Children Talking About Computers · Web viewUnderstanding of such perceptions may serve to inform teaching and learning in ICT and other subjects. This paper reports the findings

“It’s Good for Plugging-in a Budgie”: Children Talking

About Computers

Alan Jervis

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association

Annual Conference, University of Glamorgan, 14-17 September

2005

School of EducationUniversity of ManchesterOxford RoadManchesterM13 9PLTel: 0161 273 3409e-mail : [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

It’s Good for Plugging-in a Budgie: Children Talking about Computers

Abstract

It is now almost 20 years since Hughes, Brackenridge and McLeod, writing in 1987, lamented the rapidly passing opportunity to investigate 'computer-naïve' children and examined the views of seven year-old children on their experience of computers, their attitudes towards them, their conceptions of how computers function and whether there was sex-stereotyping in those views. Little further work has been done in the area of children's thinking about computers and this paper will report on the start of work to remedy this.

It will concentrate on one of the above aspects; children's views of how computers function. Given the fascination that computers appear to hold for children and the amount of time that children spend exploring and using computers, it would be surprising if they had not developed sophisticated conceptions and mental models in this area. Understanding of such perceptions may serve to inform teaching and learning in ICT and other subjects.

This paper reports the findings from two sets of interviews of seven- and eleven-year old children carried out in December 2002 as part of a longitudinal study of the development of children’s thinking about computers.

It is clear that, despite twenty years of rapidly developing technology, children’s ideas about the working of computers remain at or below the level of those of the children studied earlier and that no development of these conceptions takes place between the ages of seven and eleven. It is suggested that these concepts were formerly acquired during the process of learning to program; an activity that has low importance in current curricula.

Children construct the computer as a device which functions (or should function) instantaneously and which knows everything. Their conceptions about function are hazy but appear to include ‘tangle of wires’, ‘plugs’ and ‘chips’ to serve as metaphors for computer function.

Alan Jervis Page 2 of 29 University of Manchester


1.0 Introduction

The work reported here has its origins in speculations raised by the DfES

Circular 4/98 (DfES, 1998) and the Teacher Training Agency’s document

‘Qualifying to Teach’ (2003). These documents were intended to specify

the standards that newly qualified teachers completing a course of

postgraduate training (the PGCE) should reach. They laid out a

requirement that:

“Those to be awarded Qualified Teacher Status must, when assessed, demonstrate that they: …. know, for their specialist subject(s), pupils’ most common misconceptions and mistakes;” (Circular 4/98, Annex A: 4, section k)

These ‘Standards’ were generic, i.e. they applied to teachers of all

subjects included in the KS3/4 National Curriculum, including the subject

then known as ‘IT’ (Information Technology – later rechristened ICT –

Information and Communication Technology in the 1999 revision of the

National Curriculum). This led to speculation by teachers, trainers and

trainees about the nature of ‘misconceptions’ in ICT.

It rapidly became clear that, unlike Science and Mathematics (see e.g.

Driver, Guesne & Tiberghien, 1985; Hart, Johnson, Brown, Dickson &

Clarkson, 1989), there had been no research into children’s

misconceptions in ICT and, indeed little work on children and computers in

general, beyond the impact of computers and ICT in the classroom. It was

equally clear that, before issues of children’s misconceptions could be

examined and tackled, much more would need to be known about

children’s thoughts, beliefs and conceptions about computers. The early

publications of Mawby, Clement, Pea & Hawkins (1984), Turkle (1984) and Alan Jervis Page 3 of 29 University of Manchester


Hughes, Brackenridge & McLeod (1987) raised many fascinating questions

which remain un-researched and unanswered. This paper reports on part

of a small project aimed at examining these questions, both in general and

in the light of 15-20 years of children using computers both in school and

in wider society and of computers and digital electronics forming a far

more important part of everyday life than even the most optimistic of

forecasters would have dared claim twenty-five years ago.

One of the principal concerns articulated by these early researchers was:

“We have no baselines against which future developments may be interpreted, and if no research is carried out in this field very soon the opportunity for studying comparatively ‘computer-naive’ children may be lost completely.” (Sage & Smith, 1983: 26)

Mawby et al suggest:

“In the not-too-distant future, computer use will be so pervasive in our society that the idea of a computer-naïve child will seem antiquated, no more understandable than a school-aged child who does not know about books.” (Mawby et al, 1984: 3)

Lepper (1985: 2) expressed the concern that: “If we do not act quickly, we

may miss the ‘research window’ on microcomputers as we did with

television.” and Hughes et al add:

“We are embarked on a period of very rapid technological change and by the end of the century information technology in its many different forms will have had a highly significant impact on many aspects of children’s lives”. (Hughes et al, 1987: 10)

and “it becomes well-nigh impossible to imagine what ideas and attitudes children – or adults for that matter – will have in 16 years time.” (ibid: 33)



Arguably, that position was reached some years ago and all children

studied currently are likely to have a rich, though varied, experience of

computer use.

2.0 Background

2.1 Introduction

“If you open a computer … you see no gears that turn, no levers that move, no tubes that glow. Most often, you see some wires and one black chip. Children faced with wires and a chip, and driven by their need to ask how things work, can find no simple physical explanation. … the workings of the computer present no easy analogies with objects or processes that came before, except for analogies with people and their mental processes. In the world of children and adults, the physical opacity of this machine encourages it to be talked about and thought about in psychological terms.” (Turkle, 1984: 22)

In subjects such as Science and Mathematics, the rationale for studying

children’s thinking is the belief that, by understanding how children think

about complex concepts, and the beliefs that they hold before entering

formal teaching, learning can be enhanced and any misconceptions that

they hold can be tackled via the introduction of cognitive conflict (see e.g.

Driver, 1983). Mawby et al and Hughes et al see this as a function of their

research:

“If child novice models of computer functioning are badly flawed, the models will impede rather than support their learning about and with computers; that is, children may acquire low level skills, but the deeper conceptual understanding that allows skills to develop and generalize may elude them.” (Mawby et al, 1984: 2)

This section will summarise important ideas from three very significant

contributions to the literature on children’s thinking about computers



(Mawby, Clement, Pea & Hawkins, 1984; Turkle, 1984 and Hughes,

Brackenridge & McLeod, 1987).

It must be borne in mind that computers and the uses to which they can

be put have changed beyond recognition in the time since the early

studies were carried out. Both of the 1984 studies examined atypical

groups of children, who were of interest because they had a higher than

usual exposure to computers (Mawby et al examined a group of children

at a very well resourced New York private school and Turkle’s

conversations were with adults and children who had an unusually long

experience of computers and electronic devices).

2.2 Describing Computers

According to Mawby et al, children were confused about the boundaries of

the term ‘computer’ and were prone to describe anything which was

‘electronic’ or indeed merely ‘electrical’ as a computer. However, an

interesting common linkage was some sense of ‘automaticity’: most of the

objects classified as ‘computers’ were in some sense able to automate

operations in response to a command, even if such a ‘command’ was

merely pressing a switch, but there is a theme of computers as objects

that can, even in a limited way, act by themselves.

“Airplanes come in all shapes and can be described in all sorts of ways, but there is no conceptual problem in describing what they do: they fly. There is no equally elegant, compelling, or satisfying way of defining the computer by its function. You can say ‘it computes’, and a computer scientist can set up a conceptual frame of reference in order to define ‘the computable’. But even then, what has been isolated as ‘the essential computer’ presents no easy analogies with other objects in the world.” (Turkle, 1984: 272)



In common with the children in the work of Mawby et al discussed in the

previous section, the children in Turkle’s study also had great difficulty in

assigning objects to the category ‘computer’, choosing to include

electronic toys, video games and electronic learning aids such as ‘Speak

and Spell’. The task has become no easier in recent years: ‘a computer’

usually conjures an image of a beige box, with keyboard, screen and

mouse. However, advances such as the use of a computer-derived

operating system in a ‘Smartphone’ and other aspects of convergence of

digital technologies make the task much harder, if not meaningless in the

world of 2005.

Children’s descriptions of computers almost always imply some element of

apparent ‘free will’ or automaticity: computers for many of the children

are defined by a perceived ability to act according to their own wishes, or

to exhibit behaviours which are not always predictable. At no point in her

description does Turkle suggest that children had any direct experience of

the components of the computer and, in this respect at least, the children

studied appeared rather less technologically sophisticated than those in

the concurrent study of Mawby et al discussed previously. These issues

would be further blurred by images in the current popular culture such as

the computer HAL in ‘2001, A Space Odyssey’ (Clarke, 1968), and robots

such as C3PO and R2D2 in ‘Star Wars’ (Lucas, 1977) and Marvin in ‘The

Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (Adams, 1979) where the robots clearly

have powerful computing abilities, are humanoid in shape, and play roles

as important as any of the human characters.

In the Hughes et al study (conducted in 1983-5), many children drew

identifiable models of computers such as the ZX Spectrum, though “for



most of the children, though, a computer consisted of a keyboard (with a

large number of buttons) attached by wires to a TV screen” (Hughes et al,

1984: 13). Some of the younger children exhibited the confusion

remarked earlier and drew robots such as R2D2. The drawings

reproduced by the authors which show screen displays all have content

and these offer some insight into what children thought computers were

used for, showing arithmetic and games.

2.3 How computers work

The basic nature of a computer, that it manipulates data according to

rules that preserve meaning is highly abstract:

“While a keyboard may be likened to a typewriter, a monitor to a TV, a disk drive to a cassette player or phonograph, the central processing unit is more like a brain. Like the brain, it is not normally visible and is best known to us by what it does. Since it is out of sight, will children even mention it as part of the computer ? Or does their conception of a computer not involve computation?” (Mawby et al, 1984: 18)

Mawby et al (1984) found that few children gave a clear response to

questions in this area: “it runs by electricity”, “it works by plugging it in”,

“you press buttons”, “there are lots of wires and batteries”, “there are

engines inside and a computer brain”. Once again, they note that younger

children mentioned only the visible parts, though one said that the

‘memory’ is what distinguishes the computer from less capable machines

such as the typewriter or the television. One said “It works by wires

inside” and others “accurately described the disk drive, screen and

keyboard, but appeared not to recognise that anything else is necessary

for computer functioning.” (p 19). Few children mentioned any processes

between pressing the keys and material appearing on the screen. Even



older children, in second interviews towards the end of the study could say

little with certainty or accuracy: “I think you push buttons…”, “There is a

whole bunch of stuff and little things inside”, “The computer knows

everything that’s on it…”. A few children spoke of “memory banks” and

two of “chips”. The authors conclude that, even by the end of the study

when the children had a very extensive experience of computers

compared with the majority of children of the time, “In general, the inner

workings of computers are largely unknown to these children”.

In Turkle’s view:

“Most considerations of the computer concentrate on the ‘instrumental computer,’ on what work the computer will do. But my focus here is on something different, on the ‘subjective computer’. I look at the computer in a different light, not in terms of its nature as an ‘analytical engine’ but in terms of its ‘second nature’ as an evocative object, an object that fascinates, disturbs equanimity, and precipitates thought.” (Turkle, 1984:13)

As with the other studies described in this chapter, children studied by

Hughes et al (1987) were vague about how computers work: “you press

the buttons”, “you feed things into its memory”, “the tape – it orders the

computer around” (Hughes et al, 1987: 24). Younger children thought

that the inside of the computer contained “a wee engine”, “levers”,

“prints”, “a piece of paper with sums on it” and rather more puzzling: “a

wee brain ticket thing” (ibid: 24). Echoing Turkle’s interviewee children,

‘batteries’ and ‘electricity’ featured in children’s descriptions as did ‘plugs’

and ‘wires’.

2.4 Can computers think?

Mawby et al believe:



“Children’s understanding of the relation between thinking and computer operations will affect their views on the powers and limits of computers. Their conceptions of the similarities and differences between people and computers will influence their interactions with the computer.” (Mawby et al: 31)

This study showed that children had mixed views about computers’ ability

to think, which probably reflected their own varied views of what it means

to ‘think’. Even young children associated thinking with reflective activity

and problem solving. They had a concept of ‘awareness’: “When you pick

up a pencil, you know that you’re picking up a pencil”, “It [the computer]

would never say ‘What am I doing here?’.” Several repeated the idea that

they don’t have a brain, “just wires and things”, “computers are not flesh

and blood”. Young children had a distinct view of ‘machine thought’:

“they connect wires to think”, “[they think] with little gears”. Older

children once again used their knowledge of programming to reflect their

view that “It looks like thinking but it’s not because they’re programmed

by a thinking person.”.

All children studied were unsure about whether computers were alive.

Turkle observes that children naturally tend to develop animistic models

and that the computer is an equivocal object in the classifications adopted

by them. She also points out that computers are far from unique in

provoking anthropomorphism. ‘Alive’, as has been noted previously

appears to embody some notion of independent or autonomous action:

children may, for example, tentatively classify clouds as ‘alive’ as they

display some of the characteristics of living things, but as they realise that

cloud movement is driven by wind, clouds move to the category of ‘not

alive’. The same process is followed by computers and electronic toys as

a child learns that they can be ‘controlled’ by removing the batteries.



“Children construct theories that will help them situate the computer in the world of living and not-living things and neutralize what seems threatening about it.” (Turkle, 1984: 42).

Hughes et al are clearly worried about this aspect of children’s interaction

with computers:

“ … one of the most powerful (and dangerous) aspects of computers is the ease with which users can anthropomorphize them. It seemed likely that children would be particularly susceptible to this, given the frequency of claims that children are particularly prone to ‘animism’.” (Hughes et al, 1984: 12)

One of the particularly interesting features of this work is that the

interviewers questioned the children directly about what they term ‘the

children’s concept of the computer as an intelligent autonomous machine’.

This study interviewed the same children twice, separated by an interval

of 16 months. The researchers were surprised by an increase in the

number of children who held an animistic view of the computer, though it

accords with Turkle’s view that increasing contact with computers

increases the likelihood of children describing (and therefore, presumably

thinking of) computers in increasingly psychological language. On both

occasions, the majority of children were clear that computers couldn’t ‘do

things by themselves’, though a few pointed to random selection in

electronic toys like ‘Speak and Spell’ as evidence that they could. A

number of children felt that computers wanted the user to ‘feed things

into it, make it do things’ and ‘it wants to help you’ (ibid: 26), and in many

ways, the language used is reminiscent of the way children might discuss

the behaviour of a pet.

As was remarked by the researchers whose work is discussed in this

section, children were divided about whether computers ‘think’, which Alan Jervis Page 11 of 29 University of Manchester


probably reflects their own uncertainty about what it means to think.

Remarks quoted show that, though almost half of the children in the first

interviews and 65% of those in the second believed that computers did

think, most of them were clear that they did not think in the human way:

‘We’re thinking, but they know the answer’, ‘We’re alive but they’re

electric’, ‘They’ve not got a brain, only a microchip’ (ibid: 27).

Almost all were sure that computers ‘remembered’: ‘… then they just have

to search their memory … it’s just sort of automatic’, ‘They don’t make

mistakes’, ‘it’ll remember sums, things like that’ (ibid: 27 and 29), though

many responses suggest that children did not distinguish clearly between

thinking and remembering.

The work described in this paper addresses these and other issues with a

group of children who have had a great deal more exposure to digital

technologies over a far longer period of time than those discussed here.

3.0 Methodology

This work formed part of a larger study which has previously been partially

reported (Jervis, 2003) and the methodology of the whole study is fully

detailed in that paper.

In outline, classes of seven- and eleven-year olds were asked to draw

‘spider diagrams’ of their views of computers, what is connected to them

and what is inside them. The nodes in the spider diagrams were drawings

rather than words.



From analysis of the diagrams produced, those with the most developed

and fully–formed concepts were selected. In making this choice, literal

accuracy in terms of the technical correctness of their concepts was not

considered, merely the richness of the conceptions. In each school, the

six children who produced the most interesting diagrams were chosen for

further study.

Group interviews were arranged, and a semi-structured interview was

carried out with the researcher. In these interviews, questions were

selected to reflect, and allow comparison with, the works of Mawby et al

(1984) and Hughes et al (1987).

4 Results and Discussion

4.1 General

Interviews were carried out with two groups of six children, one group of

Y3 pupils in a primary school and one group of Y7 pupils in a secondary

school. They took place in December 2002.

The primary school is a suburban school of approximately 450 pupils with

19% of pupils having identified SEN. 4% of the pupils are eligible for free

school meals. The latest OfSTED report (2001) classifies the school as “a

very good school with some excellent features”, though it also describes

“some elements of information and communication technology” as

capable of improvement. At the time of the work reported here, there was

no computer suite and computers were distributed in classrooms



throughout the school. All computers were networked and had Internet

access.

The secondary school is an urban community comprehensive school with

Technology School status. There are some 1000 pupils and the 2002

OfSTED report states:

“The overall social and economic background of pupils is below average. The overall level of attainment of pupils on entry to the school at age 11 is well below the national average. The proportion of pupils with special educational needs is a little smaller than usual, whilst that with statements of such need is broadly average. About 17 per cent of pupils come from families of ethnic minority heritage, … This is a good and improving school. Information and communication technology (ICT) is a substantial strength of the school.”

The report adds that the school is situated in a socially and economically

deprived area and the proportion of pupils entitled to free schools meals is

30%. The school has a low pupil: computer ratio (3:1), a highly networked

environment and easy and widespread Internet access. From entry into

the school, pupils make extensive use of ICT and have their own storage

area on the network. Pupils in this school are highly ‘network aware’ in

terms of the server/ client structure of the school’s ICT provision and in the

period studied, this was emphasised by frequent network failure and the

explanation of server inaccessibility for access restrictions to both pupils’

work and software.

4.2 Ownership of computers

All of the primary children and all but one of the secondary children had a

home computer which was either seen as their property, or to which they

had frequent access. (for simplicity, this will be referred to as ‘owned a

computer’). Perhaps reflecting the relative prosperity of the communities Alan Jervis Page 14 of 29 University of Manchester


in which the schools were situated, the primary pupils had owned

computers for the longest (mean=4.2 years), with the secondary pupils

rather less (3.8 years). Four of the pupils had owned computers for six or

more years. This suggests that the ‘computer-naïve pupil’ postulated by

Sage & Smith (1983) does indeed no longer exist.

4.3 Home and School Use of Computers

Almost all pupils described using a computer for playing games and this

was their major home activity. Second to this came use of the computer

for graphics using packages such as ‘Paint’, ‘Print House’ and ‘Art Attack’.

This was reported at all ages, but was slightly more popular with the

younger pupils and with girls:

“printing pictures off … writing letters, thank you letters.” (Claire, 11)“You can make cards… invitations” (Mansoor, 11)“I’ve got … like … a ‘Print House’ disc … and you can load it in and print more different things …” (Lorna, 7)“I mostly … draw pictures. I’ve got ‘Art Attack.” (Hannah, 7)“If you like something really bad, you can go on the Internet and print it off and stick it on the wall” (Zorin, 11)

This supports Selwyn’s view about home uses of computers in his 1998

study (Selwyn, 1998). Facer et al (2001a), in a case study of 16 ‘medium-

high computer use families’ plus a questionnaire study of 855 children,

showed high levels of home access to a computer (70%, with 20% having

exclusive ownership, 83% having access to a computer outside school).

Often motivation for the purchase was not to support school work but to

offer an alternative to activities outside the home which were increasingly

perceived as more hazardous (“… compensatory leisure activity for young



people, in which digital freedom is intended to compensate for physical

freedom…” Facer et al, 2001a: 19), though as parents and children

become increasingly aware of the ‘insidious nature of contact with others

through the Internet’ it may well be the case that this greater safety is

illusory.

All pupils who had home computers had some level of Internet access,

though it was clearly circumscribed by parental control. Some children

had been told that Internet access was an expensive resource and that

use was therefore circumscribed by the family budget and several pupils

reported that though in theory, they had access to the internet, it was

currently unavailable owing to technical difficulties in connecting.

“I just have to sneak on… I look up things … on TV programmes and things.”” (Tabitha, 7)

“I play on the links” (Ben, 7)

The investigation of Internet use by children was not an aim of this study

and these matters were not pursued further in the interviews.

There is a growing body of evidence from research (Comber et al, 2002;

Wellington, 2001; Kerawalla & Crook, 2002; Facer et al, 2001b; Selwyn,

1998) that school ICT, both as a subject and within the curriculum is

diverging markedly from the use that children make at home. This has

accelerated in recent years with the availability of a huge diversity of

digital devices which will interact with the computer (e.g. MP3 music

downloads). Even at the time of these interviews, there was a clear

emphasis on ‘fun’ graphics, games and communication which is generally

absent from school ICT.



When asked about their use of computers in school, there was a marked

change of tone and the interviewees’ enthusiasm waned notably.

“Copying”, “maths” and “clip art” were listed as principal activities and

the sense of excitement and creativity vanished. It is clear that pupils

believed that the richness of computer use at home was far greater that

that at school.

4.4 What are computers ‘good at’?

This question was asked by Mawby et al (1984) and the younger (8 year-

old) children had a clear concept of them helping people with tedious

tasks (“controlling things”; “save people piles and piles of paper”, “keep

track of things”, “store recipes and phone numbers” etc.). In the primary

school, this occasioned some reflection, with answers being few and

hesitant. They inclined towards the non-creative end of the spectrum:

‘doing maths homework’, ‘learning to draw’ and ‘Maths and English’.

Secondary pupils were more positive and less tentative:

“Searching for things on the Internet” (Lauren)“E-mail” (Ben)“Making things work … like traffic lights” (Zorin)“To connect to different things … you can talk to different people” (Stevie)

plus many references to use for graphics and things such as thank-you

letters and party invitations.

As in the Hughes study (1987) this question was followed with “What are

computers not good at?” Children in that study mentioned that “they

break down”, “give the wrong answers”, “make work too easy”. The



present responses all fell into one category: “don’t move very fast when

they’re broken”, “print very slowly”, “really slow at loading things”, “get

stuck all the time”. Though this was not the interpretation intended by the

researcher, it reinforced the earlier finding from the drawings in the study

(Jervis, 2003) that children construct a belief that computing and

computers should work instantly, which is perhaps engendered by the

representations seen in the media. There is clear disappointment and

frustration when they don’t and children are intolerant of the computer

problems taken for granted by adults (e.g. inability to print, to connect to

the Internet, driver problems, unexplained ‘crashes’ etc.)

4.5 Computer ‘Brains’ and Thinking

When the primary children were asked whether they believed that

computers can ‘think’, there was an unhesitating and unanimous ‘Yes’

response (‘They’ve got a big brain’). Equally unhesitating and unanimous

was the ‘No’ response to “Is their brain like ours?”. However, when asked

whether a computer’s brain was ‘better’ than ours, there was a great deal

more thought and only a few thought that it was ‘a lot bigger than ours’.

The older pupils were much more tentative, thinking longer before

producing a response: “No … (pause) … because electric makes them

work” (Lauren); “’cause you have to tell them what to do” (Stevie); “It’s

just chips” (Ben); “Chips are like the brain (Mansoor); “No … Yes … I think

they’re stupid” (Claire). In Hughes’ (1984) work, children were

interviewed twice, sixteen months apart and by the second time, 61% of

children believed that computers could think. 34% of the children who

believed that computers could think, believed that they thought as

humans do and 51% that they were better at thinking than humans.Alan Jervis Page 18 of 29 University of Manchester


There was surprisingly little difference in the responses of the two age

groups to questions about the detailed workings of the computer.

Children mentioned “chips”, “motherboards”, “loads of little wires”, “all

those little … like … clip things”, “wires”, “like little battery things”,

“plugs”, “CD-ROMs”, “a projector thing to make the monitor work”.

The children’s responses to questions strongly suggest by context and

intonation that they do not share the mature point of view that plugs and

wires are essential connectors between the functioning components: their

concept is that the ‘plugs’ and ‘wires’ are essential active participants in

the computer’s function. Hannah (7) suggested “the plug gets energy for

the computer” and it is clear that she does not intend this judgement

merely as a factual statement that the computer must be plugged in

before it will work. References to ‘batteries’ echo Turkle’s suggestion that:

“Batteries have become some of the most frustrating objects in children’s lives … the mysterious batteries that grownups buy and take charge of. What are batteries to computers? Alice, a five-year-old, said, “They’re like their food.” (Turkle, 1984:54)

She adds (p 60):

“… even if one … breaks inside, all that the most persistently curious child finds is a chip or two, some batteries and some wire. Physically, these objects are opaque. They are frustrating.”

It is perhaps surprising that there is little difference between seven- and

eleven-year olds’ conceptualisations of the workings of the computer and

even more surprising that these concepts are certainly no more detailed

and sophisticated than those of the children studied almost 20 years

previously. Mawby et al (1984) report comments such as “you press



buttons”, “wires and batteries”, “the wires inside”, “a whole bunch of stuff

and little things inside”, “machinery inside” and Hughes et al (1987): “you

press the buttons”, “wires”, “batteries”, “electricity”, “plugs”.

Perhaps the most striking thing is that the language used by children of

similar ages has not shifted even slightly from that used fifteen years

earlier. Indeed, if anything, it is less precise and it is suggested that this

may be case because children no longer program the computer.

4.6 The Issue of Programming

The early studies referred to previously were of children whose use of

computers was generally restricted to some form of programming (in

LOGO or BASIC) and games playing. Often, the games playing took place

following the laborious ‘typing-in’ of a listing from a magazine. In the

present study, the intention was to raise the issue of programming via the

question “How do computers know the things that they know?”

All of the children in both groups were vague about a number of concepts

that might be thought to be essential for a clear concept of a computer’s

function. Children did not distinguish between ‘load’ and ‘save’ and none

had any clear idea of what these processes involved. They would offer a

superficial response such as ‘save it on the disc’ without the ability to

articulate what this process involved.

There was confusion between storage and memory and little real idea of

how a computer ‘knows the things it knows’. The start-up and shut down

processes were not understood, nor even tolerated, offering again a

source of irritation at the computer’s slowness:

R: When you switch a computer on, what happens?Alan Jervis Page 20 of 29 University of Manchester


Hannah: It has to load.R: What does it load?Hannah: Games and stuff. It takes about a minute to get all sorted.R: What’s it doing while you’re waiting?Hannah: Loading.R: How does it know about the games and the word processor?Hannah: [it comes from] the plug.

All the children were aware that software was needed for the computer to

work, though few had a clear idea of what software was and how it found

its way onto the computer:

“Is it from that disc thing?”“You have to load it so it can remember.”“You have to put it in the computer … like a CD”“You have to make something to double click on when you want to play the game.”“There’s like little square things when the computer comes on – you need CD-ROMs to get them on.”“You load it up.”“You can save it on the floppy disc.”“Everything it needs is put inside.”

Strikingly, at no point did any of the interviewees mention a program and,

even when prompted with the word, the seven-year olds were unable to

relate it to anything they knew about. One of the eleven-year olds

eventually volunteered that “It keeps the computer doing what it’s meant

to do” and another, “What makes the games go is the people that

invented them”. All of these children would have met programming in

LOGO and the eleven-year olds had done some control programming:



“making things work … like traffic lights”; “plugging-in a budgie” [buggy?].

Hughes et al (1987) say:

“Direct questioning on the nature of a computer program revealed almost total ignorance or confusion: ‘Is it a TV programme about computers?’ and ‘I don’t know, I’ve never watched it.’” (Hughes et al, 1984: 24)

In the view of Mawby et al (1984: 9) “Understanding the concept of

program is at the heart of computer literacy”. As regular LOGO users,

Mawby’s interviewees had all heard the word ‘program’, though most had

a rather vague concept of its purpose “A program is whatever information

you put in”, “It makes things quicker to do” and “It saves time typing it

over each time” (Mawby et al, 1984: 10)

The children interviewed in the current study had far less experience of

programming that those in the studies of the 1980’s and it was clear that

not one of them thought of a computer in terms of a machine controlled

by a sequence of instructions.

4.7 Data Storage

The need to store data and how it might be achieved seemed equally

opaque to the children interviewed:

R: When you want to keep work, what do you do?Tabitha: [Store it] in a file.R: What do you think a file is?Tabitha: It’s where you keep your work.

R: Where does the computer keep it?Tabitha: On that disc. The square disc, floppy disc.

Responses from the older children included: “they save it in a file”, “in a

chip”, “inside the server” and ”it’s stored inside the actual hardware”. Alan Jervis Page 22 of 29 University of Manchester


These children once again demonstrated their strong sense of a client/

server network, though one child believed that a separate server was

necessary for each application.

Enquiry about what happens to data and software when the machine was

switched off produced similar responses:

“It may be saved in the hardware.”“It could be in ‘My Work’ [the individual child’s storage area on the network] or something.”“It sends it into the memory.”

All children were unanimous that the computer did not ‘forget’ (lose data)

when switched off. Some of these responses raise the question of whether

the desktop/ file metaphor that underlies modern operating systems helps

or hinders the child’s’ thinking: if the child is satisfied that ‘in a file’ or ‘in

“My Documents”’ is a full response to the conceptualisation of storage, it

raises the question of whether this simple metaphor is assisting the child

or blocking deeper thinking.

In 1984, Mawby et al felt that “the precise location of information inside

the computers was an issue that concerned many of the children”, though

they add that about half of the children did not know and that many other

answers were vague or incomplete: “memory understands it”, “It goes

onto your disk”, “It goes through the computer brain”. In their study,

“Almost all the children could explain how to save a program… Most

children could not explain the internal process by which this was

accomplished.” (Mawby et al, 1984:14) and the same was noted

concerning recalling or loading a program from disc. (It is worth noting

that Mawby’s interviewees in 1984 used floppy discs for storage, whereas Alan Jervis Page 23 of 29 University of Manchester


the children in Hughes’ study used the much less reliable cassette tape

recorders for storage.)

4.8 Animism

Following Hughes et al (1987), interviewees were asked whether they

thought that computers ‘wanted’ to do things. The secondary pupils were

hesitant: “No … yes … a bit” and, on consideration, felt that they did

“because they have no choice” or “because they’re made to do things”.

They younger children were at first unanimous that they did, but a short

silence followed as they considered the matter further. One said “Yes –

because it helps with spelling checks” but another felt that they didn’t

because “they want to help themselves … they want to play games with

themselves”. Another echoed one of Turkle’s interviewees (Turkle, 1984)

believing that as computers had no arms, they couldn’t possibly want to

do things. Another said “they can control themselves, they want to be like

us” which was followed by a round of rather nervous laughter. The older

children gave a swift and unanimous ‘Yes’ to the question “Do computers

make mistakes?”. Once again the consciousness of client/ server

architecture was clear: “Yes, if one of the servers is shut down,” and one

perceptive response was “I don’t think they make mistakes because they

only do what you tell them to.”

5 Conclusion

Alan Kay has been credited with the quotation “Technology is what was

invented after you were born” (COOLSchool, 2003) and for significant

numbers of the children interviewed, computers had been accessible to



them in the home ‘for ever’. In the twenty years between the studies

described in the ‘Background’ section of this paper and the present work,

digital technologies have multiplied to a point where they seem

ubiquitous. They have been part of children’s lives for as long as they can

remember and children are among the most avid consumers of

technology. Perhaps the most surprising finding of this study is that there

has been no detectable increase in the understanding which children show

of computers; they speak of them in exactly the same language that was

used twenty years ago. They are no clearer on the nature of a computer

and they are just as uncertain about whether computers are ‘alive’, can

‘think’ and how they work.

It is arguable that children currently have less knowledge about computers

and their function than what Turkle describes as “Child programmers: the

first generation” (Turkle, 1984: 93). Subsequent developments mean that

this was also the last generation of child programmers. Programming is

no longer a high priority activity: it occurs to a small extent in the sector of

‘dull’ activity that is school ICT, and it would appear that, even when

taught, links are not made between programming and the essential nature

of a computer as a machine controlled by a sequence of instructions.

Walsh (2005) reports that even where LOGO is taught and appears to

meet the National Curriculum requirements, many children have little

direct experience of programming, but are instead using the built-in

programs as ‘games’:

“They used the built in programs as games without making any connection between LOGO programming and what they were accessing.” (Walsh, 2005:71)



In the UK, little is taught about the functioning of a computer before KS4

(14-16 years old) and if Mawby et al (1984) and Hughes et al (1987) are

right in their belief (which parallels that of the ‘constructivists’ in science

education) that some clear model of the computer’s function is essential

for children to become fully fluent users of computers, this is an obvious

difficulty with present schemes of work.

Equally striking, and again reflecting what emerged in the earlier studies,

there is no increase in the sophistication of the child’s conception of

computers in the years between seven and eleven: it is not possible to

distinguish the language of the younger children from the older ones.

Hughes et al (1984: 32) note that:

“It is certainly true that many children in our study were puzzling over these notions ... Our impression, however was that it was our questioning, rather than the computers by themselves, which had instigated this puzzling - indeed, many children appeared to be thinking about these issues for the first time.”

The situation does not appear to have changed; it was clear from

children’s expressions and from their hesitancy that they had not

considered these issues previously.

Virtually all children had significant access to a computer at home and

their main activities were games playing, graphics work of various types

and (just emerging at that time) use of the internet, reflecting a greater

richness of experience than that obtained in school use of computers.

They found some difficulty in articulating functions that they thought

computers carried out well, but were clearly frustrated by the types of

hardware and software problems that adult users have come to take for



granted. They construct the machine as operating instantly and infallibly

and are disappointed when computers fail to meet these expectations.

They are unclear about how a computer operates and use metaphors such

as ‘tangled wires’, ‘electricity’, ‘batteries’, ‘plugs’ and ‘chips’ to represent

the function of ‘computing’. In each of these cases, the metaphor stands

for more than the simple mechanical function of these components; for

the children studied, they are vital, active components which represent

the locations where the fundamental activity of computing takes place.

Few children studied currently have any concept of a program, still less of

a program as a sequence of instructions which defines the computer’s

activity. In general, they make little distinction between hardware and

software, though it might be argued that this represents a positive step in

the conception of the computer as an integrated machine.

A further area of confusion is between memory and storage; not

uncommon in adults also. Children have little idea about data, where it is

stored and how it is manipulated by the computer and there is little clarity

about the processes of starting up and closing down a computer, beyond

some frustration at the time the processes take. Where the programs and

data are stored whilst the computer is switched off are also linked to this.

Almost all children express a belief that, at some level, in some way,

computers can ‘think’, though most distinguish between human thought

and machine ‘thought’. This view is linked to an animistic view of a

computer: it appears able to act autonomously and, to most children, this

is a criterion of ‘thinking’. To some extent, this is reflected in views that

computers have an active internal ‘life’ in which they have a desire to do



things ‘for themselves’ and play games with themselves. Once again, this

partially rests on the lack of understanding of a program as a controlling

entity.

Each of these issues is worthy of further study, but tentative indications

are emerging of the approaches that teaching might take in order to

tackle these conceptual difficulties. It remains to be seen whether such

teaching would improve children’s ability to work with computers and

information technology or merely satisfy an adult view that children

should know the ‘truth’ about how computers work.

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