The Impact of Embodied Approaches on Debugging Practice in Children's Programming Education

• In Event: 66.056 - Achieving the Promise in Digital Literacy

Abstract

This study focuses on the effects of different embodied instructions on young children’s debugging performance and self-efficacy in ScratchJr, a block-based iPad programming language. Students were asked to practice how to detect errors and fix coding in a pre-coding activity with different types of embodiment and then moved onto a pre-programmed debugging task on the iPad. Findings showed that both direct and surrogate embodiment groups outperformed the control group. Surrogate embodiment group preferred deleting and rewriting as a debugging strategy and tended to have higher self-efficacy in the computer usage. This study provides an example of effective instructions in programming education to teach young children how to cope with errors and have confidence in their problem-solving ability.

Authors

• Junghyun Ahn, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Yaoli Mao, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Woonhee Sung, Teachers College, Columbia University

• John B. Black, Teachers College, Columbia University