Students’ interest in Scratch coding in lower secondary mathematics

Abstract

The ability to code computer programs is an important part of literacy in today's society. Coding is a part of logical reasoning, which represents one of the key skills of what are now called "21st century skills" (European Schoolnet, 2014). In an attempt to increase interest in coding, much effort has gone into developing tools and activities for young people. One such initiative is Scratch, a visual coding environment developed by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. Scratch is intended to foster creativity and increase motivation to engage with computers. The Scratch online community's slogan "Imagine, Program, Share" indicates that sharing and the social aspects of creativity are important parts of the philosophy behind Scratch. The term "Scratching" refers to the fact that existing code can be reused for other purposes and easily combined, shared and adapted to new scenarios-in Scratch, users are encouraged to "remix," downloading and building upon projects developed and made publicly available by other users (Kafai & Burke, 2014).A growing number of schools around the world use Scratch as a gateway to coding. Scratch coding has been successfully utilized in subjects including mathematics, science and arts. In mathematics, Lewis and Shah (2012) measured correlation between the results of coding quizzes and AbstractThe ability to code computer programs is considered an important part of literacy in today's society. This paper reports from a case study in two sixth-grade classes where Scratch coding was part of six mathematics lessons. The aim of the study was to investigate how Scratch coding affected students' interest development in coding and in mathematics. Data were collected using a convergent parallel mixed methods design. The results show a slight, but nevertheless significant, negative effect on students' average interest in coding, as well as in mathematics. Students attributed this to the level of difficulty and the tedious workflow, indicating that their waning interest was due to the prescriptive nature of tasks that offered neither a sense of accomplishment nor the chance for autonomous input. However, situational interest was triggered in off-task coding situations. These situations were not related to the mathematical coding tasks but to the use of existing Scratch games and animations. The findings point to the importance of design principles that allow students an opportunity to tinker, but also to a need for an increased focus on facilitating the development of design knowledge within teacher professional development.

The Effect of Block-Based Programming Activities on Pre-Service Teachers’ Computer Programming Self-Efficacy and Computational Thinking Skills

“…Nowadays it is clear that programming teaching is a necessity in schools (Akpınar & Altun, 2014;Dohn, 2019). Indeed, considering 21st century skills, programming teaching plays a key role in gaining these skills (Yukselturk & Altiok, 2018).…”

“…Günümüzde okullarda programlama öğretiminin bir gereksinim olduğu açıkça ortadadır (Akpınar ve Altun, 2014;Dohn, 2019). Nitekim, 21. yy becerileri dikkate alındığında programlama öğretimi bu becerilerin kazandırılmasında anahtar rolündedir (Yükseltürk ve Altıok, 2018).…”

The Effect of Programming Classes with Tangible Scratch Blocks on the Programming Interest of 6th Grade Elementary School Students

“…Scratch is appropriate for novice programmers to learn the basic principles of programming (sequences, conditionals, and loops) because it presents fewer grammatical and logical errors than other programming languages. It provides an effective way for elementary school students to learn coding and programming because of being more accessible and the appeal of creating various multimedia projects [6].…”

“…Among these, Scratch [4] is very popular and available in more than 40 languages and 150 countries. Scratch is based on a Graphical User Interface (GUI), and it is highly suited to complete newcomers to computer programming because it minimizes grammatical errors, thus is potentially simpler to learn [5], [6].…”

Tactile Scratch Electronic Block System: Expanding Opportunities for Younger Children to Learn Programming

“…Among these, Scratch is popular and available in more than 40 languages and 150 countries. The Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab runs the Scratch program, and Millions of people of all ages use it [1]. The core goal of Scratch is to teach programming to people without any prior experience.…”