Computational Thinking (CT) has evolved as an essential competency for K-12 students, and programming practices are recognized as the key way to facilitate CT development. However, most studies of CT development in middle graders have focused on visual programming, lacking evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of Python programming. Therefore,…

Background: As one of the mainstream forms of programming education, educational robotics (ER) have been a crucial way to develop K-12 students' programming ability. Objectives: The purpose of this study is to clarify the content of programming ability, to verify the effectiveness of ER as a teaching method to improve students' programming…

The effective teaching of the concept of programming, where critical thinking is an important factor, is not so easy in secondary education. New teaching approaches, including, game-based learning, may provide a solution due to their inclusion of more fun and diverse activities but they still lack the active participation of the students in the…

In this paper, the researchers have tried to solve one of the didactic tasks of an educational institution - the formation of a student's thinking, the development of their algorithmic style of thinking and intelligence. Since an important component of human intellectual development is precisely algorithmic thinking, learning to solve standard…

The focus on Computer Science Education at the K-12 level has been increasingly highlighted due to today's need for a populace with computational thinking skills, in addition to the expansion of careers related to computing and computer science. Programming helps facilitate students' examination of the nature of a problem and helps students to…

Teachers around the world have started teaching programming at the K-9 level, some due to the formal introduction of programming in the national curriculum, others without such pressure and on their own initiative. In this study, we attempted to understand which skills -- both CT-related and general -- are developed among pupils in the process of…

Life-long learning, including development of professional competence, is an essential paradigm of the 21st century. The goal of this research is to analyse the quality and efficiency of the educators' professional competence enhancement programme dubbed "Fundamentals of Programming in Visual Programming Environment Scratch" in accordance…

The aim of this study is to investigate the computational thinking skills of secondary school students and their perceived self-efficacy related to block-based programming. The study group consists of 464 students attending 5, 6, 7, and 8 grades in a province located in the Central Anatolia region, Turkey. Data were collected by Computational…

As new introductory block-based coding applications for young students to learn basic computer science concepts, such as, loops and conditionals, continue to increase in popularity, it is necessary to consider the best method of teaching students these skills. Many of these products continue to exhibit programmatic misconceptions of these concepts…

This research is part of a larger three-year study investigating the impact of humanoid robots on students' learning and engagement. In this case study, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students worked with a humanoid robot to develop, in parallel, both their programming skills and their understanding of the traditional Narungga language and culture.…

Two studies were conducted to examine the use of grounded embodied pedagogy, construction of Imaginary Worlds (Study 1), and context of instructional materials (Study 2) for developing learners' Computational Thinking (CT) Skills and Concept knowledge during the construction of digital artifacts using Scratch, a block-based programming…