Data-driven Analysis of Elementary School Students’ Computational Thinking through Scratch Projects
Guang Yang, Daisuke Saito, Hironori Washizaki, Yoshiaki Fukazawa · 2023
The development of computer science has led to an increase in programming education for younger people. Many countries have begun programming education in elementary schools. As is a relatively new subject in elementary education, the course design and textbooks for programming education remain under development. The growth trend in computational thinking (CT) is helpful for educators to teach suitable programming concepts to students. Scratch, which is mostly used as an introductory programming language for elementary school students, can be evaluated to reflect students’ CT. In this work-in-progress research, we conducted a data-driven analysis on fourth-grade students’ CT growth in their first 3 years of programming learning by evaluating their Scratch projects. A preliminary result shows that CT grows rapidly in the first 2 years and tends to be stable in the third year. The reasons for the difference in growth of specific CT concepts are discussed.