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A proposal for teaching ScratchJr programming environment in preservice kindergarten teachers

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Michail Kalogiannakis at University of Thessaly
Michail Kalogiannakis
Stamatios Papadakis at University of Crete
Stamatios Papadakis
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Abstract

This paper reports the design and evaluation of semester-scale teaching intervention addressing the teaching of Scratch programming environment followed by pre-service kindergarten students. The overall aim of this course was to assist students in utilizing computational thinking and programming as an instructional tool within other subject areas (i.e. mathematics and physics). The methodology used is the research based design, which is interventional and recursive in nature. The observations of the researchers, the recordings of students' actions, as well as their projects, were used to draw conclusions, to identify strengths or weaknesses of the teaching intervention implemented and to assess its efficacy regarding a computer course structure using the educational environment ScratchJr. We argue that the teaching of ScratchJr can assist teachers in utilizing Computational Thinking and programming as an instructional tool within other subject areas (i.e. mathematics and physics).
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A PROPOSAL FOR TEACHING SCRATCHJR PROGRAMMING
ENVIRONMENT IN PRESERVICE KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS
Michail Kalogiannakis
1
, Stamatios Papadakis
2
1,2
Department of Preschool Education, Faculty of Education, University of Crete, Crete Greece
This paper reports the design and evaluation of semester-scale teaching intervention addressing the
teaching of Scratch programming environment followed by pre-service kindergarten students. The overall
aim of this course was to assist students in utilizing computational thinking and programming as an
instructional tool within other subject areas (i.e. mathematics and physics). The methodology used is the
research based design, which is interventional and recursive in nature. The observations of the researchers,
the recordings of students’ actions, as well as their projects, were used to draw conclusions, to identify
strengths or weaknesses of the teaching intervention implemented and to assess its efficacy regarding a
computer course structure using the educational environment ScratchJr. We argue that the teaching of
ScratchJr can assist teachers in utilizing Computational Thinking and programming as an instructional tool
within other subject areas (i.e. mathematics and physics).
Keywords: ScratchJr, Preservice kindergarten teachers, computational thinking
INTRODUCTION
The formal study of computational skills in primary and secondary schools has been recognized by many
institutions and administrations (Department of Education, 2013). Learning to code and develop
computational thinking are skills that make an essential contribution to the learning process of children,
helping them to face many situations they will find in life, and enabling them better collaboration between
human and machine (Papadakis, Kalogiannakis & Zaranis, 2016). However, for developing children
computing skills during preschool education it is necessary for preschool teachers to be able to introduce
coding and Computational Thinking (CT) to preschoolers. Interventions concerning the teaching of
programming to pre-service teachers with programming environments such as Scratch have shown positive
results (Bean et al., 2015; Saltan & Kara, 2016). These interventions relate to the use of traditional computer
in preschool class. However, given the current entry of tablets into K-12 education, researchers have
expressed concern about the lack of a mobile-friendly version of Scratch (Bean et al., 2015). Various studies
have shown that under certain conditions mobile devices contribute to creating an interactive learning
environment that the students can benefit from (Flannery et al., 2015). In this study, we propose the use of a
new programming environment, the ScratchJr, to assist pre-service kindergarten teachers in utilizing CT and
programming as an instructional tool within other subject areas (i.e. mathematics, and science).
METHOD
Study purpose
The purpose of this study is the design and evaluation of a teaching intervention for teaching ScratchJr via a
six-month workshop in a department of preschool education and the wording of a possible new teaching
intervention based on these findings.
Exploring Digital Literacy in Early Childhood with ScratchJr
ScratchJr is a graphical programming tool currently in development for kindergarten through second-grade
students. ScratchJr builds on the graphical programming language Scratch which uses interconnecting on-
screen blocks to program character animations. ScratchJr is uniquely focused on the developmental needs of
5- to 7-year-olds, such as emerging fine motor skills, reading ability, and self-regulation. The software could
stand alone as a technology tool; however, the ScratchJr team has also created fun, engaging, curricular
activities which complement and scaffold the software (Flannery et al. 2013).
The teaching intervention design
In the present study, the design based research was used as a methodological approach. This approach,
which blends empirical educational research with the theory-driven design of learning environments, is an
important methodology for understanding how, when, and why educational innovations work in practice
(The Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). In this methodology, there are some cross-features,
including (Cobb, et al., 2003):
• The design experiments applied to obtain local theories that are valid in a certain context,
• The knowledge of other studies (in education and other fields) used in the educational design,
• The nature of the research is intrusive,
• The reflection is a key element of the methodology, and
• The conclusions are used for a new intervention (iterative design).
122 female students who were third- and fourth-year undergraduate kindergarten students attended a
semester course on how to use ScratchJr for educational purposes. The students were not dealt with
ScratchJr in the past. The course consist of a weekly lesson of a three-hour duration that was carried out in
13 weeks. The study design is presented in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The study design
Due to the large number of participants, each group was composed of 2-4 members. At the end of each
lesson, each group was required to send its projects to the teacher using the ScratchJr built-in feature of
sending project via email. The first 10 lessons were divided into two parts. In the first part, the students were
engaged in an open activity with ScratchJr, which introduced a new programming concept or a new
ScratchJr characteristic. In the second part, the students were engaged in group work and supervised by the
teacher. We carefully selected examples that would be both attainable and challenging and arranged them in
increasing complexity. Each lesson delved much deeper into computational thinking concepts, including
sequences, loops, events, and parallelism. Moreover, the practice of ‘running’ each project as the students
were building it firmly established the practice of testing and debugging early on. The sequence of courses
was adapted from the ScratchJr ‘Animated Genres’ curriculum as described by Portelance & Bers (2015)
and the activities included in the book entitled ‘The Official ScratchJr Book’ (Bers & Resnick, 2015). In our
approach, learning coding and CT is about moving away from computer languages, syntax, and academic
exercises towards real-world connections: game design and building projects that tie into other subjects like
physics and mathematics. The students were informed that the last three courses would be dedicated to the
development of three open-ended design-thinking projects from the fields of physics and mathematics. The
course website was used for a regular exchange of information and views throughout the semester.
RESULTS
The findings of this study regarding the course evaluation focus on the ways the ScratchJr was used by the
students during the semester. The conclusions are derived from the researchers' observations and content
analysis of the projects delivered during the workshops (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Researchers took field
notes as to what issues the students encountered during each session and why. The students during the first
two meetings were not limited to the teaching content but they experimented with other commands of
ScratchJr. At the end of the third and fourth lesson, the students created complex projects utilizing the
multiple ways of sprites synchronization. The work of students within the scope of ScratchJr, characterized
by a high level of interaction with the user. In the tenth lesson, the students were taught the synchronization
via message passing (“when I receive message” block). All students used that feature in their final projects.
In general, we found that many of the challenges-difficulties students faced were due to factors related more
to the environment limitations than to programming concepts. The students’ final projects characterized by a
high degree of complexity revealing that using ScratchJr became familiar with classifications of various
programming components and they build foundational knowledge structures across domains. This success of
the intervention was also reflected in students’ end-of-semester blog posts and comments in the lesson
online platform.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
In this research, we presented ScratchJr combined with a teaching intervention to familiarize pre-service
kindergarten teachers with basic programming concepts. Based on the findings from this study, we conclude
that the teaching of ScratchJr can assist teachers in utilizing CT and programming as an instructional tool
within other subject areas (i.e. mathematics and physics). The intervention strategy of providing pre-service
teachers with mastery experiences of using CT embedded within other subject areas such as mathematics
and physics was clearly successful. Through mastery experiences, the students learn that they can indeed
program, and may even enjoy it, even though they previously did not consider it a possibility. The proposed
course of teaching seems to work well enabling all students to participate in the activities. We also consider
the formation of groups of 2-4 students positive as it gave students the opportunity to collaborate with each
other while solving problems and answering questions most of the time without teacher intervention.
ScratchJr runs on any smart mobile device with screen size 7-inches or large. The concern regarding the
existence of enough tablets was dealt with the adoption of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) practice, i.e. the
use of students’ tablets. Due to the repetitive nature of this research, we aimed at a further evaluating of this
teaching intervention efficiency, to form a complete sentence for teaching ScratchJr and basic programming
concepts to preservice kindergarten teachers.
REFERENCES
Bean, N., Weese, J., Feldhausen, R., & Bell, R. S. (2015). Starting from scratch: Developing a pre-service teacher
training program in computational thinking. In Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE), (pp. 1-8). IEEE.
Bers, M. U., & Resnick, M. (2015). The Official ScratchJr Book. No Starch Press, Inc., San Francisco, CA.
Cobb, P., Confrey, J., diSessa, A., Lehrer, R., & Schauble, L. (2003). Design Experiments in Educational Research.
Educational Researcher, 32(1), 9-13.
Department for Education. (2013). National curriculum in England: computing programmes of study - key stages 1
and 2. (DFE-00171-2013). UK: UK Government Retrieved from https://goo.gl/vfk3sN
Flannery, L-P., Kazakoff, E-R., Bontá, P., Silverman, B., Bers, M-U., & Resnick, M. (2013). Designing ScratchJr:
support for early childhood learning through computer programming. Proceedings of the 12th International
Conference on Interaction Design and Children, ACM, New York, USA, pp.1–10.
Papadakis, S., Kalogiannakis, M., & Zaranis, N. (2016). Developing fundamental programming concepts and
computational thinking with ScratchJr in preschool education: a case study. International Journal of Mobile
Learning and Organisation, 10(3), 187-202.
Portelance, D. J., Strawhacker, A. L., & Bers, M. U. (2015). Constructing the ScratchJr programming language in the
early childhood classroom. International Journal of Technology and Design Education, 26(4), 489-504.
The Design-Based Research Collective. (2003). Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational
Inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5-8.
Saltan, F., & Kara, M. (2016). ICT Teachers’ Acceptance of “Scratch” as Algorithm Visualization Software. Higher
Education Studies, 6(4), 146.
Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1990). Basics of qualitative research (2
nd
Ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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Conference Paper
  • Jun 2013
ScratchJr is a graphical programming language based on Scratch and redesigned for the unique developmental and learning needs of children in kindergarten to second grade. The creation of ScratchJr addresses the relative lack of powerful technologies for digital creation and computer programming in early childhood education. ScratchJr will provide software for children to create interactive, animated stories as well as curricula and online resources to support adoption by educators. This paper describes the goals and challenges of creating a developmentally appropriate programming tool for children ages 5-7 and presents the path from guiding principles and studies with young children to current ScratchJr designs and plans for future work.
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The Official ScratchJr Book
  • Jan 2015
  • M U Bers
  • M Resnick
Bers, M. U., & Resnick, M. (2015). The Official ScratchJr Book. No Starch Press, Inc., San Francisco, CA.
National curriculum in England: computing programmes of study-key stages 1 and 2. (DFE-00171-2013) UK: UK Government Retrieved from https
  • Jan 2013
  • Department For Education
Department for Education. (2013). National curriculum in England: computing programmes of study-key stages 1 and 2. (DFE-00171-2013). UK: UK Government Retrieved from https://goo.gl/vfk3sN
Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational Inquiry
  • Jan 2003
  • 5-8
The Design-Based Research Collective. (2003). Design-Based Research: An Emerging Paradigm for Educational Inquiry. Educational Researcher, 32(1), 5-8.