Review of learning design choices of primary school programming courses in empirical researches

Abstract

Programming, most recently in the form of Computational Thinking (CT), is emerging as a new subject in primary schools worldwide. By data-based decision making, teachers, as learning designers, make decisions on instruction design based on a broad range of evidence, such as student assessment scores and classroom teaching observations. Given the current limitations on conclusive, field-proven teaching practices and an underlying 'culture' to use as a basis, we turn to pertinent empirical studies that the growing scientific interest on introducing programming in primary school curricula has produced. The hypothesis is that we may overcome the lack of extensive experience in designing a programming course by reviewing the above evidence, in order to frame learning situations and methods. © 2021 IEEE.