Mediated transfer: From text to blocks and back

Abstract

Since its beginnings in the 1970s, learning to program is a challenging task for learners and educators. In the last two decades, many attempts were made to increase learning programming’s popularity, resulting in the development of block-based programming languages (BPL), widely used to engage children in programming from an early age. The use of BPL showed the benefits for K-12 programming novices in lowering the barrier towards programming. However, by using a BPL as the only programming language, or even using it for a more extended period of time, there is a risk that students will not transfer learned programming concepts to the “real” text-based programming language (TBPL). There is a lack of theoretical or empirical studies dealing with transferring BPL to TBPL at the K-12 level. This study is designed to investigate the effects of BPL MakeCode for micro:bit using a pedagogical approach of mediated transfer for the transfer of learned programming concepts to “real” TBPL Python. According to the national curriculum among 49 sixth graders in the classroom settings, the quasi-experiment was conducted during programming lectures according to the national curriculum. Results confirmed that BPL could successfully be used as a mediated transfer medium to understand the programming concepts in the TBPL.