As programming continues to be an essential 21st century skill, it is critical to focus on diversity and increasing participation of underrepresented groups in computing. To address this need, we must better understand minorities' views and attitudes towards programming, especially in their youth, as literature shows that children form ideas about their interests and careers in middle school or earlier. To explore this, we provided middle school students in the U.S. with a full day (7 hours) of programming activities to learn about their initial attitudes towards computing and how a short intervention might change these attitudes. We ran two separate one-day events, serving a total of 34 minority students (21 males and 13 females; grades 6 and 7) from a low-income, urban area. We found that students' initial attitudes towards computing were high, and that one day of learning programming increased their reported attitudes in computing even more. We also found differences in attitudes by gender and ethnicity. These findings highlight the positive attitudes minority students have towards computing, and the importance of providing resources and support to help maintain their interests in computing while recognizing demographic differences.
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Micro:bit vs. Python: Students’ perceptions and attitudes toward computing
There has been a growing interest in teaching computer science (CS) concepts to
students at a younger age. Increasingly, block-based programming has been used in place of
traditional text-based programming languages, like Python, in K-12 education. However, little
empirical research has been conducted to compare the combination of the former and physical
computing with the latter. This study aimed to address this gap by comparing the attitudes and
perceptions of elementary school students in the two approaches in a six-week afterschool program.
The findings from the experiment indicated that students’ attitudes and perceptions toward
computing were more positive when using physical computing. These findings suggest potential
pedagogical implications and future research directions.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1923483
- PAR ID:
- 10536459
- Publisher / Repository:
- Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference
- Date Published:
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2320-2327
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- physical computing computational thinking text-based programming
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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