Understanding students’ abstractions in block-based programming environments: A performance based evaluation

•The study examined the effect of using block-based coding environments on enhancing secondary school students’ abstraction skills.•A rubric was created to reveal the students’ abstraction performances.•The students performed high in elimination, focusing and generalization; however, students’ perfo...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Thinking skills and creativity Jg. 41; S. 100888
Hauptverfasser: Çakıroğlu, Ünal, Çevik, İsak, Köşeli, Engin, Aydın, Merve
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2021
Schlagworte:
Abstraction
Block-based programming
Computational thinking
Computer science education
Computational thinking
Computer science education
Abstraction
Block-based programming
ISSN:1871-1871, 1878-0423
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:•The study examined the effect of using block-based coding environments on enhancing secondary school students’ abstraction skills.•A rubric was created to reveal the students’ abstraction performances.•The students performed high in elimination, focusing and generalization; however, students’ performances were relatively low in customization.•The nature of the problems, affordances of block-based programming environments and coding constructs were the factors affected the abstraction process. Providing computational problems for enhancing students’ abstraction skills and monitoring how students make abstractions is difficult in block-based programming environments (BBPEs). Thus, concrete examples and principles are needed to guide computer science teachers about understanding and enhancing students’ abstractions. This study aims to examine the effect of using block-based coding environments on enhancing secondary school students’ abstraction skills. Referring to the programming knowledge, a rubric was created to analyze the data from screen recordings, observation and interviews were used together to reveal the students’ abstraction performances. The results suggested that students performed high in elimination, focusing and generalization; however, students’ performances were relatively low in customization. Students’ explanations were mostly related the nature of the problems, affordances of BBPE and the programming constructs used in coding. We hope the study will provide insights for the efforts on instructional designs for successful abstraction experiences for young students.
ISSN:1871-1871
1878-0423
DOI:10.1016/j.tsc.2021.100888