Background: The world is moving towards digitalization and intelligence. Programming has become an essential development competency. Even though many countries are currently making great efforts to expand programming education, the programming education in these countries shows an imbalance in geographical and gender dimensions. We found that few…

Computational thinking (CT) competency is essential for K-12 students in the digital societies. Understanding the relationship between students' CT and relevant factors contributes to implementing and improving CT education. Most previous studies investigated the effect of demographic or attitudinal factors on CT performance; whereas few research…

Programming self-efficacy plays an important role in promoting interest in programming education among teenagers. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine to what extent family socioeconomic status, programming learning, programming teaching, and gender influence programming self-efficacy. A total of 851 upper-secondary-school students…

As one of the core skills of the 21st century, computational thinking has received increasing attention from educators and researchers. Although some research has been conducted on computational thinking, few studies examined the impact of learning activities on students' computation thinking skills from the perspective of cognitive development.…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being deeply integrated into human society. In the future, human collaboration with AI is inevitable. Therefore, exploring the attitudes of future workers--represented by current K-12 children--towards AI has become crucial. Robots stand as typical representatives of AI. Robot programming education is an important…

Computational thinking (CT) has attracted global research attention. However, the relationship between CT education and later aspirations in computing careers was less explored, and less attention was paid to understanding the intermediary role of computational identity. Based on social cognitive career theory, this study examined the…

Scholars believe that computational thinking is one of the essential competencies of the 21st century and computer programming courses have been recognized as a potential means of fostering students' computational thinking. In tradition instruction, PFCT (problem identification, flow definition, coding, and testing) is a commonly adopted procedure…