism, but as a process that allows the creation of a shareable product of human expression.
