Despite mixed results in research on student learning from drawing in science, there is growing interest in the potential for this visual mode, in tandem with other modes, to enact and enable student reasoning in this subject. Building on current research in this field, and using a micro‐ethnographic approach informed by socio‐semiotic perspectives, we aimed to identify how and why student drawing can contribute to student reasoning and learning. In our study, secondary school students were challenged to explore and collaboratively create explanatory representations of phenomena including through drawing. Data were generated using multiple wall‐ and ceiling‐mounted cameras capable of continuously tracking groups of students negotiating these representational challenges. Our analysis proceeded through active and iterative viewing of the extensive video record, and the identification of themes to establish possible relationships between drawing and reasoning. Through this process, we (a) identify multiple necessary conditions and varied opportunities for student drawing to enact and enable reasoning, and (b) extend current understandings of how the particular affordances of this mode interact with these conditions to contribute to student learning in science.

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This literature-based article explores key trends in the integration of digital technologies in education and aims to highlight issues and challenges in the relationship between technology, pedagogy and early years’ education practices. The article explores how technology, teacher training initiatives and productive play-based pedagogy could be used to improve digital literacy outcomes for early childhood learners. While situated within the Australian context, more global literature is also reviewed to provide an international perspective. This review of trends in the integration of digital technologies in education is timely due to the national and international focus on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) education, arguably for economic sustainability and the quality standards expected in early childhood education. The role of digital technologies in early childhood is increasingly discussed and negotiated in learning centres. Educators are wanting support in understanding how young children can be creators of technology rather than simply being consumers of digital products.

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We currently live in digital times, with educators increasingly coming to realise the need to prepare students to productively participate in such a coding-infused society. Computational Th inking (CT) has emerged as an essential skill in this regard. As with any new skill, the ways it is theorised and practiced vary greatly. In this paper, we argue for the importance of Unplugged Programming (UP) as a hands-on and practical approach to teaching and learning, which emphasises embodied and distributed cognition. UP has the potential to open up what it means to enact CT in the classroom when computational devices are put to the side. Preparing for the issues of the future is a matter of reconnecting with the past, in particular with ideas such as epistemological pluralism. By appreciating the diversity of ways that students can undertake CT and teachers can support them in doing so – from coding with digital devices to pencil-and-paper programming – we can work to make the classroom a place in which students can explore and undertake CT in rich and diverse ways.

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