Designing a 5E flipped teaching approach to enhance elementary schoolers' computational thinking concepts, problem-solving and debugging skills

Abstract

There are increasing calls from researchers to introduce Computational Thinking (CT) education into K-12 contexts, in which programming is a common means to support the acquirement of CT concepts and problem-solving skills. Yet, despite numerous efforts to explore various ways (e.g., using child-friendly block-based programming tools) to promote CT education, constraints such as the lack of active learning opportunities and low-level student participation in traditional programming teaching often prevent young novices from fully engaging in learning. More importantly, program debugging, one of the core components of CT, has often been overlooked in programming teaching. It is therefore necessary to conduct explicit teaching on debugging, given that it is a cognitively challenging task for young novices. However, effective teaching approaches to improve novices’ program debugging abilities whilst optimizing their cognitive load have not been adequately examined in previous research. This thesis presents a systematic investigation of a flipped teaching approach to enhance elementary schoolers’ CT concepts, problem-solving, and debugging skills. It consists of two main studies. Study One adopted the 5E framework (i.e., Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration and Evaluation) to guide the teaching activity design in the flipped classroom to address the constraints of traditional programming teaching. A pretest-posttest quasi-experiment study was implemented in a public elementary school to examine the impacts of 5E-supported flipped teaching on 4th graders’ concepts and problem-solving abilities in the CT field. 125 students of the 5E-supported flipped teaching group (experimental) and 122 of the non-flipped teaching group (control) participated in Study One. The findings indicated that the 5E-supported flipped classroom markedly improved student performance in computational concepts and problem-solving. Study Two focused specifically on students’ debugging performance. The overarching goal of Study Two was to design a theoretically and empirically supported approach that could improve student performance in debugging and optimize their cognitive load. Study Two employed a quasi-experimental research method to evaluate the impacts of the systematic debugging process containing four steps (i.e., problem identification & representation, bug location, bug correction, and evaluation) plus modeling method on elementary schoolers’ debugging performance. Altogether, 158 5th graders from an elementary school were divided into two groups, comprising a control group without the systematic approach plus modeling method (n = 75) and an experimental group using the systematic debugging process method plus modeling method (n = 83). To help students actively engage in learning, the 5E-supported flipped teaching was used for both groups. Quantitative (e.g., debugging tests at four measurement time points, cognitive load questionnaire) and qualitative data (e.g., student interviews) were collected. The research findings indicated that the flipped systematic approach plus modeling method significantly improved student achievement in program debugging compared to the flipped teaching method without the systematic approach plus modeling method. Furthermore, this novel approach helped increase students’ investment of germane load by engaging them in schema constructions. It also helped reduce intrinsic and extraneous load imposed on students. The interview results showed that the systematic approach strengthened students’ understanding of program debugging and facilitated their learning. Overall, Study Two verified the effectiveness of the theory-based flipped systematic debugging process method plus the modeling method on student learning and cognitive load.