The concept, development and assessment of computational thinking have increasingly become the focus of research in recent years. Most of this type of research focuses on older children or adults. Preschool age is a sensitive period when many skills develop intensively, so the development of computational thinking skills can already begin at this…

The aim of this research is to determine the effects of Scratch and Alice tools and programming teaching practices on student engagement, reflective thinking and problem-solving skills and computational thinking (CT) comparatively. A quasi-experimental design was used in the research and patterns with pretest-posttest control group were chosen for…

This study investigated young children's computational thinking (CT) development by integrating ScratchJr into a programming curriculum. Twelve third graders (six males and six females) voluntarily participated in an experiment-based computer class conducted at a public elementary school in Taiwan. This study adopted a case study methodology to…

In this research, we explore the potential for computational thinking (CT) to benefit the spatial reasoning abilities of thirty-three middle-school students (aged 11-13) in grades 6 and 7. There is an increasing focus on the explicit development of spatial reasoning throughout the mathematics curriculum, such as geometry, as students' success in…

In this paper we consider implications of the current world-wide inclusion of computational thinking in relation to children's development of algebraic thinking. Little is known about how newly developed visual programming environments such as Scratch could enhance early algebra learning. The study is based on examples of programming activities…

Collaborative programming helps improve students' computational thinking and increases their confidence in solving programming problems. However, the effect of collaborative learning is not ideal because it is difficult for students to mobilize metacognition to regulate learning spontaneously. To guide students to effectively regulate the learning…

Like digital technologies themselves, programming education is embedded in the colonial matrix of power, and access to programming knowledge demands immersion in the epistemologies of the Global North. While there is a growing body of work exploring ways to decolonise programming education, far more needs to be done. Current research focuses on…

This dissertation follows a manuscript-style format, beginning with an introduction and literature review, followed by three distinct studies and a concluding section. All three studies use "Lucky Codes," an educational board game designed to foster computational thinking skills in elementary students, as the intervention. The first…

Informed by the person-object theory of interest, this study deployed a mixed-method concurrent triangulation design and investigated the impact of major/specialization, gender, and module design on preservice teachers' interest in teaching computational thinking. The study was conducted in a flipped computational thinking module hosted in three…

The primary goals of this research were to investigate the development of computational thinking (CT) skills among elementary students and to identify areas for improvement in their CT practices. Empirical investigations, accomplished in a learner-centered, problem-based learning curriculum for sixth-graders, sought to examine student proficiency…

Teaching and learning Computational Thinking (CT) is at the forefront of educational interest. In the process of teaching and learning CT, learning strategies and tools play an important role. Efforts have been made to apply several learning strategies for teaching Computational Thinking. Among them, game-based learning and scaffolding are widely…

Theorists and educators increasingly highlight the importance of computational thinking in STEM education. While various scaffolding strategies describe how to best support this skillset (i.e., paired programming, worked examples), less research has focused on the design and development of these digital tools. One way to support computational…

As block-based visual programming platform such as Scratch become more accessible and supportive to children's programming learning, the demand on understanding a trajectory of children's computational thinking development through programming from their early ages increases rapidly in recent years. To explore the developmental process of…

Much research attention has been focused on learning through game playing. However, very little has been focused on student learning through game making, especially in science. Moreover, none of the studies on learning through making games has presented an account of how students engage in the process of game design in real time. The present study…

Background and Context: In order to fully include learners with visual impairments in early programming education, it is necessary to gain insight into specificities regarding their experience of and approach to abstract computational concepts. Objective: In this study, we use the model of the layers of abstraction to explore how learners with…