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26 January 2023
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27 January 2023
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Study | Participants and education level | Country (first author) | Learning domain | Teaching tools | Research questions | Hypothesis | Pre/post-test | Interviews | With control group | Course duration | Research design | Previous experience | Project and grant | Research purpose |
Computers & Education | ||||||||||||||
Howland and Good (2015) [124]. | 55 young people aged 12-13, one secondary school, | The United Kingdom | Game creation | Flip | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | 8 weeks (2 lesson per week, each lesson 53 min.) | Not specified | No | Grant EP/G006989/1 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. | How young people can use commercial game creation software to develop their own 3D video games. |
Sáez-López, Román-González, and Vázquez-Cano (2016) [125]. | 107 primary school students from 5th to 6th grade, five different schools | Spain | Visual Programming | Scratch | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | The academic years 2013-14 and 2014-15 in 20 one-hour sessions | Mixed | Not specified | Not specified | To evaluate the use of Scratch in school lessons as an introduction to programming for total novices, in a younger age group at primary school. |
Snodgrass Israel and Reese (2016) [98]. | 2 students who had different disabilities, 4th and 5th grade, one elementary school | USA | CT activities within visual Programming | Scratch | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | One unit at the end of the Spring 2015 school year, 45 min/week | Not specified | No | Not specified | Examine the participation of students with disabilities and their support needs during computing instruction. |
Çakır, Gass, Foster, and Lee (2017) [114]. | 21 girls in grades five through eight, one middle school | Turkey and USA | Game-design | Unity's 2D development tools and C# (one or two functions and variables) | No | No | Yes | Yes | No | A full day event during the weekend, two workshops | Mixed | Yes | A grant from the Entertainment Software Association Foundation (ESAF). | To help young girls explore a sense of identity as a game designer was through the introductions of female role models in the game industry. |
Chen, Shen, Barth-Cohen, Jiang, Huang, and Eltoukhy (2017) [58]. | 121 students 5th grade, one an elementary school | USA | CT and Robotics Programming | Text-based and visual programming language (similar to Scratch) | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Six months, between 45 and 60 min per week | Not specified | Yes | Supported by a grant from the Entertainment Software Association Foundation. | Develope an instrument to assess fifth grade students' CT. |
Durak and Saritepeci (2018) [122]. | 152 students, 5th-12th grade (21,7% of them were secondary sch.), different school | Turkey | CT | Not specified | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | 2015/16 school year | Quantitative | Not specified | Not specified | Determine how much various variables explain students' (CT) skills. |
Hsu and Wang (2018) [126]. | 242 students 4th-grade, one elementary school | Taiwan | Puzzle-based game learning system, algorithmic thinking skills | TGTS (Turtle Graphics Tutorial System) | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Ten weeks (once a week) | Quantitative | No | Not specified | Examine the effects of using game mechanics and a student-generated questions strategy to promote algoritm. thinking skills in TGTS. |
Kong, Chiu, and Lai (2018) [37]. | 287, 4th to 6th grades, one school | Hong Kong | CT- part of a larger project that aims to promote CT education | Not specified | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Not specified | Quantitative | No | Project from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust | Promote CT education amongprimary schools. |
Città et al. (2019) [127]. | 92 students 1st to 5th grade (6 to 10 years), one school | Italy | Mental rotation and CT | LEGO, “My Robotic Friends” and “Graph Paper Programming” lessons from code.org | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Two 90-min sessions in each class | Not specified | Not specified | Not specified | Contextualize CT and programming concepts in the field of Enactivism. |
Zhao and Shute (2019) [121]. | 69 eighth grade students (one middl school) | USA | Components of CT skills: Algorithmic thinking and Conditional logic | Video game Penguin Go | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Three 60-min sessions during three weeks in 2017 | Qualitative | No | Not specified | Investigate the cognitive and attitudinal impacts of playing a video game that targeted the development of CTskills among middle school students. |
Schlegel, et al. (2019) [117]. | 190 students, 64 were in the program both years, 3th to 5th-grade (one elementary school) | USA | Basic programming through a block-based interface | Not specified | No | Yes | Yes | No | No | Two academic school years (2015-2016, 2016-2017) | Quantitative | Not specified | NSF grant #DRL-1433770 | Whether engaging in Making led to changes in self efficacy, interest, and identification with both Making and science in elementary school. |
Hsu, Chang, & Hung (2018) [74]. | Review article | Taiwan | A meta-review of the studies published in academic journals from 2006 to 2017 was conducted to analyze application courses, adopted learning strategies, and course categories of CT education. | Database SCOPUS, 1133 articles. | ||||||||||
Xia and Zhong (2018) [88]. | Review article | China | This paper aims to review high-qualified empirical studies on teaching and learning robotics content knowledge in K-12 and explore future research perspectives of robotics education (RE) based on the reviewed papers. | 22 SSCI journal papers are included in this review. | ||||||||||
Popat and Starkey (2019) [65]. | Review article | New Zealand | This study reviewed research to analyse educational outcomes for children learning to code at school. | Identified 172 potentially relevant research articles, ten articles were used in the review and included quantitative data. | ||||||||||
Zhang and Nouri (2019) [75]. | Review article | Sweden | This systematic review presents a synthesis of 55 empirical studies, providing evidence of the development of computational thinking through programming in Scratch. | Systematic overview of CT education for K-9. | ||||||||||
Computers in Human Behavior | ||||||||||||||
Kalelioğlu, F. (2015) [128]. | 32 primary school students, 10 years, one school | Turkey | Teaching programming skills (block-code) | Code.org site (The Maze, The Artist 2) | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Five-week (one hour per week) | Mixed | No | Not specified | Explore the effects of code.org programming on 4th grade primary school students’ reflective thinking skills towards problem solving skills. |
Zhong, Wang, and Chen (2016) [129]. | 154, 6th grade pupils, one a primary School | China | Programming | Alice | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | 13 weeks, in the 2015 spring semester | Quantitative | Yes | The project “Collaborative Innovation Center for Talent Cultivating Mode in Basic Education. | Explore the impacts of two social factors on pair programming effectiveness. |
Román-González et al. (2017) [36]. | 1251 Spanish students from 5th to 10th grade, 1110 students 10-15 age (24 different schools) | Spain | CT | Code.org, site (The Maze, The Canvas) | No | Yes | No | No | No | Elective subject of Computer Science, which is held twice a week (1 h each) | Quantitative | No | Not specified | Provide a new instrument for measuring CT and additionally giving evidence of the correlations between CT and other well-established psychological constructs in the study of cognitive abilities. |
Ruggiero and Green (2017) [99]. | 11 students, 14 - 17 age (average 14 age). students have of special needs young people, secondary school -special needs | United Kingdom | Design game, the Project Tech | Not specified | No | No | No | No | No | Six-months (30 workshops, 90 min. per workshop) | Quantitative | No | Not specified | Draw from the game iterations a list of empirically grounded problem solving attributes that are associated with digital game design in a special needs classroom. |
Pérez-Marín, Hijón-Neira, Bacelo, and Pizarro (2018) [130]. | 132, primary education students 4th – 5th grade (9–12 years in age), more than 32 schools | Spain | CT, a methodology based on metaphors | Scratch | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | 6 weeks,1 h per week | Quantitative | No | Research funded by the projects TIN 2015-66731-C2-1-R and S2013/ICE-2715. | Analyse whether MECOPROG has an impact on the students' programming knowledge and whether it can improve computational thinking in students. |
Basogain, Olabe, Olabe and Rico (2018) [103]. | No Number, students of primary and secondary education (10-15 years old), 21 schools | Spain | CT | Scratch and Alice | No | No | No | Yes | No | Study-1, April-June 2016; and Study-2, December-2016/March-2017, 10 sessions, each lasting 2 hours | Not specified | No | The Research Development Grants of the University Basque System (2016-18) | Processes of CT aided by the visual programming environments. |
Román-González et al. (2018) [116]. | 1251, 5th to 10th grade, 24 different schools | Spain | CT | The Maze, The Canvas | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | Optional Computer Science contents (in Primary School), with a frequency of twice a week. | Quantitative | No | Not specified | To extend the nomological network of CT with non-cognitive factors, through the study of the correlations between CT, self-efficacy and the several dimensions from the ‘Big Five’ model of human personality. |
Cheng, G. (2019) [131]. | 431 students in 38 primary schools. | Hong Kong | Visual programming environment (VPE) | App Inventor | No | Yes | No | Yes | No | Between December 2015 and March 2016, 1 to 5 hours on programming activities in the last 4 weeks. | Mixed | No | Not specified | Designing an extension of the technology acceptance model to identify determinants influencing boys' and girls' behavioural intention to use VPE in the primary school context. |
Yücel and Rızvanoğlu (2019) [123]. | 16 children (age between 11 and 14), one middle school | Turkey | A code learning game | Code Combat game | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Play the first 10 levels maximum 1 h. | Mixed | No | Not specified | Provide insights about the first-time user experience in a home environment of 16 middle school children with a code learning game named “Code Combat”. |
Papavlasopoulou, Giannakos, and Jaccheri (2019) [132]. | 44 children (8–17) -cycle 1, 105 children (13–16) years-cycle 2, 8 girls (10-14) years- cycle 3, one school | Norway | A block-based programming environment and collaboratively created a socially meaningful artifact (i.e., a game). | Scratch | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Over the two years (cycle 1 two and cycle 2 six weeks, cycle 3 two day) | Mixed | No | The European Commission's Horizon 2020 SwafS-11-2017 Program (Project Number: 787476) | In this study, investigate children's learning experience as they constructed their own knowledge by using a digital programming tool (Scratch) and collaboratively creating socially meaningful artifacts: games. |
Journal of Educational Computing Research | ||||||||||||||
Akpinar and Aslan (2015) [133]. | 18 fifth grade and 12 sixth graders (12–14) age, one middle school | Turkey | Programming-video game | Scratch | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Nine workshops (two 40-min, four 30 min of hands-on Scratch programming instruction and 50 min of developing games) | Quantitative | Not specified | Not specified | Explore the effects of middle school students’ development of video games with Scratch on their achievement of independent events in probability. |
Zhong, Wang, Chen, and Li (2016) [108]. | 144 pupils sixth grade, one primary school | China | CT | 3D programming language Alice 2.4 | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | (18 weeks, 40 minutes per week) | Not specified | Yes | (13YJC880121) granted by Chinese Ministry of Education. | Propose what types of tasks could be made accessible and meaningful for assessing students’ CT. |
Jakoš and Verber (2017) [134]. | 107 sixth grade pupils, three primary schools | Slovenia | Learning programing | Game “Aladdin and his flying carpet” | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | 2 months – 2 weeks for Phases 1 and 3, 45 min, and 1 month for Phase 2, 135 min | Not specified | No | Not specified | Investigate the effectiveness of using educational games for learning basic programing skills. |
Tran, Y. (2019) [135]. | Over 200 students, five elementary schools | USA | CT | Blockly programming language- code.org | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | 10-weeks, an hour each week | Mixed | Yes | Not specified | Pre- and posttest changes in CT using adapted lessons from code.org’s. |
Vasilopoulos and Van Schaik (2019) [136]. | 66 third-grade students (mean age 14), one secondary school | Greece | Visual programming | Koios programming language | No | Yes | No | No | No | Nine lessons (one per week) | Quantitative | No | Not specified | Produce a programming environment that could serve as an efficient tool for improving the teaching and learning of introductory programming in Greece. |
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning | ||||||||||||||
Falloon, G. (2016) [137]. | 32, 5- and 6-year-old students, one primary school | New Zealand | CT | Scratch Jnr | Yes | No | No | No | No | 4 sessions, 25-40 min, February 2015 to April 2015 | Not specified | No | Not specified | Students thinking skills when they have completed the basics of programming |
Witherspoon, Schunn, Higashi, and Shoop (2018) [120]. | 136 (6th–8th grade), two middle school | USA | Virtual robotics curriculum, visual programming language | ROBOTCGGraphical, VEX IQ robots | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | 6- to 9-week course, treba proveriti | Not specified | Not specified | Grant/Award Number: 1418199; National Science Foundation. | Effects of units with different programming content within a virtual robotics context on both learning gains and motivational changes in middle school (6th–8th grade) robotics classrooms. |
Benton, Kalas, Saunders, Hoyles, and Noss (2018) [138]. | 181 pupils (aged 10–11), from 6 primary schools | UK | Computational and mathematical thinking, visual blocks-based language | ScratchMaths | No | No | No | Yes | No | 2-year, computing and mathematics curriculums, six modules (three per year) | Not specified | Yes | Education Endowment Foundation, the SM project schools. | Develop computational and mathematicalthinking skills through learning to program. |
Yildiz Durak, H. (2018a) [111]. | 62 fifth-grade students, one secondary school. | Turkey | Digital story use in programming teaching | Scratch | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | 10-week application process, course name Information Technologies and Software | Mixed | No | Not specified | Determine the effects and experiences of the use of digital story design activities in teaching applications of programming on academic achievement. |
Yildiz Durak, H. (2018b) [115]. | 371 students, 5th to 8th grade, two middle schools | Turkey | flipped learning readiness (FLR), programming | Scratch | No | Yes | No | No | No | 15-week programming teaching during the spring semester of 2017 | Quantitative | Yes | Not specified | Investigate the effect of students' (FLR) on engagement, programming self-efficacy, attitude towards programming. |
Educational Technology and Society | ||||||||||||||
Su, Huang, Yang, Ding, and Hsieh (2015) [112]. | 37 students sixth-grade (average age 12), one elementary school | Taiwan | Programming course | Scratch | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Three hours per week, 4-month, March to June 2013 | Quantitative | No | Not specified | Explore the effects of annotations and homework on learning achievement. |
Basawapatna, A. (2016) [113]. | 45 7th grade students, one middle school | USA | visual programming, game design, IPAK JE CT, Pattern Programming | Simulation Creation Toolkit | No | No | No | No | No | 4 days, 16 pattern implementations | Not specified | Yes | The National Science Foundation under Grant Numbers 0833612, 0848962, 1138526. | Design game in the integration of Computational Thinking activities through simulation construction in the classroom environment. |
Zhong, Wang, Chen, and Li (2017) [102]. | 150 pupils 6th grade, one primary school | China | Programming course | Alice and Scratch | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | 13 weeks | Not specified | Yes | The project “Collaborative Innovation Center for Talent Cultivating Mode in Basic Education. | Compare the learning achievement and attitude in different periods of switching roles. |
Wang, Hwang, Liang, and Wang (2017) [139]. | 166 ninth graders, one junior high school | Taiwan | Visual programming | Scratch | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | 10 weeks of two hours per week | Quantitative | Not specified | Supported in part by the Ministry of Science and Technology, China, numbers NSC 102 2511 S 011 007 MY3 and MOST 104. | Evaluate the studen ts’ competence of using the programming statements and operations to develop Scratch programs based on the topics specified by the teacher. |
Educational Technology Research and Development | ||||||||||||||
Akcaoglu and Green (2019) [140]. | 19 6th grade students (average = 11 age), one middle school | USA | Game design course | Microsoft Kodu software | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | A once-a-week, hour-long session, the school year | Mixed | No | Not specified | If middle school students who attended a game design course showed improvements in their system analysis and design skills. |
Sáez-López, Sevillano-García, and Vazquez-Cano (2019) [118]. | 93 sixth-grade students, four primary schools | Spain | Robotics and programming | mBot | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Academic year 2016–2017 | Quantitative | Not specified | Not specified | Analyze the potential of visual block programming and robotics for use in primary education. |
Strawhacker and Bers (2019) [141]. | 57 K-2nd grade participant children (One Kindergarten, one 1th and 2th grade classroom) | USA | Programming | ScratchJr | Yes | No | No | No | No | Twice-weekly 1-h lessons over 6 weeks | Mixed | No | Grant No. DRL1118664. | Cognitive domain that young children leverage when learning programming for the first time. |
Interactive Learning Environments | ||||||||||||||
Garneli and Chorianopoulos (2017) [142]. | 34- students, 15 age, third grade, one middle school | Greece | CT over video-game | Scratch | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Five weeks, two-hour sessions per week | Qualitative | No | Not specified | Potential effects of constructing video games and simulations on student learning. |
Chiang and Qin (2018) [143]. | 89 seventh grade students, one secondary school | China | Game-based construction learning | Scratch | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | A ten-week period during a weekly 45-minute session | Quantitative | No | By Beijing Wangjing Experiment School, grant number KJHX2015322. | Examine the impacts of Scratch-based games made by seventh grade students to solve equations, on their equation-solving performance and attitudes towards learning mathematics with the assistance of technology. |
British Journal of Educational Technology | ||||||||||||||
Costa and Miranda (2017) [66]. | Review article | Portugal | A systematic review of the literature include 232 studies published between the years 2000 and 2014 in the main databases. | The effectiveness of the use of Alice software in programming learning when compared to the use of a conventional programming language. | ||||||||||
Lindberg, Laine, and Haaranen (2019) [82]. | Review article | Belgium | An investigation on the guidelines on programming education in K-12 in seven countries. | Review of existing acquirable games that utilize programming topics in their gameplay was conducted by searching popular game stores. |
Journal Name | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Computers in Human Behavior | 686 | 855 | 693 | 447 | 455 | 3097 |
Computers & Education | 235 | 161 | 147 | 212 | 198 | 953 |
British Journal of Educational Technology | 116 | 89 | 103 | 80 | 201 | 589 |
Educational Technology and Society | 115 | 103 | 92 | 83 | 30 | 423 |
Interactive Learning Environments | 45 | 118 | 72 | 74 | 79 | 388 |
Learning and Instruction | 62 | 58 | 71 | 83 | 73 | 347 |
Electronic Library | 70 | 60 | 72 | 72 | 61 | 335 |
Educational Technology Research and Development | 43 | 61 | 71 | 71 | 67 | 313 |
The Turkish Online Journal of Educational Technology | 76 | 61 | 65 | 60 | 38 | 300 |
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning | 47 | 44 | 46 | 89 | 63 | 289 |
Journal of Educational Computing Research | 48 | 46 | 46 | 54 | 82 | 276 |
IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies | 29 | 32 | 42 | 43 | 39 | 185 |
International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning | 16 | 17 | 17 | 18 | 17 | 85 |
Total | 7580 |
Journal Name | Number of Studies |
---|---|
Computers & Education | 15 |
Computers in Human Behavior | 10 |
Journal of Educational Computing Research | 5 |
Journal of Computer Assisted Learning | 5 |
Educational Technology and Society | 4 |
Educational Technology Research and Development | 3 |
Interactive Learning Environments | 2 |
British Journal of Educational Technology | 2 |
Total | 46 |
Primary | Middle | Secondary | Primary and secondary | Total | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
programming | 9 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 13 |
CT | 9 (1 special needs) |
3 | 1 | 3 | 16 |
Game design | - | 4 | 3 (1 special needs) |
- | 7 |
Robotics programming | 1 | 1 | 1 | - | 3 |
Algorithmic thinking | 1 | - | - | - | 1 |
Review articles | - | - | - | - | 6 |
Total | 20 | 9 | 7 | 4 | 40/46 |
Study | Impact on learning performance | Impact on learning motivation | Impact on learning attitudes | Impact on learning perceptions |
---|---|---|---|---|
Howland and Good (2015) | not specified | positive | not specified | not specified |
Sáez-López et al. (2016) | positive | positive | positive | not specified |
Snodgrass Israel and Reese (2016) | not specified | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Çakır et al. (2017) | not specified | positive | positive | positive |
Chen et al. (2017). | neutral | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Durak and Saritepeci (2018) | not specified | not specified | negative | not specified |
Hsu and Wang (2018) | positive | positive | positive | not specified |
Kong et al. (2018) | not specified | not specified | neutral | not specified |
Città et al. (2019) | not specified | not specified | not specified | positive |
Zhao and Shute (2019) | not specified | neutral | positive | negative |
Schlegel et al. (2019) | not specified | positive | not specified | positive |
Kalelioğlu, F. (2015) | positive | not specified | positive | positive |
Zhong et al. (2016) | positive | not specified | not specified | positive |
Román-González et al. (2017) | positive | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Ruggiero and Green (2017) | not specified | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Pérez-Marín et al. (2018) | positive | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Basogain et al. (2018) | not specified | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Román-González et al. (2018) | positive | not specified | positive | positive |
Cheng, G. (2019) | positive | not specified | positive | positive |
Yücel and Rızvanoğlu (2019) | positive | positive | neutral | negative |
Papavlasopoulou et al. (2019) | not specified | positive | positive | not specified |
Akpinar and Aslan (2015) | not specified | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Zhong et al. (2016) | not specified | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Jakoš and Verber (2017). | positive | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Tran, Y. (2019) | not specified | positive | positive | positive |
Vasilopoulos and Van Schaik (2019) | positive | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Falloon, G. (2016) | not specified | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Witherspoon et al. (2018) | positive | negative | not specified | not specified |
Benton et al. (2018) | not specified | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Yildiz Durak, H. (2018a) | not specified | positive | positive | not specified |
Yildiz Durak, H. (2018b) | positive | positive | positive | not specified |
Su et al. (2015). | positive | not specified | not specified | positive |
Basawapatna, A. (2016) | not specified | positive | not specified | not specified |
Zhong et al. (2017) | not specified | not specified | positive | not specified |
Wang et al. (2017) | positive | not specified | positive | not specified |
Akcaoglu and Green (2019) | positive | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Sáez-López et al. (2019) | positive | positive | not specified | not specified |
Strawhacker and Bers (2019) | positive | not specified | not specified | not specified |
Garneli and Chorianopoulos (2018) | positive | positive | not specified | not specified |
Chiang and Qin (2018) | positive | not specified | positive | positive |
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