Effect of Mind Mapping on Creative Thinking of Children in Scratch Visual Programming Education

Abstract

Scratch, a kind of visual programming software, has been widely used in instruction for primary school children. Scratch constructs a digital world for children to design, develop, and create coursework in which their creative thinking is fostered. Different instructional methods have been designed and implemented to stimulate children’s creative thinking skills through their coursework. This study investigated whether scaffolding construction with mind mapping promoted children’s creative thinking in a Scratch course. Two groups of 84 fifth-grade pupils participated in the study. The experimental group of 44 students adopted the scaffolding construction with mind mapping in the Scratch course, while the control group of 40 students did not use the mind mapping method. The Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural (TTCT-F) and Torrance Creative Personality Self-Report Scale were used three times over the 16-week learning period. The results show that learning in the Scratch course promoted the children’s creative thinking. The difference between the two groups indicates that mind mapping was beneficial to improve the children’s creative thinking.

Impact of the Pandemic on STEAM Disciplines in the Sixth Grade of Primary Education

“…However, unlike the first objective that we discussed, the data confirm that the pandemic, together with the preventive measures in Spanish schools, had an impact on the experimental group that developed active methodologies, as supported by the study by Ref [ 68 ], especially in PEER_INT, POST_COM and TRANS_THINK in a negative way, although above the average evaluation. That is, working in the classroom as a group or exchanging ideas among peers through fields of computational thinking, such as robotics, programing or artificial intelligence, as supported by studies by Refs [ 41 , 42 , 43 , 51 ], are considered beneficial for transdisciplinary learning. However, according to the results of this study, the students of the experimental group valued these disciplines less when working individually and without being able to share resources or being able to move to creative spaces.…”

“…In reference to the main objective of the study, “Evaluate the STEAM dimensions in sixth grade of primary education in times of pandemic”, the post-test results of the experimental group support the lines of research of Refs [ 19 , 20 ] in relation to the fact that there is little research on STEAM-EDU teaching methodologies and resources among teachers, who encountered an added difficulty during the pandemic, that is, the restrictions implemented in educational centers by the government of Spain [ 69 ]. Finally, in the experimental group, the possibility of creating, researching, interacting, exploring, developing and presenting, which are areas of the Classroom of the Future, and these actions are associated with the pyramid of Bloom’s taxonomy, are enriching cognitive processes that are achieved through computational thinking, following the lines of research in Refs [ 40 , 43 , 44 ]. In this study, the pre-test data show that they are viable but not as a result of the pandemic.…”

“…STEAM-EDU develops computational thinking skills at an early age [ 39 ], understood as the ability to formulate and represent problems to solve them through the use of tools, concepts and practices of the computer science discipline, such as abstraction, decomposition or use of simulations [ 40 ]. There are multiple fields that allow STEAM-EDU to work through computational thinking, such as robotics [ 41 , 42 ], block programing or artificial intelligence, which favor student problem solving [ 43 , 44 ] with benefits for the development of creative thinking [ 45 , 46 ]. Computational thinking “is acquiring great importance due to the evolution of new technologies, thus creating a global trend that considers programming in the classroom as a fundamental activity of the present and the future” [ 47 ] (p. 45).…”

Effects of ATDE Teaching Mode during Online Teaching on Creative Thinking Ability of Learners

“…They have active thinking and like imagination and show obvious creativity and passion in many aspects (Su, Y. S et al [29]).…”

Promoting Students’ Programming Logic and Problem-Solving Awareness With Precision Feedback: A Two-Tier Test-Based Online Programming Training Approach

“…For example, Scratch is a well-recognized visual programming language with a user-friendly graphical interface (Alonso, 2020). Several previous studies have reported the potential of using such visual programming systems to foster novice learners’ computational thinking (Wu & Su, 2021) and creative thinking (Su et al, 2021; Resnick et al, 2009) as well as programming syntax (Meerbaum-Salant et al, 2013).…”