Programming and computational thinking have been introduced into the curricula of several countries, also in relation to science and technology education. Preparing pre-service teachers for using programming in science education is therefore an important and relevant task. The purpose of this article is to describe what knowledge may be relevant…

Background: Robot programming can simultaneously cultivate learners' computational thinking (CT) and spatial thinking (ST). However, there is a noticeable gap in research focusing on the micro-level development patterns of learners' CT and ST and their interconnections. Objectives: This study aims to uncover the intricate development patterns and…

The aim of this explanatory study is to identify the causes of intrinsic cognitive load in programming process. For this purpose, a method based on two dimensions; programming knowledge types (syntactic, semantic, and strategic) and programming constructs was proposed. The proposed method was tested with high school students enrolled in Computer…

Purpose: Much remains unknown about how young children orient to computational objects and how we as learning scientists can orient to young children as computational thinkers. While some research exists on how children learn programming, very little has been written about how they learn the technical skills needed to operate technologies or to…

The purpose of this study was to explore how kindergarten students (aged 5-6 years) engaged with mathematics as they learned programming with robot coding toys. We video-recorded 16 teaching sessions of kindergarten students' (N = 36) mathematical and programming activities. Students worked in small groups (4-5 students) with robot coding toys on…

Computer science works as hardware and software increasingly takes place in each of our daily lives with effective products and services. As in all areas, it is an inevitable part of learning and teaching computer-based environment-tools and equipment in the fate and type of education, including early childhood. Computer science products may…

Contributions: This article presents a large-scale study which investigates students' reaction to game-based learning as part of programming courses. The study focuses on knowledge acquisition, learner experience, and game usability. Background: Despite the rapid growth of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) sector, the lack of…

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…

The objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a practice-oriented approach in teaching Python programming to students in Kazakhstan. The study participants comprised students from a control group (CG) and an experimental group (EG), with 89 students in each group. The mean age of the participants was 20 years. The sample included…

Contribution: This article compares the effectiveness for online software engineering education of video-based learning and game-based learning using teacher-authored educational video games created by using authoring tools. Background: Although substantial research has evaluated the impact of video-based and game-based learning versus traditional…

In this study, we developed a classification system of programming errors based on the historical data of 680,540 programming records collected on the Online Judge platform. The classification system described six types of programming errors (i.e., syntax, logical, type, writing, misunderstanding, and runtime errors) and their connections with…

Artificial Intelligence (AI) education in primary schools has received a great deal of attention globally, and it is thus important to investigate primary school students' perceptions and understanding of AI learning. Therefore, in this study, 673 drawings of conceptions of AI learning by third to sixth grade students were collected. Firstly, a…

Educational process mining is now a promising method to provide decision-support information for the teaching-learning process via finding useful educational guidance from the event logs recorded in the learning management system. Existing studies mainly focus on mining students' problem-solving skills or behavior patterns and intervening in…

The language and concepts used by curriculum designers are not always interpreted by children as designers intended. This can be problematic when researchers use self-reported survey instruments in concert with curricula, which often rely on the implicit belief that students' understanding aligns with their own. We report on our refinement of a…

The paper presents research that aims to expose students' understanding of the "this" reference in object-oriented programming. The study was conducted with high school students (N = 86) and college engineering students (N = 77). Conceptualization of "this" reflects an understanding of objects in general and involves aspects of…