Primary school pre-service teachers competence level of computational concepts in programming using Dr. Scratch

Theresia Yunia Setyawan, Universitas Sanata Dharma, Indonesia

Abstract


This descriptive research aimed at providing a general description of primary school pre-service teachers’ competence level of computational concepts in programming with Scratch using Dr. Scratch. This study analyzed Scratch projects made by 87 sophomore students of the Primary School Teacher Education Program of Sanata Dharma University as part of their Media Pembelajaran Berbasis ICT (MPBICT) course. The projects were then submitted to the Scratch Online Community platform and analyzed using a web tool called Dr. Scratch to analyze their competence level of computational concepts. The analysis results provided by Dr. Scratch showed that 75.86% of the Scratch projects belong to the category of developing projects while 22.99% of them were categorized as master projects, and only 1.15% of the projects could be labeled as basic projects. The results also revealed that the most common bad coding practices identified in the submitted projects were duplicated scripts and object namings. These results indicated that the primary school pre-service teachers of the Primary School Teacher Education Program of Sanata Dharma University had moderate competence level in integrating Scratch computational concepts such as flow control, data representation, synchronization, and user interactivity but the pre-service teachers still needed to be provided with more opportunities to work with other Scratch computational concepts such as abstraction, parallelism, and logic.

Keywords


Computational concepts; Dr. Scratch; pre-service teachers; primary school

Full Text:

PDF

References


Adams, K. A., & Lawrence, E. K. (2019). Research methods, statistics, and applications (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications, Inc.

Angevine, C. (2018). Advancing computational thinking across K-12 education. Gettingsmart.Com. https://www.gettingsmart.com/2018/02/advancing-computational-thinking-across-k-12-education/

Barr, D., Harrison, J., & Conery, L. (2011). Computational thinking: A digital age skill for everyone. Learning & Leading with Technology, 38, 20–23. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ918910.pdf

Battaglia, M. P. (2011). Nonprobability sampling. In Encyclopedia of Survey Reasearch Methods. Sage Publications.

Brennan, K., & Resnick, M. (2012). New frameworks for studying and assessing the development of computational thinking. Annual American Educational Research Association Meeting, 1–25. http://web.media.mit.edu/~kbrennan/files/Brennan_Resnick_AERA2012_CT.pdf

Bullee, A., Norbert, A., Naseeven, P., Pultoo, A., Oojorah, A., Roocha, V., Sheoraj, K., Rajcoomar, H., Panchoo, S., & Ujoodha, M. (2020). Codecraft competition: Learning to code through contests using scratch. Journal of Science and Technology, 5(4), 40–53. https://doi.org/10.46243/jst.2020.v5.i4.pp40-53

Burke, Q., Bailey, C. S., & Ruiz, P. (2019). CIRCL primer: Assessing computational thinking. CIRCL Primer Series. http://circlcenter.org/assessing-computational-thinking

Elskamp, F. (2018). CoDuo: A game for teaching computational thinking in primary education. http://essay.utwente.nl/75552/

Fagerlund, J., Häkkinen, P., Vesisenaho, M., & Viiri, J. (2021). Computational thinking in programming with Scratch in primary schools: A systematic review. Computer Applications in Engineering Education, 29(1), 12–28. https://doi.org/10.1002/cae.22255

Fingal, J. (2018). Teaching computational thinking more important than defining it. Iste.Org. https://www.iste.org/explore/Computational-Thinking/Teaching-computational-thinking-more-important-than-defining-it

Hunsaker, E. (2020). Computational Thinking. In A. Ottenbreit-Leftwich & R. Kimmons (Eds.), The K-12 Educational Technology Handbook. EdTech Books. https://edtechbooks.org/k12handbook/computational_thinking/simple

ISTE, & CSTA. (2011). Operational definition of computational thinking for K–12 education. National Science Foundation.

Jacob, S., & Warschauer, M. (2018). Computational thinking and literacy. Journal of Computer Science Integration, 1(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.26716/jcsi.2018.01.1.1

Kite, V., & Park, S. (2020, March 26). Secondary science teachers conceptualizations of computational thinking and perceived barriers to CT/content integration. The 2020 Annual Meeting of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching (NARST). https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340175597

Kotsopoulos, D., Floyd, L., Khan, S., Namukasa, I. K., Somanath, S., Weber, J., & Yiu, C. (2017). A pedagogical framework for computational thinking. Digital Experiences in Mathematics Education, 3(2), 154–171. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40751-017-0031-2

Kwon, K., Lee, S. J., & Chung, J. (2018). Computational concepts reflected on Scratch programs. International Journal of Computer Science Education in Schools, 2(3). https://doi.org/10.21585/ijcses.v2i3.33

Looi, C.-K., Chan, S. W., Huang, W., Seow, P., & Wu, L. (2020). Preservice teachers’ views of computational thinking: STEM teachers vs non-STEM teachers. In S. C. Kong, H. U. Hoppe, T. C. Hsu, R. H. Huang, B. C. Kuo, K. Y. Li, C. K. Looi, M. Milrad, J. L. Shih, K. F. Sin, K. S. Song, M. Specht, F. Sullivan, & J. Vahrenhold (Eds.), The Fourth International Conference on Computational Thinking Education 2020 (pp. 73–76). The Education University of Hong Kong. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343737473_Preservice_Teachers’_Views_of_Computational_Thinking_STEM_Teachers_vs_non-STEM_Teachers

Lynch, M. (2019). Why we must teach our teachers computational thinking. Thetechedvocate.Org. https://www.thetechedvocate.org/why-we-must-teach-our-teachers-computational-thinking/

Martins-Pacheco., L., von Wangenheim., C., & Alves., N. (2019). Assessment of computational thinking in K-12 context: Educational practices, limits and possibilities - A systematic mapping study. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, 292–303. https://doi.org/10.5220/0007738102920303

McVeigh-Murphy, A. (2019). What is computational thinking? and why is it important for students? Equip.Learning.Com. https://equip.learning.com/computational-thinking

Moreno-León, J, & Robles, G. (2015). Analyze your Scratch projects with Dr . Scratch and assess your Computational Thinking skills.

Moreno-León, Jesús, Robles, G., & Román-González, M. (2015). Dr. Scratch: Automatic analysis of scratch projects to assess and foster computational thinking. Scratch Conference, 12–15. https://jemole.me/replication/2015scratch/InferCT.pdf

O’Neill, J. (2018). SPAE: A Scratch Project Analysis tool for Educators [Appalachian State University]. http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/O%27Neill_Joseph_2018_Thesis.pdf

Papert, S. A. (1993). Mindstorms: Children, computers, and powerful ideas (2nd ed.). Basic Books.

Rich, K. M., Yadav, A., & Larimore, R. A. (2020). Teacher implementation profiles for integrating computational thinking into elementary mathematics and science instruction. Education and Information Technologies, 25(4), 3161–3188. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10115-5

Román-González, M., Pérez-González, J.-C., & Jiménez-Fernández, C. (2017). Which cognitive abilities underlie computational thinking? Criterion validity of the Computational Thinking Test. Computers in Human Behavior, 72, 678–691. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.08.047

Rose, S., Habgood, J., & Jay, T. (2018). Pirate plunder: Game-based computational thinking using scratch blocks. In Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Games Based Learning (pp. 556–564). Academic Conferences and Publishing International Limited. http://shura.shu.ac.uk/21715/

Šerbec, I. N., Cerar, Š., & Žerovnik, A. (2018). Developing computational thinking through games in Scratch. Education and Research in the Information Society. http://hdl.handle.net/10525/2943

Stockemer, D. (2018). Quantitative methods for the social sciences: A practical introduction with examples in SPSS and stata. Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99118-4

Troiano, G. M., Snodgrass, S., Argimak, E., Robles, G., Smith, G., Cassidy, M., Tucker-Raymond, E., Puttick, G., & Harteveld, C. (2019). Is my game ok Dr. Scratch? Exploring programming and computational thinking development via metrics in student-designed serious games for STEM. Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 208–219. https://doi.org/10.1145/3311927.3323152

Vaidyanathan, S. (2016). What’s the difference between coding and computational thinking? Edsurge.Com. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-08-06-what-s-the-difference-between-coding-and-computational-thinking

Vatansever, Ö., & Baltaci Goktalay, S. (2018). How does teaching programming through Scratch affect problem-solving skills of 5th and 6th grade middle school students? International Journal of Management and Social Sciences, 9(33), 1778–1801. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328601938

Voinohovska, V., Tsankov, S., & Goranova, E. (2019). Development of the students’ computational thinking skills with project-based learning in Scratch programming environment. 12th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, 5254–5261. https://doi.org/10.21125/edulearn.2020.0133

Wang, P. S. (2017). From computing to computational thinking (1st ed.). CRC Press. https://doi.org/10.1201/9781315115320

Weese, J. L., & Feldhausen, R. (2017). STEM outreach: Assessing computational thinking and problem solving. 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition. https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--28845

Wing, J. M. (2006). Computational thinking. Communications of the ACM, 49(3), 33–35. https://doi.org/10.1145/1118178.1118215




DOI: https://doi.org/10.21831/jitp.v7i2.36185

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2021 Theresia Yunia Setyawan

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Our journal indexed by:

       

View Journal Statistics