Principles to facilitate design-based learning environments for programming in secondary education while making learning visible in an authentic way
Bas Van Zadelhoff, Ebrahim Rahimi, Erik Barendsen · 2021
Design-based learning (DBL) environments seem a promising instructional approach to facilitating students’ learning of programming concepts via applying them to develop various digital artifacts such as games, websites, robots, and software applications. However, there is a lack of theory-grounded principles to facilitate DBL environments for programming in K-12. In the absence of such principles, some essential elements of DBL such as the reciprocal link between ”design” and ”learning” processes might be easily neglected which can sacrifice ”learning” in favor of ”making” and degrade constructionist-based learning-by-making initiatives in programming to a form of ”shallow constructionism” or doing for the sake of making with no significant impact on the students’ programming knowledge.