Programming with Scratch in primary school, indicators related to effectiveness of education process and analysis of these indicators in terms of various variables

Abstract

Since programming processes involve different thinking skills and different fields of knowledge, it is especially important for children to acquire 21st-century skills. Even though the programming education activities are being intensively applied, it can be said that there is a gap in quantitative researches supporting the effort to reveal the direct or indirect effectiveness of the learning–teaching processes for the programming education. This study, which was done to fill this gap, aims to examine the degree to which students learn programming concepts (PC) and to identify effective variables in that process with a developed curriculum for gifted students studying in the second–third–fourth grade in primary schools. For this purpose, a 15-week application was carried out and each student developed an individual project. In the study, a criterion list, observation forms and peer evaluations were used based on PC to examine projects and learning process. The scores obtained from these tools were used to examine the application of each participant, to comment on the effective variables and the adequacy of the teaching process. The evidence from this study intimates that female participants obtained higher scores than male ones in programming education. Those scores are higher in 9 and 10 age group of students than others. Those who haven’t had Internet access, who have never used computer or have had access to Internet as well as who haven’t had any computer courses had lower scores than others. The upshot of this is that previous computer technology experiences of students may have affected the scores obtained programming education process.