Banca de DEFESA: LIDIANE BEATRIZ RIBEIRO SOUSA DA SILVA

PERFORMANCE OF EXECUTIVE FUNCTIONS IN CHILDREN IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL I: STUDY WITH INTERVENTION OF UNPLUGED COMPUTATIONAL THINKING ACTIVITY

Computational Thinking; Unplugged Activities; Executive Functions; Elementary School I

The dissertation presented debate about the importance of stimulating, from the Early Years of Elementary Education, skills such as logical reasoning and problem-solving, essential to citizens of the 21st century, as they stimulate the development of Executive Functions important for this audience, mainly, in a world that is increasingly turned to technology, we should think strategies to facilitate and optimize the processes and solve problems. Children who are new users and future developers should learn from an early age skills in teamwork, leadership, decision-making, critical thinking, adaptability and coping with their own emotions through the technologies available in school, exploring the possibilities and experiencing self-discovery for the development of logical reasoning. In this sense, the general objective is to analyze whether unplugged Computational Thinking can contribute to the performance of Executive Functions. To this goal, specific goals for the research have been listed, which are: a) Develop Cognitive Training and Sessions of Computational Thinking Activities that point to the development of Executive Functions; b) Compare and evaluate the performance, pre- and post-test, of the executive functions of inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility in children subjected to the activity of Computer Thinking unplugged; and c) Produce an e-book with the systematization of PC activities related to their pillars to executive roles and their skills as a method for the cognitional development of children. The research will be of an applied nature with a quali-quanti approach if it is based on the principles of action research and is guided by the steps indicated in the work of Gil (2017), being carried out, at first, a study of works on Computational Thinking (BRACKMANN, 2017 and WING, 2006), Unplugged Computing (BRACKMANN, 2017 and BELL et al., 2015) and Executive Function (DIAMOND, 2013 e DIAS; SEABRA, 2013) based on the studies carried out, pre- and post-tests were applied to analyze the performance of Executive Functions in students of the 3rd year of Elementary School I (children aged between 8-9 years), from a municipal public school, located in Parnamirim/ RN, based on the application of cognitive training activities and unplugged computational thinking. The systematization of the process resulted in the production of an e-book that brings together activities from the book “Computer Science Unplugged” written by Tim Bell, Ian H. Witten and Mike Fellows. Thus, this work points to the importance of developing strategies for teaching computational thinking in the face of the diversity of educational realities in Brazil and to develop logical reasoning and problem-solving in children.