Relationship Analyses among High School Students’ Educational Program Understanding, Abstract Thinking Ability, and Programming Language Experience– Focusing on RUR-PLE
Chan Jung Park, Jung Suk Hyun, Sang Mi Kim · Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia services convergent with Art Humanities and Sociology · 2016
Received (November 24, 2015), Review Result (December 8, 2015) Accepted (December 15, 2015), Published (March 31, 2016) Dept. Computer Education, Jeju National Univ., Jejudaehak-ro 102, Jeju-do, 63243, Korea email: [email protected] (Corresponding Author) Dept. Management Information Systems, Jeju National Univ., Jejudaehak-ro 102, Jeju-do, 63243, Korea email: [email protected] Dept. Computer Education, Jeju National Univ., Jejudaehak-ro 102, Jeju-do, 63243, Korea email: [email protected] Relationship Analyses among High School Students’ Educational Program Understanding, Abstract Thinking Ability, and Programming Language Experience– Focusing on RUR-PLE Copyright c 2016 HSST 242 According to the changes from industrial society to digital society, software education for ordinary people has been popular both in home and overseas. In particular, due to the revision of the curriculum of Informatics in 2015, the interest on software education has been rising. Recently, various types of instructional materials have being developed, and thus, many schools are concerned about what to teach. Typically, most teachers do not choose a programming language based on the characteristics of the language but based on the stableness or popularity of the language. Focusing the RUR-PLE, which has been taught in many schools recently, this paper surveyed high school students, who learned the RUR-PLE for a semester, on the abstract thinking ability, problem solving ability, and academic achievement. And then, this research analyzed the relationship between abstract thinking ability and problem solving ability. As a result, the student group at low construal level performed better in predicting concrete actions of the robot of the RUR-PLE unlike the C language. In addition, we examined if there exists an interaction effect between abstract thinking ability and language experience about program understanding ability. From the research results, we knew the importance of the appropriate language selection for improving the secondary school students’ thinking ability.