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…

While numerous studies have highlighted the potential benefits of programming environment (PE) use for children's learning, the boundary conditions of children's PE acceptance within the programming education context are less clear. This study fills this gap in the literature by investigating the critical determinants of children's PE use…

Background: Collaborative programming is important and challenging for K12 students. Scaffolding is a vital method to support students' collaborative programming learning. However, conventional scaffolding that does not fade may lead students to become overly dependent, resulting in unsatisfactory programming performance. Objectives: This study…

Pair programming is an effective instructional format in programming education for adolescents. Within pair programming, three potential gender combinations may arise: Boy-Boy (BB), Girl-Girl (GG), and Boy-Girl (BG). This study explores the impact of different gender pairings on the programming self-efficacy and collaborative attitudes of…

Computational thinking skill is one of the basic skills required for every individual, such as reading and writing. For the development of CT, programming education is seen as the key. In the context of programming and CT relationship, it is very important to model individual characteristics and various affective variables with a holistic approach…

Secondary school students (N = 269) participated in a daylong visual programming course held in a stimulating environment for start-up enterprises. The tasks were application-oriented and partly creative. For example, a wearable device with light-emitting diodes, (ie, LEDs) could be applied to a T-shirt and used for optical messages. Our research…

This study investigates the effect of programming courses on the computational thinking (CT) skills of elementary school students and the learning effectiveness of students from different backgrounds who are studying programming. We designed a OwlSpace programming course into an elementary school curriculum. Students in fourth and fifth grades…

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…

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…

Many girls believe they have little natural ability in computer science and girls' perception of self-efficacy beliefs for programming is generally low. Offering engaging hands-on programming activities could be a beneficial strategy to increase girls' self-efficacy beliefs for programming since it has the potential to offer them exposure to…

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…

The robotics context is suggested as a context that supports the learning of the sciences including mathematics. The present study investigates how the robotics context affects students' motivation for learning mathematics. Two groups of seventh-grade students participated in the present research: a robotics class (32 students) and a regular class…

Many education policy strategy documents at the European Union level, as well as national strategies of various countries, recommend including computational thinking as a fundamental skill in curricula. The professional development of teachers should be supported to disseminate computational thinking in K12 education. Teachers' value beliefs about…

Literature indicated that attitude toward programming, programming self-efficacy, gender, and students' department was related to achievement in computer programming. However, there is a need for further studies investigating to what extent these factors explain programming achievement in a model. This study aimed to investigate the effects of…

Over the past 20 years, the field of computer science has experienced a growth in student interest. Despite this increase in participation rates, longstanding gender gaps persist in computer science. Recent research has examined a wide variety of individual factors (e.g., self-efficacy, sense of belonging, etc.) that impact student interest and…