Content area
Collaborative programming (i.e. pair-programming) in elementary school is a highly promising strategy for developing students’ efficacy and interest in computer science, helping motivate them to excel in this skill and use it in future education and career trajectories. However, we know very little about students’ current practices in programming, let alone collaborative programming environments and what influences them. This study provides new insights on the influence of gender and motivation in programming, the ground truth measure of current practices in an efficacious programming environment such as pair-programming, and how to facilitate students to better perform in pair programming contexts.
In this research we explored the role of gender and motivational beliefs on students’ collaborative and programming performances in pair programming and design an intervention to support collaboration during pair programming. We conducted three studies to accomplish the goal. The first study explored how and if gender and prior experiences, mediated by motivational factors (mindset, interest and self-efficacy) influence individual students’ programming related conceptual understanding; Second, we qualitatively compared different gender groupings based on the quality of dyad’s collaboration and programming learning; Third, we examined a intervention of providing feedback on both productive collaboration and motivational factors aiming to help students better collaborate regardless of their gender and prior experiences.
Finding from our research shed light on how gender, prior experience and motivational beliefs and interests intercorrelate and influence students’ learning in CS. The findings may direct educators and researcher toward factors related to programming practices that needs most attention for elementary classroom. This study also provided a preliminary validation of an instrument that measures students’ self-perceived ability beliefs and interests in programming at elementary level. This can be utilized and adapted by researchers to measure elementary students’ motivational beliefs and interest in future studies. Finding that gender do not have strong impact on the understanding of programming, we then explored if gender impacts collaborative programming performance. This research provided insights on how different gender pairings such as girl-girl, boy-girl and boy-boy pairs’ collaborative practices and programming compare. These findings will help researchers and educators decide on what aspects of pair programming male and female students may need support and design interventions accordingly. In the process of analyzing students’ collaboration in pair programming, we also provided a validation of a framework for discourse analysis in pair programming. This framework can capture the more complex patterns and nuances of students’ collaborative practices during programming activities. Using this framework we provided important insights into students’ natural tendencies in collaborative discourse in pair programming that were critical for developing a more refined and targeted study design. Finally, we examined an intervention that utilized a feedback framework specifically designed to engage students in high quality collaboration. Educators can utilize this intervention to help students better collaborate not only to program better, also in any computer-supported collaborative environments.