Many countries are revising their computing curricula, including Serbia, where coding became a core subject in primary schools in 2017/2018. Gamification is a common teaching method, yet little research explores primary students' motivation to learn coding through gamification. This study aims to investigate the factors that influence primary…

Two global trends that can be observed in computing education all over the world are moving the beginning of teaching computing as a compulsory school subject to primary education and moving from the teaching of user approaches to digital technologies to computer science content. The Czech Republic is currently the scene of such changes within the…

Early literacy experiences, including reading and writing, serve as meaningful backdrops for teachers in early childhood contexts to support and embed both computational thinking and computer science into classroom instruction. This article shares how interactive in-class instruction that is embedded within rich literacy experiences and computer…

Students' lives, both in and out of school, are full of different forms of value. Wealthy students enjoy value in the form of financial capital; their fit to hegemonic social practices; excellent health care and so on. Low-income students, especially those from African American, Native American, and Latinx communities, often lack access to those…

We propose a framework for identifying, organizing, and communicating learning objectives that involve program semantics. In this framework, detailed learning objectives are written down as rules of program behavior (RPBs). RPBs are teacher-facing statements that describe what needs to be learned about the behavior of a specific sort of programs.…

While computing has been (re)introduced into the basic education curricula in various countries, its actual implementation appears to be inconsistent. There are schools in which computing education is commonplace, while the implementation seems to be lagging behind in others. There is emerging evidence that some teachers do not consider computing…

Automatically detecting bugs in student program code is critical to enable formative feedback to help students pinpoint errors and resolve them. Deep learning models especially code2vec and ASTNN have shown great success for "large-scale" code classification. It is not clear, however, whether they can be effectively used for bug…

Nationally, a shortage exists of qualified cybersecurity persons entering the field, posing challenges for higher education institutions in locating qualified educators to help fill the gap. A wealth of literature discusses the needs of students, yet literature outlining qualities of attracting graduates to become educators is lacking. The purpose…

Disciplines in Higher Education have their own interpretations of what is essential knowledge that influences what is taught, how teaching occurs, and the role of digital tools. Disciplinary culture is dynamic and evolving, informed by disciplinary research and technology improvement. During the COVID-19 pandemic, digital solutions enabled ongoing…

In higher education institutions, critical race theory (CRT) is known to be associated with fields that study racial disparities or systemic oppression such as law, education, and ethnic studies. The impression that CRT is unrelated to fields like business or computer science may have led scholars and practitioners from these disciplines to put…

Background: Coding has become an integral part of STEM education. However, novice learners face difficulties in processing codes within embedded structures (also termed nested structures). This study aimed to investigate the cognitive mechanism underlying the processing of embedded coding structures based on hierarchical complexity theory, which…

Prior studies in the Computer Science education literature have illustrated that novices make many mistakes in composing SQL queries. Query formulation proves to be difficult for students. Only recently, some headway was made towards understanding why SQL leads to so many mistakes, by uncovering student misconceptions. In this article, we shed new…

The use of the Capture the Flag (CTF)-style competitions has grown popular in a variety of environments as a method to improve or reinforce cybersecurity techniques. However, while these competitions have shown promise in student engagement, enjoyment, and the teaching of essential workforce cybersecurity concepts, many of these CTF challenges…

A replication study was conducted to determine the effectiveness of an instructional treatment based on self-efficacy theory when used with novice Arduino microcontroller users. Students (n = 32) in an introductory university agricultural systems technology course participated in a lesson on Arduino microcontrollers, circuit breadboarding, and…

This systematic review examines 35 empirical studies featuring the use of think-aloud interviews in computational thinking (CT) research. Findings show that think-aloud interviews (1) are typically conducted in Computer Science classrooms and with K-12 students; (2) are usually combined with other exploratory CT assessment tools; (3) have the…