Background: Teaching programming and computational thinking is becoming a major issue in many education systems. Numerous approaches are possible, but very few studies compare these different ways of implementing programming and computational thinking learning. Objectives: We compared three ways of teaching programming and computational thinking…

The aim of this study was to determine how 5-year-old children identified the functional relationship of correspondence, and whether or not they generalized when working on a task that involved programmable robots. We conducted this study with 15 children (9 girls and 6 boys) in their last year of preschool education. The study was designed around…

Educational technologists and practitioners have made substantial strides in developing affordable digital and tangible resources to support both formal and informal computer science instruction. However, there is a lack of research on practice-based assignments, such as Internet of Things (IoT) projects, that allow undergraduate students to…

Background: In the digital age, fostering young children's computational thinking (CT) and executive functions (EFs) through programming has emerged as a significant research issue. While unplugged programming activities are commonly adopted in preschools, robot programming activities have recently gained attention for the potential to enhance…

In the last two decades, computational thinking has gained wide relevance in international educational systems. The inclusion of this new type of thinking poses educational challenges with some underlying research questions that need to be answered to meet these challenges with quality. Thus, this study focuses on analyzing the difficulties that…

During a relatively short period of time, programming has been implemented in the national curriculum of the compulsory school in Sweden. Since 2018, programming is a new content in the technology subject and the research field has discussed some of the challenges teachers and students, who generally have little experiences of programming, face…

Robotics has emerged as a popular interdisciplinary pedagogical approach in the field of education to teach children STEM concepts. By providing playful learning experiences, the use of robots engages children in an active learning process, making it an effective tool to promote their targeted knowledge, skills, and disposition towards STEM,…

Background: Robot programming can simultaneously cultivate learners' computational thinking (CT) and spatial thinking (ST). However, there is a noticeable gap in research focusing on the micro-level development patterns of learners' CT and ST and their interconnections. Objectives: This study aims to uncover the intricate development patterns and…

There is a growing body of knowledge on coding and computational thinking for young students in mathematics education, and several attempts to lower the threshold for learning programming and programming languages have been reported. This study focuses on the challenges of teaching programming in a linguistically heterogeneous classroom by…

Learning basic concepts of programming resulting in a development on computational thinking (CT) can be reached by means of digital programming environments. As a counterpart, the application of unplugged programming activities seems also to have promising potential regarding the impact on CT. The main characteristic of unplugged programming is…

Background: As highly interactive hands-on learning tools, robots can inspire new generations of mathematics students. However, to date, no comprehensive systematic reviews have been conducted on robot-assisted mathematics education from K-12 through higher education. Hence, it is important to explore the research evidence of robot-assisted…

Teaching robotics with the robot operating system (ROS) is valuable for instating good programming practices but requires significant setup steps from the learner. Providing a ready-made ROS learning environment over the web can make robotics more accessible; however, most of the previous remote labs have abstracted the authentic ROS developer…

Geometric concepts are fundamental to early geometry education, and developmentally appropriate practices are crucial for teaching them to young children. Robotic coding is an effective tool in many areas of early mathematics and has significant potential in teaching geometric concepts. This study aimed to test the impact of a research-based…

With the growing popularity of computational thinking (CT) classes in K-12 schools, it is important to investigate public perceptions of these initiatives. Analyzing public discussions and opinions provides valuable insights that can inform future educational policies and reforms. In this paper, we collected questions and answers related to CT…

Robotics education has received widespread attention in K-12 education. Studies have pointed out that in robotics courses, learners face challenges in learning abstract content, such as constructing a robot with a good structure and writing programs to drive a robot to complete specific learning tasks. The present study proposed the embodied…