The work of Niklaus Wirth, designer of the Pascal programming language, has led to the introduction of programming in schools in many countries often leading to a transformation in the way of thinking. In this article, we provide a retrospective analysis of the Lithuanian experience driven by Pascal and discuss the main ideas about teaching…

In the following research review, 57 articles were analysed to get an insight into research in the field of computational thinking and programming in K-12. The results show that empirical research regarding programming and computational thinking is prevalent in the USA and Greece. The articles were published in 43 different academic journals. A…

It is widely believed that there are educational benefits to making computer games, but there is no systematic review of research on this topic. This article describes a meta-synthesis of research on children designing and programming computer games that investigates the extent to which there is evidence of benefits for computer science learning…

Programming skills are an increasingly desirable asset across disciplines; however, learning to program continues to be difficult for many students. To improve pedagogy, we need to better understand the concepts that students find difficult and which have the biggest impact on their learning. Threshold-concept theory provides a potential lens on…

This article describes how research methodologies were modified and integrated during the doctoral research conducted by the first author under the supervision of the second author. The research project concerned trying to understand why teachers do or don't use "Jeliot", a program animation system designed to facilitate teaching and learning of…