This study investigates computer programming ('coding') activities of Primary School Children; we ask if there is evidence of gender differences in their coding activities. The research took place in an English urban school with around 180 children on role, mostly from a middle-class social background. The study involved a class of 17 boys and 15…

Background: Computational thinking (CT) has emerged as a critical component of 21st-century skills, and increasing effort was seen in exploring the development of CT skills in K-12 students. Despite cumulative research on exploring students' CT acquisition and its influencing factors, learners' development of the skill over time and the underlying…

Background and Context: A continued gender disparity has driven a need for effective interventions for recruiting girls to computer science. Prior research has demonstrated that middle school girls hold beliefs and attitudes that keep them from learning computer science, which can be mitigated through classroom design. Objective: This study…

Background and Context: Despite the growing initiatives in K-12 computer science (CS), there is a continued disparity in the participation of Latinx and multilingual students, a historically underrepresented group in computing. The inequitable participation may be understood by examining students' early development of CS attitudes. Objective: This…

The purpose of this quantitative non-experimental study was to evaluate the gender stereotyping in picture books from a classroom library collection that primary school students use for independent reading in the classroom. Using the Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade fiction books from the classroom library collection from Booksource, this research…

Learning coding during early childhood is an effective way for children to practice computational thinking. Aspects of children's motivation can increase the likelihood that children approach computational thinking activities with enthusiasm and deep engagement. Gender inequities may interfere with children's readiness to take advantage of…

Background and Context: Despite the increasing implementation of coding in early curricula, there are few valid and reliable assessments of coding abilities for young children. This impedes studying learning outcomes and the development and evaluation of curricula. Objective: Developing and validating a new instrument for assessing young…

Trees are important to the environment owing to their ecological services. However, many aspects of their form and function are poorly understood by the public. From their earliest years, children have an elementary knowledge about plants which they gain from their everyday observations, their parents and other people and from their kindergarten…

Equity in mathematics classroom discourse is a pressing concern, but analyzing issues of equity using observational tools remains a challenge. In this article, we propose equity analytics as a quantitative approach to analyzing aspects of equity and inequity in classrooms. We introduce a classroom observation tool that focuses on relatively…

This cross-sectional study explored students' conceptions of science learning via drawing analysis. A total of 906 Taiwanese students in 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, and 12th grade were asked to use drawing to illustrate how they conceptualise science learning. Students' drawings were analysed using a coding checklist to determine the presence or absence…

The overall goal of this dissertation was to examine teacher characteristics, teachers' beliefs, and contextual factors that may motivate teachers' decisions to engage in high quality teacher-child interactions. I use two complementary studies to meet this goal. These two studies provide insight into several aspects of early childhood teachers'…

This paper reports results from a large-scale observational study investigating attention allocation during instructional activities in elementary school students (kindergarten through fourth-grade). In Study 1, 22 classrooms participated while a more diverse sample of 30 classrooms participated in Study 2. This work investigated temporal patterns…

This study investigated children's narrative evaluations about jealousy in relation to performance on a higher-order perspective-taking task and assessments of receptive vocabulary and nonverbal intelligence. Eighty children (5;0-11;11) narrated a wordless picture book about a jealous frog, answered probe questions about the plot, and generated a…

The impact of a hybrid Sport Education-Invasion Games Competence Model (IGCM) unit of instruction on students' game performance and game understanding in soccer was examined in this study. Pre- and posttest measures were collected from one fifth grade class of students (n = 24, mean age 10.3) residing in Portugal during a 17-lesson unit of…

Although children with autism spectrum disorder are frequently included in mainstream classrooms, it is not known how their social networks change compared to typically developing children and whether the factors predictive of this change may be unique. This study identified and compared predictors of social connectivity of children with and…