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Elementary Students’ Understanding of CS Terms

Authors:

Jessica Vandenberg,

Danielle Boulden,

Zarifa Zakaria,

Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, and

Eric WiebeAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE), Volume 20, Issue 3

Article No.: 17, Pages 1 - 19

https://doi.org/10.1145/3386364

Published: 16 June 2020 Publication History

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Abstract

The language and concepts used by curriculum designers are not always interpreted by children as designers intended. This can be problematic when researchers use self-reported survey instruments in concert with curricula, which often rely on the implicit belief that students’ understanding aligns with their own. We report on our refinement of a validated survey to measure upper elementary students’ attitudes and perspectives about computer science (CS), using an iterative, design-based research approach informed by educational and psychological cognitive interview processes. We interviewed six groups of students over three iterations of the instrument on their understanding of CS concepts and attitudes toward coding. Our findings indicated that students could not explain the terms computer programs nor computer science as expected. Furthermore, they struggled to understand how coding may support their learning in other domains. These results may guide the development of appropriate CS-related survey instruments and curricular materials for K–6 students.

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Cited By

Vandenberg JMott BLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)"AI Teaches Itself": Exploring Young Learners' Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence for Instrument DevelopmentProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588778(485-490)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588778
Ober TCheng YCoggins MBrenner PZdankus JGonsalves PJohnson EUrdan T(2022)Charting a path for growth in middle school students’ attitudes toward computer programmingComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2022.213467734:1(4-36)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2022.2134677
Vandenberg JLynch CBoyer KWiebe E(2022)“I remember how to do it”: exploring upper elementary students’ collaborative regulation while pair programming using epistemic network analysisComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2022.204467233:3(429-457)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2022.2044672
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Elementary Students’ Understanding of CS Terms
1. Social and professional topics
  1. Professional topics
    1. Computing education
      1. K-12 education
      2. Student assessment

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Computing Education

ACM Transactions on Computing Education Volume 20, Issue 3

September 2020

200 pages

EISSN:1946-6226

DOI:10.1145/3406963

Editor:
Chris Hundhausen
Washington State University, USA

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Copyright © 2020 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 16 June 2020

Online AM: 07 May 2020

Accepted: 01 February 2020

Revised: 01 December 2019

Received: 01 August 2019

Published in TOCE Volume 20, Issue 3

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Cited By

Vandenberg JMott BLaakso MMonga MSimon Sheard J(2023)"AI Teaches Itself": Exploring Young Learners' Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence for Instrument DevelopmentProceedings of the 2023 Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3587102.3588778(485-490)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3587102.3588778
Ober TCheng YCoggins MBrenner PZdankus JGonsalves PJohnson EUrdan T(2022)Charting a path for growth in middle school students’ attitudes toward computer programmingComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2022.213467734:1(4-36)Online publication date: 4-Nov-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2022.2134677
Vandenberg JLynch CBoyer KWiebe E(2022)“I remember how to do it”: exploring upper elementary students’ collaborative regulation while pair programming using epistemic network analysisComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2022.204467233:3(429-457)Online publication date: 9-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2022.2044672
Vandenberg JRachmatullah ALynch CBoyer KWiebe E(2022)Interaction effects of race and gender in elementary CS attitudesInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.10029329:COnline publication date: 22-Apr-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.ijcci.2021.100293
Becker B(2021)The Roles and Challenges of Computing Terminology in Non-Computing DisciplinesProceedings of the 2021 Conference on United Kingdom & Ireland Computing Education Research10.1145/3481282.3481284(1-7)Online publication date: 2-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3481282.3481284
Vandenberg JRachmatullah ALynch CBoyer KWiebe ESchulte CBecker BDivitini MBarendsen E(2021)The Relationship of CS Attitudes, Perceptions of Collaboration, and Pair Programming Strategies on Upper Elementary Students' CS LearningProceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3430665.3456347(46-52)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3430665.3456347
Rachmatullah AWiebe E(2021)Building a computational model of food webs: Impacts on middle school students' computational and systems thinking skillsJournal of Research in Science Teaching10.1002/tea.2173859:4(585-618)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2021
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