Novices enrolled in introductory programming courses often face many difficulties. These difficulties are more emphasized when novices are K–12 students. Many new visual programming languages have primarily been designed to provide a smooth introduction to programming for children. However, at some point, a general‐purpose text‐based programming language should be used. A well‐known and studied method is to visualize program execution to assist novices in forming correct mental models. Although many studies have investigated the effects of using visualizations in teaching and learning, most of them focus on courses taught at the university level. Studies that focus on investigating the impact of program visualizations at the K–12 level are, to the best of our knowledge, scarce. Therefore, we investigated the impact of using program visualizations with a group of K–12 students. Because of the underrepresentation of girls in computer science and known gender stereotypes, we additionally investigated student performance based on gender. Our research included 98 fifth‐grade students from three elementary schools. The lectures in the experimental group included different visualization techniques, including a program visualization tool and PowerPoint animations, whereas the control group had no program visualizations. All students learned Python as part of their curriculum. We present the results of our research in this paper.

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Block-based programming languages are becoming a favourite learning tool for programming novices while the traditional way of teaching programming mostly uses text-based programming languages. The purpose of this study was to compare the impact of used visual and textual programming languages on K-12 students' understanding of the loop concept. Participants were 312 elementary school students from 5th to 8th grade using visual programming language Scratch (n = 59), and textual programming languages Logo (n = 185) and Python (n = 68). Tests for all languages were equivalent, differing only in the used programming language. Results showed that students achieved statistically significant higher scores when using block-based programming language compared to students using textual programming languages. These results show that K-12 students need concrete experience to understand abstract concepts, as the loop concept, which Scratch as a blockbased programming language provides.

No abstract

Block-based programming languages are becoming a favourite learning tool for programming novices while the traditional way of teaching programming mostly uses text-based programming languages. The purpose of this study was to compare the impact of used visual and textual programming languages on K-12 students' understanding of the loop concept. Participants were 312 elementary school students from 5th to 8th grade using visual programming language Scratch (n = 59), and textual programming languages Logo (n = 185) and Python (n = 68). Tests for all languages were equivalent, differing only in the used programming language. Results showed that students achieved statistically significant higher scores when using block-based programming language compared to students using textual programming languages. These results show that K-12 students need concrete experience to understand abstract concepts, as the loop concept, which Scratch as a blockbased programming language provides.