Programming Instruction at K-12 Schools---An Investigation into the Teaching Strategies

[[abstract]]This is a three-year project, starting in August, 2008, that tries to explore effective strategies for use in programming instruction at elementary and middle schools. The second year’s study has been focused on parent-child collaboration in programming learning. Specifically we intended to investigate how parents and children collaborated with each other when they wrote MSWLogo programs together. A multi-case study approach, in which three parent-child pairs were observed directly during a five-day computer camp, was used. Each pair was assigned a total of 33 programming tasks to solve during the course. Qualitative data were collected through classroom observation, individual interviews and video recording. Findings from this study indicated that parent-child collaboration in programming naturally fell into a special form of “pair programming” in which the parent and the child in each pair took the roles of “the reviewer” and “the driver” respectively. It was also shown that, under the supervision of their parents, the children were able to work through the programming problems more systematically, which resulted in programs that were more compact and contained fewer errors. Moreover, the parents took care to ensure that their children reflected and looked back at what they had done to solve a problem. The participating parents and children alike found great pleasure in learning to program collaboratively.