Purpose: Previous research has demonstrated that television has the potential to influence youth behaviors, but little evidence exists on how television depicts physical activity (PA), an important public health priority for youth. This mixed-methods study investigated depictions of television characters' participation in PA in the top 25 favorite…

As Japanese Ministry of Education educational mandates for implementation by 2020 press on public school administrators, teachers, students, and communities, the Sustainable Programming Education proposes strategies for addressing English and programming education curricula in the elementary and middle schools. Sustainability resides in the…

An ongoing challenge of 21st century learning is ensuring everyone has the requisite skills to participate in a digital, knowledge-based economy. Once an anathema to parents and teachers, digital games are increasingly at the forefront of conversations about ways to address student engagement and provoke challenges to media pedagogies. While…

Pair programming (PP) is a useful approach to fostering computational thinking for young students. However, there are many factors impacting on the effectiveness of PP. The period of switching roles between the driver and the navigator is often ignored by researchers. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the impact of the switching period on PP.…

Data collected from partners in a dyadic instructional setting are, by definition, not statistically independent. As a consequence, conventional parametric statistical analyses of change and influence carry considerable risk of bias. In this article, we illustrate a strategy to overcome this obstacle: the longitudinal actor-partner interdependence…

The introduction of computer programming in K-12 has become mainstream in the last years, as countries around the world are making coding part of their curriculum. Nevertheless, there is a lack of empirical studies that investigate how learning to program at an early age affects other school subjects. In this regard, this paper compares three…

Pair programming is a strategy that grew out of industry and has shown promise for performance and retention in computer programming courses at universities and in industry. In this study, we examine whether pair programming is effective in K-12, what it is effective for, and how partners influence each other. We collected the data from 320 middle…

The robotics field represents the integration of multiple facets of computer science and engineering. Robotics-based activities have been shown to encourage K-12 students to consider careers in computing and have even been adopted as part of core computer-science curriculum at a number of universities. Unfortunately, for students with visual…

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship of middle school students' perceptions of the ideal science student to their problem solving activity and conceptual understanding in the applied science area of robotics. Twenty-six 11 and 12 year-olds (22 boys) attending a summer camp for academically advanced students participated in the…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate student understanding and application of computational thinking patterns to novel situations. Over 500 students, who had just designed and programmed a Frogger-style game using the AgentSheets platform, responded to a newly developed video-prompt survey instrument administered in the Fall 2010 semester.…

This study investigates differences between collaboration methods in two summer enrichment classes for students entering the sixth grade. In one treatment, students used pair programming. In the other treatment, students engaged in frequent collaboration, but worked on their own computer. Students in the two treatments did not differ significantly…

This article describes an outreach program to broaden participation in computing to include more students with visual impairments. The precollege workshops target students in grades 7-12 and engage students with robotics programming. The use of robotics at the precollege level has become popular in part due to the availability of Lego Mindstorm…

Several studies have demonstrated that games have been effectively used as an instructional strategy to motivate and engage students. This paper presents the use of the process of game development as an instructional strategy to promote higher order thinking skills. An analysis of the various aspects of game development including graphics,…