In the hive: Designing for emergence when teaching complex systems in early childhood

This Design-Based Research study explores the iterative design decisions for a participatory simulation created to teach children in grades K–2 about complex biological systems. In this simulation, children assumed the role of honeybees, whose job was to collect nectar from flowers and bring it back to a hive, learning about the social nature of honeybee colonies (e.g., the need for honeybees to communicate the location of nectar via a “waggle dance”). As we designed the simulation, we iteratively analyzed the ways that children in a range of low-tech and high-tech conditions engaged in creating a nonverbal system of communication. Findings suggest that the spatial layout of the simulation directly influenced the game’s difficulty levels and subsequently impacted both the nonverbal communication and the learning outcomes of the activity. This paper presents the iterative design cycles and outlines implications for studies seeking to design participatory simulations for young children.