Educational Game for Laterality Development in Early Childhood and the Importance of Participatory Design Patrícia Cavedini Silvia de Castro Bertagnolli Informatics in Education/Education Informatics in Education/Computing IFRS/Colégio Marista Rosário IFRS Porto Alegre, Brazil Porto Alegre, Brazil pcavedini@gmail.com silvia.bertagnolli@poa.ifrs.edu.br André Peres Ederson Luiz Locatelli Informatics in Education/Computing Education IFRS Rede Marista Porto Alegre, Brazil Porto Alegre, Brazil andre.peres@poa.ifrs.edu.br locatelli1501@gmail.com Abstract—The learning process in Early Childhood child can develop, organize, and plan their play activities. Still Education focuses on the development of children and their according to [4], in today's times, the child's cultural different forms of expression. Learning can be established by background is important, where the adult plays the role of body language, because, by movement, the child establishes mediator, and motivates the child to learn and understand the symbolic relationships, and constructs his thinking. So, in Early facts while respecting this background. Childhood Education a dialogue with other areas of knowledge is necessary, seeking to provide an immersion in various This work focuses on analyzing the development of learning situations. In this context, the present work focuses on laterality of Early Childhood Education students, gathering analyzing the development of a digital game in Scratch with the Physical Education and Informatics, through play and body participation of students, which reflects paths and levels expression, both developed in playful and challenging identified in Physical Education classes, aiming to develop activities that combine theory and practice in different spaces, laterality. The research is qualitative and used the scientific such as the classroom, computer labs, sports courts, and other procedures of bibliographic research, participant observation, school spaces. The concept of laterality is very important in discursive textual analysis, and participatory design for the this context, because, according to [5], “Laterality [...] elaboration of the game. The subjects were children aged represents the integrated and symbolically internalized between four and six who are in Early Childhood Education. As awareness of both sides of the body, left and right side, which a result, the digital game really became a strategy to assist in the presupposes the notion of the midline of the body.”. Body development of laterality of children, as it enhanced the control is important, especially at school, as it is fundamental appropriation of psycho-motor schemes related to spatial and temporal orientation. in the children's learning process, influencing adult life [6, 7, 8]. Keywords—Early Childhood Education, Laterality, It worth notice that the students of Early Childhood Educational Game, Participatory Design. Education who took part in this research are children who are in the age group of four to six years old. They participated in the planning, organization, data collection, and validation, as well as constant interaction with the researchers involved in I. INTRODUCTION the research [9]. For that, methodological procedures related to the age group of the public in question [9] were used, such When we consider the Early Childhood Education in the as drawings, photos, and footage, always respecting the reality Brazilian Common Curricular Base (BNCC) [1] and its and the children's experience. During the research, their defined fields of experience (live situations, experiences, and behavior was observed when they were in informal knowledge of the children), it became evident that the conversations with educators and with the other children, with children's knowledge of their own body is highlighted, as it is participant observation, and with open interviews. explored and experienced by movements, playful activities, expressions, and games. This knowledge is acquired through Through qualitative data analysis, together with the the conscience of the whole body, and the mind - that cannot bibliographic research, a game was built, which was analyzed be separated from the body [2]. in order to verify whether or not it could contribute to the development of laterality in early childhood students. For the According to the National Curriculum Guidelines for development of the game, the participatory design was used Early Childhood Education [3], children's play and activities [10, 11]. It should be noted that, this type of experience design must be observed, recorded, and evaluated, as it is through can arise due to the needs of students, regardless of the area, play that they are able to express themselves, either through thus enriching the development of works and activities and gestures, through the use of their bodies, through always valuing the interactivity between those involved [12]. communication or feelings. In this sense, the school must In addition, as highlighted in [13], the children's participation provide a welcoming and warming environment so that the in the game design allows for the development of skills linked Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). to creative and critical thinking, communication, and among others, are developed by movement, whether through problem-solving. dances, dramatizations, or games [17]. Thus, it is necessary, for its development process, to have a notion of right and left According to [14], when using participatory design, and to know how to situate itself in space and time, to certain techniques can be chosen to develop products that constitute an integral body conscience [18]. provoke positive reactions in users, so that they feel at ease, comfortable, and that they enjoy the experience of using the Laterality can be related to a compass [19], as it is from product. there that the child and/or the adult are located in space and time, perceiving the direction in relation to themselves and After some experiments on paper, students developed a others. [20] already starts from this same principle, stating that digital game and used it in person and online. The game design when the individual recognizes and is oriented both on the left was defined using different possible courses that represented and on the right, he/she manages to establish a relationship levels of difficulty, which were established by the students with the objects that are around him/her. themselves. It is important that the child is stimulated bodily, This paper presents, in section 2: the theoretical especially about laterality, as a good acquisition of it enables foundation of laterality and its contributions to children's learning, especially regarding the writing and orientation of learning. Section 3: describes the methodology used for the letters and numbers (mirroring), enabling good body development of the research, and section 4: details the results development. Both parents and the school must provide obtained with the students' participation in the game project, pleasant environments that encourage movement, so that the addressing their perceptions when using it. Finally, section 5: child explores the space and develops its potential [5, 21, 22], describes some of the conclusions reached with the becoming aware of both sides of the body, both the left and development of this work. the right. II. LATERALITY: REFLEXES IN CHILDREN'S LEARNING The following section describes some aspects regarding The process of valuing Early Childhood Education is the methodology used in the research and the construction of increasingly focusing on understanding the integral the digital game presented. development of children and their different forms of expression, which reveal how they understand the reality III. METHODOLOGICAL PROCEDURES around them. Having good motor control, they can explore the According to [23], this research is established between the outside world, carrying out concrete experiments [15]. Thus, Critical and Constructivist-Interpretive paradigms, mainly due it has become a challenge and a necessity for schools, to the relationship between researchers and the research teachers, and the family to reflect on an appropriate and broad context and the search to understand and explain a dialogue between Early Childhood Education and other areas phenomenon. As already mentioned, the subjects of this of knowledge, with immersion in different learning situations research were children; and, therefore, it was necessary to use [16]. a methodology appropriate to this age group. Children can plan, organize, and analyze the data together with According to Fernández [15], learning occurs through the participating adults [9]. Therefore, the participant research, relation between the organism, the body, intelligence, and the characterized by the involvement of the individuals desire of knowledge. This learning involves different factors, participating in the research, was the most appropriate. Fig. 1 whether they are concepts of space-time, postural, and illustrates the steps that were part of the development and gestural domain. The body becomes explored by discoveries application/validation process of the proposed game. and experiences of itself and with the world; and, therefore, the process is not simple, as it involves psychological, social, For the development of this research, the participation of and biological factors, causing certain qualitative students was foreseen in the definition and elaboration of a transformations [6]. digital game created in the Scratch software [24]. Learning also takes place through body language [7], that After performing various activities and games, in Physical is, through the body in movement, because in this way the Education classes, which stimulated laterality, students, child establishes symbolic relationships, thus building his through Participatory Design [10, 11, 25], developed a thinking. Body language is the first to be developed in computer game, in which they performed movements with the childhood, as movement is an important act to be performed direction arrows of the keyboard. The game aimed to analyze by the child. "The wealth of possibilities of body language how students would move from concrete to abstract thinking. reveals a universe to be experienced, known, enjoyed" [8]. Seeking to align the objectives of the research, the context The conscience of their own body structure is the ability of Early Childhood Education, and the subjects, we opted for of the child and even the adult, under normal conditions, to a design approach in the etymological sense [26]: “The verb recognize the existence of himself and his own body and 'designare' can be translated as 'determining', but it means differentiate it in relation to the environment. The body is more or less: 'to demonstrate'. What is determined is fixed. related to movement, stimulating the knowledge of body parts The design transforms the vague into determined through as a sensory component of the nervous system, responsible for progressive differentiation. Design (designatio) is understood the perception of the occurrence of movement or rest. The in a general and abstract way. Determination through the development of the body's conscience occurs through stimuli, presentation. The science of design corresponds to the science which can be carried out in a playful way, in the form of of determination.”. In addition, as for the design stages, it is games, which play an important role in this process [1, 2]. important to understand it beyond an object and its aesthetics [27]. For [27], the state "design of environments and systems" Various skills, such as balance, notions of space and time, means a human system, the integration between information, inside and outside, body structure, muscle tone, laterality, physical artifacts, and interactions in living, working, leisure The students participating in the research were observed and learning environments. by the researchers during the Informatics and Physical Education classes. The children demonstrated their knowledge through their verbalizations, actions, and drawings. Observations took place once a week, lasting 50 minutes during ten meetings for each class. The next section presents the process that was used to build the game and indicates how early childhood students were involved during the process. IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS As previously described, the digital game, developed with Scratch software, focused on analyzing how students would move from concrete to abstract thinking. The game features courses that involve the directions used in Physical Education classes (forward, backward, right, and left). The students were divided into two spaces. At the first moment of the class, they stayed in the computer lab and received some instructions from the teachers, such as, for example, that the Physical Education and Computer classes would be held together and that they would be called one by one to take a course. The details of the activity were addressed in the space where it took place. Meanwhile, students used iPads and computers to explore games related to the notions Fig. 1. Game development process of laterality, such as mazes. Secondly, in the chosen space, the teachers prepared a course (a path made with ropes) that they With the intention of involving students in the construction should take in whatever way they thought was best - walking, of the game, it was decided to use the participate designing jumping, or running. It is observed that the route (Fig. 2) has process, which implies the effective participation of students orientations from different directions, such as walking in the whole process. According to [14], the participatory forward, left, and right. The route was traced on the ground, design addresses spontaneity, the discussion of better using a rope and objects available at school, and its solutions for the product to be built, and the collaboration construction included the participation of children. between users, always with more effective learning. To explain the qualitative analysis of the research, open interviews and observations with the children were used, through photos, drawings, and video recording. In the view of [9], “there is a need to cross speech or group dialogues with drawings, with photographs… the recording of their activities can favor the expansion and relativization of our adult point of view”. The systematic, critical, and creative observation of children, of games and interactions, as well as the recording made by children and adults (drawings, photographs, reports) made throughout the process at various times, are indispensable conditions to understand how the child appropriates the ways of acting, feeling and thinking culturally. Fig. 2. Example of the route in the Physical Education class Qualitative research of discursive textual analysis "has The orientation was that they should make the route in the been shown to be especially useful in studies in which analysis following way: the beginning was identified by the orange approaches require referrals that are located between solutions object, and the end, by a red object. After the execution, the proposed by content analysis and discourse analysis" [28]. Physical Education teacher asked them to raise their right hand This analysis can be performed through photos, videos, and then their left hand. The beginning and the end were drawings, among other graphic and visual expressions carried out without any problems since all the students who produced by students. It is observed that it is the researcher took the course managed to start in orange and end in red. who defines which is the best instrument to carry out the Regarding the identification of the right hand and the left analysis. hand, some raised it correctly, others did not know which hand was the correct one, and one was in doubt. Thus, in subsequent As previously mentioned, this research is aimed at classes, the Physical Education teacher performed activities students of Early Childhood Education aged between four and and games to reinforce the body's spatial notions, such as six years. It was carried out with two classes with forward, backward, to the right, to the left, under, over, in and approximately 20 students in each one. The definition of the out, with the two participating classes. digital game was carried out by the educators and students of these classes, through drawings and discussions [10, 11]. It should be noted that the students of Early Childhood Education went through several challenges related to the body to later use the game. The game definition steps are shown The children chose the path illustrated by Fig. 4 as Level below: 1 because it presents an easier path to be taken and without major variations in direction. They also claimed that it would  The students from both classes drew the paths of the take less time to travel. digital game; and, subsequently, there was a vote to choose the courses that would be part of the game.  In addition to the routes, they choose the characters that would be included in the game (a dog and a dog bowl).  The technology teacher coded the game for students to play it. Fig. 4. Level 1  Finally, the students played the digital game and used the same directions already used in physical education It is noteworthy that the participating children had not yet classes - forward, backward, to the right and to the left. appropriated the concepts of proportion; so, for them, the time To design the game, students were organized into four to travel the route was not related to the distance itself, but to groups, and it was explained to them that the teacher would the number of times the directions of the path to be traveled create a digital game for them, making it clear that they would by the dog changed. also be part of this process. Thus, they began to reflect on The path illustrated by Fig. 5 was chosen as Level 2 which routes would be covered and which character would be because it has a vertical path, different from the first and with used in the game. Then, the students chose a dog as the main greater variation of directions, in addition to containing two character, who should follow the path defined by the game to more stretches than the previous one. feed. The choice for this character is due to the fact that the students were reading the book “The Umbrella” (written and illustrated by Dieter Schubert and Ingrid Schubert), whose story has as main focus a dog that finds a red umbrella and is taken on a journey of many adventures and emotions. After these definitions with the students, the teachers drew an example route (Fig. 3), where they included the chosen Fig. 5. Level 2 character, the feed bowl at the end, and some obstacles in the middle of the route, which should be overcome by the dog. Level 3, as shown in Fig. 6, is much more complex than the previous levels. The children reported that it would be more difficult to walk because it is bigger and has more movements in different directions. Fig. 3. Example path: created by the teachers The researchers handed out a sheet and a marker pen to each child, and each drew the route that they found interesting Fig. 6. Level 3 for the dog to follow until it found the food. This activity was based on the theory of [29], aligned with other proposals [10, Level 4 (Fig. 7) created a discussion among students, as 11, 25] which affirm that it is important to use prototyping and some thought that it would be the most difficult level, as it to design several times what the user wants, either in the presents the great variation in direction and displacement; but, programming part or for an object. The same authors argue after several conversations, it ended up being the chosen route. that techniques such as brainstorming, drawing, and The children thought about placing obstacles, represented by prototyping on paper can be used to design with children [10, points in the drawing, but then they found it better to remove 11]. Regardless of how the interactive product looks, it is them, as this level of the game already had a long way to go. important to have drafts, prototypes, and models in order to understand the user's desire well, in addition to understanding “why” and “how” the product will be designed [29]. After the design of all the courses, these were shown to the students, who chose the drawings, called Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, Level 5, Level 6, and Level 7, as shown in Figures 4 to 10. These levels were part of the game that was created in Scratch, where, at each level, the child moves to the Fig. 7. Level 4 next one, which is more difficult than the previous one, and so on until reaching the last level. The route illustrated by Fig. 8 was chosen as Level 5, as it and the demonstrated role by students during the process of presented less difficulty in moving, but more movements in creating the digital game. several directions than the other two remaining levels. In the computer lab, the two classes got to know the digital game and played it on computers. The students received the original drawings so that they could compare them with the game; and the children's reaction to seeing what they had planned was of the utmost importance. Several comments were said: “Look! It's my drawing!”, “Teacher, this is very easy”, “We could have made a game more difficult”, “Teacher, even the color of my drawing is the same”. It was noticed, by the students' speech, that they identified with the Fig. 8. Level 5 game and established relationships with what they had previously produced. Level 6 (Fig. 9) also has a vertical path, like Level 2. Regarding the results related to laterality, it should be However, it has a wide variety of directions and is an noted that, of the 37 participating students, 35 managed to extensive path, as argued by the students participating in the complete all the routes of the game, with no doubt about which research. movement they should perform. Fig. 11 outlines some of the paths taken by students in the digital game. Fig. 9. Level 6 Level 7 (Fig. 10) created controversy together with Level 4, as students considered both difficult. It presents various displacement and with a change of direction along the route. Fig. 11. Digital Game For each stage of the game, all students were observed by the researchers, and videos were recorded during the stages. The duration of each activity depended on the pace of each Fig. 10. Level 7 student, the number of students, and the difficulties Another aspect that needs to be considered, in relation to encountered, whether cognitive or motor. the diagrams in Figures 3 to 9, is that: the course, the character The next section describes some conclusions obtained (dog), and the bone/feed bowl drawn at the end of the path are with the development of the game and with the observations all authorial elements of the students. made through the described methodological procedures. According to [14], there are three motivations that are V. CONCLUSIONS necessary for participatory design: the participation of the user in the development of the project; the identification and As already described, the understanding of laterality is documentation, at the beginning of the project, of the user essential, as it is from there that the child and/or the adult are experience goals and specific usability; the interaction in space and time, perceiving the direction in relation to between the user and the programmer. Thus, the entire process themselves and others. In this way, the integration between the of elaborating the digital game was carried out. The children Physical Education and Informatics disciplines allowed us to talked to the educators about their ideas of how the dog's path combine physical activities to develop laterality with a digital to the feed bowl should be drawn, as shown by the first game. Initially, it was thought that teachers could build the motivation of participation design; then, they designed the game and then present it to students. However, as the research courses, leaving the game documentation registered, progressed, it was realized that student participation would be following the second motivation; and, finally, they showed essential. their drawings to the teachers, explaining how it would be the It is interesting to highlight some of the actions that this best way to turn them into games, as well as establishing the research provided to Early Childhood Education students: (i) third motivation of participatory design. exploring relationships and everyday practices using concrete It is important to note that it was essential to follow these elements; (ii) building associations and activities, as it is in motivations for participation design, as this influenced the childhood that the child begins to establish his first decisions made in the game design. As stated in [30, 31, 32], relationships and representations from the elements that it is through play that the child learns and has fun. In the case surround him (people and objects); (iii) become familiar with of this paper, it was decided to present the game levels using the structure of the BNCC, through practices and experiences the graphic representations produced by the children, and not that favor the construction of meanings about themselves, the the digital game screens themselves, as it is believed that the world around them and their peers. greatest contribution of the work is precisely in the authorship The developed game served as a resource of pedagogical [22] M. H. B. Duzzi, S. D. Rodrigues e S. M Ciasca, “Percepção de support for Physical Education classes, providing the professores sobre a relação entre desenvolvimento das habilidades psicomotoras e aquisição da escrita”. Rev. 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