skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


  • NSF Public Access
  • Search Results
  • Leveling the computational playing field: Inquiring about factors predicting computational thinking in constructionist game-based learning

This content will become publicly available on June 7, 2026

Title: Leveling the computational playing field: Inquiring about factors predicting computational thinking in constructionist game-based learning
Computational thinking (CT) is key in STEM and computer science (CS) education. Recently, there has been a surge in studies inquiring about the factors that predict the CT development of young students. We extend these prior works by inquiring about the factors that predict the CT of students (n = 932) in a constructionist game-based learning (GBL) STEM curriculum. Specifically, after addressing missing data through imputation, we apply Multilevel Modeling (MLM) to identify these potential factors in Scratch games and students’ CT. We found that teachers’ experience implementing game-based curricula, students’ Scratch experience, student choice of game genre, and the interaction between teacher experience and game genre significantly predicted CT. Instead, students’ gender did not emerge as a significant predictor of CT. We provide recommendations for curricula that support CT through constructionist GBL.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2122707
PAR ID:
10645295
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Editor(s):
Pergamon
Publisher / Repository:
Elsevier
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Computers and education
ISSN:
0360-1315
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. (, Proceedings of tThe 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)
    null (Ed.)
    While the Next Generation Science Standards set an expectation for developing computer science and computational thinking (CT) practices in the context of science subjects, it is an open question as to how to create curriculum and assessments that develop and measure these practices. In this poster, we show one possible solution to this problem: to introduce students to computer science through infusing computational thinking practices ("CT-ifying") science classrooms. To address this gap, our group has worked to explicitly characterize core CT-STEM practices as specific learning objectives and we use these to guide our development of science curriculum and assessments. However, having these learning objectives in mind is not enough to actually create activities that engage students in CT practices. We have developed along with science teachers, a strategy of examining a teacher’s existing curricula and identifying potential activities and concepts to “CT-ify”, rather than creating entirely new curricula from scratch by using the concept of scale as an “attack vector” to design science units that integrate computational thinking practices into traditional science curricula. We demonstrate how we conceptualize four different versions of scale in science, 1. Time, 2. Size, 3. Number, and 4. Repeatability. We also present examples of these concepts in traditional high school science curricula that hundreds of students in a large urban US school district have used. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education)
    Computational Thinking (CT) is being infused into curricula in a variety of core K-12 STEM courses. As these topics are being introduced to students without prior programming experience and are potentially taught by instructors unfamiliar with programming and CT, appropriate lesson design might help support both students and teachers. “Use-Modify-Create" (UMC), a CT lesson progression, has students ease into CT topics by first “Using" a given artifact, “Modifying" an existing one, and then eventually “Creating" new ones. While studies have presented lessons adopting and adapting this progression and advocating for its use, few have focused on evaluating UMC’s pedagogical effectiveness and claims. We present a comparison study between two CT lesson progressions for middle school science classes. Students participated in a 4-day activity focused on developing an agent-based simulation in a block-based programming environment. While some classrooms had students develop code on days 2-4, others used a scaffolded lesson plan modeled after the UMC framework. Through analyzing student’s exit tickets, classroom observations, and teacher interviews, we illustrate differences in perception of assignment difficulty from both the students and teachers, as well as student perception of artifact “ownership" between conditions. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ; (, Proceedings of International Conference on Computational Thinking Education 2020)
    Kong, S.C. (Ed.)
    This work aims to help high school STEM teachers integrate computational thinking (CT) into their classrooms by engaging teachers as curriculum co-designers. K-12 teachers who are not trained in computer science may not see the value of CT in STEM classrooms and how to engage their students in computational practices that reflect the practices of STEM professionals. To this end, we developed a 4-week professional development workshop for eight science and mathematics high school teachers to co-design computationally enhanced curriculum with our team of researchers. The workshop first provided an introduction to computational practices and tools for STEM education. Then, teachers engaged in co-design to enhance their science and mathematics curricula with computational practices in STEM. Data from surveys and interviews showed that teachers learned about computational thinking, computational tools, coding, and the value of collaboration after the professional development. Further, they were able to integrate multiple computational tools that engage their students in CT-STEM practices. These findings suggest that teachers can learn to use computational practices and tools through workshops, and that teachers collaborating with researchers in co-design to develop computational enhanced STEM curriculum may be a powerful way to engage students and teachers with CT in K-12 classrooms. 
    more » « less
  4. ; (, Proceedings of the Fifth Asia Pacific Society for Computers in Education International Conference on Computational Thinking and STEM Education,)
    The focus of this paper is to investigate how elementary students learned computer science concepts through storytelling in Scratch. To serve this purpose, we conducted artifact interviews with 4th graders who were engaged with a computer science (CS) integrated module in their English language arts (ELA) class. Students created stories in Scratch with a focus on character traits. The constructionist design of the Scratch tool supports student learning through tinkering, the creation of meaningful artifacts, and through the theatrical metaphor that underlies interface design. This paper explores how two 4th graders demonstrated their CS/CT and ELA knowledge through the design of a Scratch artifact and how Scratch facilitated this interdisciplinary learning. While there have been studies in middle school and in after-school contexts that focus on digital storytelling and writing, there are few papers that examine interdisciplinary integration in the formal school context at the elementary level. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; (, SIGCSE '20: Proceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)
    With many school districts nationwide integrating Computer Science (CS) and Computational Thinking (CT) instruction at the K-8 level, it is crucial researchers closely inspect the relationship between program expression and student understandings. In this study, we propose and report on our use of Scratch Charades, a game in which students act out Scratch scripts while others build them. The purpose of Scratch Charades is to familiarize students with scripts and blocks without the cognitive overhead of the complex user interface. However, in this study, we also used it to elicit student understandings about Scratch blocks and scripts to design mnemonics to help students debug their code. We propose two building and/or debugging strategies based on our observations. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email