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In this study, we investigated the debugging process that early childhood preservice teachers used during block-based programing. Its purpose was to provide insights into how to prepare early childhood teachers to integrate computer science into instruction. This study reports the types of errors that early childhood preservice teachers commonly ma...
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Men continue to outnumber women in many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics fields, particularly technical fields such as engineering and computer science. Educational interventions aimed at addressing the gender disparity between men and women have generally focused on increasing the interest of girls and women during high school and...
Citations
... The lack of attention to debugging was especially surprising. Debugging plays a critical role in the research on early childhood computer science education (Chou, 2020;Govind et al., 2020;Hassenfeld & Bers, 2020;Kim et al., 2018). As a result, we wondered to what extent the guiding powerful ideas framework may have influenced children's learning opportunities beyond the explicit or noticeably implicit presence of ideas in the written documents. ...
Despite a growing movement towards expanding computer science education in PreK‐12, gaps in computing opportunities along lines of race, ethnicity, class, and gender have widened. Emergent theories and practices related to culturally responsive computing show promise in addressing this gap; however, little is known about engaging Black, Latinx, and Indigenous preschoolers in computer science. In this paper, we utilized qualitative content analyses to explore how an early childhood computer science curriculum created opportunities for young Black and Latinx preschoolers to develop computational thinking skills while engaging in culturally responsive computing. Overwhelmingly, we found the curriculum, co‐developed with educators and caregivers, emphasized unplugged tools and coding activities to support computational thinking. These unplugged opportunities positioned children as innovators with technology and technosocial change agents, in developmentally‐appropriate, play‐based ways. Findings demonstrate a need to emphasize the value of unplugged tools and coding activities in order to support computational thinking and align the goals of culturally responsive computing with the unique needs of young children. We discuss implications for a theory of culturally responsive computing specifically for early childhood education.
... Initial testing will likely show that the blinking works once with A+B triggers, emphasizing the important principle of evaluation in programming. If programming outcomes do not meet intentions, debugging is essential to identify and correct flaws in code (Kim et al., 2018). Makecode's step-by-step debugger and verbalizing the program's flow and actions can aid the process (Heikkilä and Mannila, 2018). ...
Slideshow presentation of the conference paper.
Slides published at repository: https://pub.ph-noe.ac.at/id/eprint/24/
... Further, robot programming allows kinesthetic and intellectual experiences (Fegely & Tang, 2022;Han, 2013;Zhang et al., 2021) as students create, test, and refine abstract algorithmic sequences to control robot behavior based on a predetermined goal. Immediate visual feedback that the robot provides serves as input to inform troubleshooting and debugging of programs (Kim et al., 2018. Integrating robots into the classroom is a promising social constructivist approach to promote knowledge construction and learning by doing (Harel & Papert, 1991;Papert, 1980). ...
... It was also noticeable that lessons entailed observing or playing with robots, but not necessarily assembling or programming them. Such use of robots misses out on STEM learning affordances (Kim et al., 2015) because it deprives students from engaging in engineering design practices (Yuan et al., 2022), using computer science programming concepts, and debugging of errors during assembly and programming (Kim et al., 2018;. Having assembled and programmed various robots themselves during the monthlong module, it is possible that participants felt that the time available in the classroom was a constraint, and therefore, they decided to not include student-driven robot assembly and programming. ...
Science teachers have been urged to use emerging technologies, such as robots, in ways that empower K-12 students as active participants responsible for their learning and knowledge development within the scientific domain. And yet, little is known about whether the use of robots effectively supports students’ epistemic agency in science learning. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate to what extent elementary preservice teachers use educational robots in ways that promote epistemic agency in science lessons. Seven data sources were gathered for this study: individual reflections about lesson planning and lesson design, team reflection about teaching with robots, robotics-enhanced science lessons, posters, video-recorded presentations about designed lessons, and participant interview. A framework of epistemic practices for science inquiry was adopted to analyze the data followed by qualitative thematic analysis. Results indicate that the use of robots in science lessons promotes content assimilation rather than self-driven inquiry, robot movement rather than evidence drives science explanations, science activities with robots are situated in a social vacuum, and robot assembly and programming are underutilized in the lessons. Implications for preservice science teacher education and future research are discussed.
... Initial testing will likely show that the blinking works once with A+B triggers, emphasizing the important principle of evaluation in programming. If programming outcomes do not meet intentions, debugging is essential to identify and correct flaws in code (Kim et al., 2018). Makecode's step-by-step debugger and verbalizing the program's flow and actions can aid the process (Heikkilä and Mannila, 2018). ...
... Program debugging is defined as a process of finding faults in programs and fixing them [30]. It typically involves three phases: program inspection, fault localization, and bug fixing [3]. ...
... For example, a systematic literature review by Dong et al. (2023) reported that a computational thinking (CT) training can improve the confidence and attitudes of PSTs towards teaching CS. However, research has also reported that PSTs struggle with identifying variables, defining conditions, and identifying errors when learning CS concepts (Kim et al., 2015(Kim et al., , 2018. Ortiz et al. (2015) reported that 12% of their PST participants still did not feel prepared to integrate CS instruction into their teaching after participating in training, having noted a sense of intimidation with the abstract math concepts. ...
... Despite these successes, other studies have uncovered challenges in teaching CS concepts to PSTs. Commonly, the literature has noted that PSTs have issues with programming concepts like identifying variables, defining conditions, and identifying errors (Ahmadzadeh et al., 2007;Kim et al., 2015Kim et al., , 2018. Furthermore, PSTs have indicated that they feel intimidated by the abstract math competencies necessary to effectively teach programming (Ortiz et al., 2015). ...
... Quantitative results indicated that PSTs' comprehension of programming concepts increased significantly, and qualitative findings indicated that the problem-based curriculum aided the PSTs' learning. While there are numerous successes reported in the literature, research by Kim et al., (2015Kim et al., ( , 2018 has reported that even with the physical manipulatives of educational robotics, PSTs struggle with identifying variables, defining conditions, and identifying errors. In summary, although there is a paucity of research on the use of robotics to teach PSTs programming concepts, these studies suggest that PSTs may benefit from robotics instruction for improving their CS knowledge to better prepare them for the field. ...
Computer science teaching standards for grades K-8 have been implemented in nearly all U.S. states, and the core subject area teachers (e.g., math, science, English, social studies) have been asked to integrate these standards into their instruction. Thus, it is important that K-8 pre-service teachers of all subjects are both prepared and motivated to teach computer science concepts—such as programming—upon entering the field. However, little is known about how pre-service teachers learn and retain programming knowledge or obtain and sustain their motivation related to programming. Maker-focused educational robotics activities have the potential to both reduce abstract cognitive load and work as motivational tools for STEM learning. The purpose of this study was to examine pre-service teachers’ motivational persistence and retention of programming concepts after learning with educational robotics through maker-focused computer science activities. Hands-on maker robotics programming activities were used to teach and motivate pre-service teachers. This quantitative study utilized repeated measures through pre-, post-, and 6-month follow-up surveys and tests. The findings indicated the pre-service teachers’ programming comprehension gains exhibited on the posttest deteriorated substantially to near-baseline levels within 6 months of instruction. Conversely, pre-service teachers’ motivation related to programming continued to rise after the instruction had concluded. Both the retention of comprehension of programming concepts and motivational persistence findings imply that educator preparation providers should integrate programming instruction throughout their pre-service teacher curricula and support curricular initiatives that call for the integration of computer science instruction across pre-service teacher methods courses to reinforce computer science learning.
... using different techniques, including product and portfolio evaluation (Lin, 2012), computer screen recording (Kim et al., 2018), reflection reports (Choi, 2013) and approaches that provide quantitative data such as course activity evaluations and questionnaires (Kaila et al., 2018). In addition to these techniques, CT skills or course achievement tests (Tran, 2019;Zapata-Cáceres et al., 2020), certain scales relating to CT skills (Gülbahar, Kert, & Kalelio glu, 2019;Korkmaz et al., 2015), and psychometric-based CT scales (Román-González et al., 2017;Tsai et al., 2019) are also available to measure the CT perceptions of students. ...
Background
Today, computational thinking (CT), which is considered to be a form of literacy, has taken its place in the ICT curriculum of many countries at the K‐12 level. Therefore, there is a need for more evidence with regards to a theoretical and practical understanding of CT skills’ development of K‐12 students.
Objectives
The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of an unplugged coding course on primary school students’ development of CT skills, differences in their CT skills in terms of socio‐demographics such as gender, computer ownership, daily computer use, and home Internet access, and the relationship between their CT and 21st century skills.
Methods
The research was based a quasi‐experimental design with one‐group pretest‐posttest with follow‐up. The CT skills of 212 third and fourth grade students at a public primary school of Turkey were measured with a CT Skills Test before, after, and about ten weeks following having attended an unplugged coding course.
Results and Conclusions
The results of the study showed that the unplugged coding course statistically significantly improved the participants’ CT skills, specifically in algorithmic design, abstraction, evaluation, decomposition, and generalization. Moreover, the findings indicated that primary school students’ CT skills were not associated with their socio‐demographics. In addition, the students’ CT skills were found to be positively and statistically significantly correlated with their collaboration and communication skills.
Implications
This study contributes to understanding of the effects of unplugged activities on the development of primary school students’ CT skills, which is beneficial to teaching practices for CT skills in the primary education.
... In the specific context of debugging, some scholarship has documented social interaction between teachers and students during debugging (e.g., DeLiema et al., 2022;Flood et al., 2018;Hassenfeld & Bers, 2020;Heikkilä & Mannila, 2018;Hennessey Elliott et al., 2022;Silvis et al., 2022), but this work attends to the public record captured on camera and audio recordings, not teachers' personal reflections. In addition, researchers have examined how new CS instructors debug code on their own (Kim et al., 2018;Vasconcelos et al., 2020), studies that are key to informing teacher professional development but do not directly examine day-to-day debugging support. On the other hand, at least one workshop focused on how teachers experience the process of teaching debugging was held at an annual CS education research conference (Lewis & Gregg, 2016). ...
This paper articulates an approach to incorporating instructor feedback in design-based research. Throughout the process of designing and implementing curriculum to support middle school students’ debugging practices in a summer computer science workshop, our research and practice team utilized instructor-generated conjecture maps as boundary objects, providing insight into the instructors’ reflections on their classroom teaching. We develop an analytic tool for categorizing instructors’ reflections on their conjecture maps, attending specifically to how instructors push back on design choices, whether by envisioning new mediating processes, introducing new connections, discussing new design features, articulating confusion/uncertainty, and/or presenting hopes and predictions. The tool is then applied to seven instructors’ daily reflections over the course of four weeks of instruction, focused on three conjecture maps. Overall, the paper documents a range of tensions that instructors encounter when aiming to provide sustained debugging support to students and introduces a tool for understanding the detailed ways that instructors critique design conjectures.
... However, program debugging is a challenging task for novices (Falloon, 2016;Kim et al., 2018) for three reasons: poor student performance in domain knowledge and strategic knowledge, huge cognitive burdens induced by debugging learning, and the lack of emphasis on program debugging as a separate teaching practice in K-12 CT education. ...
... Domain knowledge refers to knowledge of the relevant concepts, constructs, relations and rules of the underlying programming language (Li et al., 2019). Novices typically develop a shallow understanding of basic concepts, which increases the difficulty of interpreting the executed results of specific sets of commands (Pea, 1986), inferring error causes (Fitzgerald et al., 2010;Kim et al., 2018) and correcting errors. Strategic knowledge refers to knowledge of debugging methods, which can guide novices to plan effective problem-solving solutions (Li et al., 2019). ...
Reintroducing computer science (CS) education in K-12 schools to promote computational thinking (CT) has attracted significant attention among scholars and educators. Among the several essential components included in CS and CT education, program debugging is an indispensable skill. However, debugging teaching has often been overlooked in K-12 contexts, and relevant empirical studies are lacking in the literature. Moreover, novices generally have poor performance in domain knowledge and strategic knowledge concerning debugging. They also consistently experience a high cognitive burden in debugging learning. To address these gaps, we developed a flipped systematic debugging approach combined with a systematic debugging process (SDP) and the modeling method. A quasi-experimental study was conducted to explore the effectiveness of this flipped systematic debugging approach, in which 83 fifth-grade students attended the flipped debugging training lessons with the SDP-modeling method, and 75 fifth-grade students attended the unassisted flipped debugging training lessons without the SDP-modeling method. The results indicated that flipped de-bugging training using the SDP-modeling method improved students' debugging skills. The results from the questionnaire showed that the proposed teaching approach increased the students' investment in germane cognitive load by promoting schema construction. It also helped reduce students' intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load in learning.
... The intervention's duration across the studies was almost equally divided between less than or equal to a month (17 out of 39 studies, 43.59%) and more than a month (22 out of 39 studies, 56.41%). The rationale behind the most popular durations is that these studies were conducted in classroom experiments and as conditional learning. For example, Kim et. al. (2018) conducted their experiments in a course offered at a university where it took 3 weeks based on a robotics module. A total of four different research methodologies were adopted in the studies, the two most popular being mixed methods (35.89%) and questionnaires or surveys (35.89%). Although mixed methods can be daunting and time-consumin ...
... They targeted learning because the authors investigated the effectiveness of R-STEM learning activities (Castro et al., 2018;Convertini, 2021;Konijn & Hoorn, 2020;Ma et al., 2020) and conceptual knowledge of STEM disciplines (Barak & Assal, 2018;Gomoll et al., 2017;Jaipal-Jamani & Angeli 2017). They targeted transferable skills because they require learners to develop individual competencies in STEM skills (Kim et al., 2018;McDonald & Howell, 2012;Sullivan & Bers, 2016) and to master STEM in actual competition-related skills (Chiang et al., 2020;Hennessy Elliott, 2020). ...
Fostering students’ competence in applying interdisciplinary knowledge to solve problems has been recognized as an important and challenging issue globally. This is why STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) education has been emphasized at all levels in schools. Meanwhile, the use of robotics has played an important role in STEM learning design. The purpose of this study was to fill a gap in the current review of research on Robotics-based STEM (R-STEM) education by systematically reviewing existing research in this area. This systematic review examined the role of robotics and research trends in STEM education. A total of 39 articles published between 2012 and 2021 were analyzed. The review indicated that R-STEM education studies were mostly conducted in the United States and mainly in K-12 schools. Learner and teacher perceptions were the most popular research focus in these studies which applied robots. LEGO was the most used tool to accomplish the learning objectives. In terms of application, Technology (programming) was the predominant robotics-based STEM discipline in the R-STEM studies. Moreover, project-based learning (PBL) was the most frequently employed learning strategy in robotics-related STEM research. In addition, STEM learning and transferable skills were the most popular educational goals when applying robotics. Based on the findings, several implications and recommendations to researchers and practitioners are proposed.
