Collaborative Behavior Patterns of Students in Programming Instruction

The pair programming approach is used to overcome the difficulties of the programming process in education environments. In this study, the interaction sequences during the paired programming of preservice teachers was investigated. Lag sequential analysis were used to explore students’ behavioral patterns in pair programming. The participants of the study consist of 14 students, seven pairs enrolled in a Programming Languages course. The findings indicate that there are significant behavioral learning sequences. During the program development process, students hesitated to create an algorithm and to improve an existing one while proposing the next step. In addition, they constantly waited for approval. Collaborative behaviors such as giving and receiving feedback and helping other partners were less observed in females. In addition, significant sequential driver and navigator behaviors were presented. The findings of the study have important implications for instructors and designers when using a pair programming approach in teaching programming. In the future, programming instruction environments can be designed by considering the learner behaviors that are presented in this study.

Development of the ICT Teachers’ Perceptions of the Contribution of Scratch Program to Programming Instruction Scale

Scratch which is one of the block-based software for facilitating programming teaching is commonly used for beginners of learning programming. However, there is a lack of studies about the perceptions of information and communication technologies (ICT) teachers regarding the contributions of this visual programming language. Therefore, this study deals with developing a scale for measuring ICT teachers’ perceptions based on unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) about Scratch’s contributions in teaching programming. The sample of the study includes 265 ICT teachers from Turkish Ministry of National Education (MoNE) secondary schools who used Scratch software in their courses. According to exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses results, final version for perceptions scale of ICT teachers regarding the contributions of block-based visual programming language (Scratch) includes 28 items. The Cronbach Alpha coefficient is 0.97. This scale can help the practitioners who aims at understanding the contributions of Scratch and the other block-based visual programming languages from ICT teachers’ perspective; the researchers who wish to investigate this contribution according to various variables and the decision-makers of using Scratch in programming instruction programs.