Assessment tasks built on family-identified funds of knowledge elicited computational thinking from K-2 children in a small design-based study that made no comparison with standard assessment¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · design r2 · q2 · n=13 children across two tasks (9 bus task, 4 healthcare task), from a majority Hispanic and Black, low-income school district
Currency · newest study 2025 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

When formative assessment tasks for young children were built around specific household and community practices identified through family interviews, children showed computational thinking (sequencing, abstraction, data reasoning, algorithmic logic) in them. Whether standard, decontextualized computational-thinking assessments would miss that competence was not tested: the study compared no such assessment with the same children.

Subclaims¶

q2 i? In a task built around a family-identified "bus riding" practice, K-2 children demonstrated modeling/simulation (understanding a map as representation), data reasoning (inferring character attributes), and — for some children — abstraction and algorithmic sequencing (ordering pickups with community-grounded justifications like "elders can't walk long"). → Randall et al. 2025

q2 i? In a parallel task built around a "healthcare visit" practice, children demonstrated data reasoning (identifying medical tools and functions) and, for most, algorithmic thinking (sequencing steps with justifications, e.g., "bandage goes right after the injection to stop bleeding"). → Randall et al. 2025

Evidence¶

Randall et al. 2025¶

Randall, J., Earnest, D., Thota, N., & Mensing, S. (2025). Investigating and assessing informal computational thinking in grades K-2: A funds of knowledge approach. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 34(4), 526-570. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2025.2574311

q2 · design-based research with iterative task development and clinical interviews, no comparison to a standard non-FoK assessment within the same children · i? · the abstract prints no effect size; the full text may · n=13 children across two tasks (9 bus task, 4 healthcare task), from a majority Hispanic and Black, low-income school district · design · r2

Following family-interview-based assessment task design, researchers interviewed families to surface community practices (bus commuting, healthcare visits), then co-designed play-based clinical-interview tasks with teachers using character cards and manipulatives. In the bus task, all children demonstrated modeling/simulation and most demonstrated data reasoning; some showed abstraction and algorithmic sequencing when asked to justify non-obvious pickup orders. In the healthcare task, all children demonstrated data reasoning about medical tools, and most demonstrated algorithmic sequencing of visit steps. The standard computational-thinking constructs assessed (abstraction, algorithms, data, modeling/simulation) were the Massachusetts DLCS framework's existing definitions — the contribution is the assessment task design, not new CT constructs.

Discussion¶

This is a design-based study with a small sample (13 children total across two tasks) and no direct within-subject comparison to how the same children would perform on a standard, non-funds-of-knowledge computational-thinking assessment — so the claim that this approach reveals competence a decontextualized assessment "misses" is an inference from the richness of what was observed, not a controlled contrast. The approach was also resource-intensive (family interviews, iterative co-design with teachers, university partnership) and was not tested for sustainability by a single teacher without that support. A secondary, less rigorously established finding from the same study: teachers who personally conducted family interviews (rather than only reading transcripts) reported a shifted, more asset-based view of those specific families, but some did not generalize that asset-based view to other families they hadn't personally interviewed — suggesting the interview step alone, without follow-up support, may not produce a general shift in teacher beliefs.

Related Claims¶

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