Özkan VATANSEVER, ŞEHNAZ BALTACI GÖKTALAY

HOW DOES TEACHING PROGRAMMING THROUGH SCRATCH AFFECT PROBLEM- SOLVING SKILLS OF 5th AND 6th GRADE MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS?

It is important to teach students programming at an early age so that they do not have difficulty in understanding the programming logic when they reach the age of undergraduate education. Scratch, a visual two-dimensional programming tool, has been developed to accomplish this purpose. There are studies in the literature related to Scratch on problem-solving skills, but they are not directed at the steps of problem solving. In order to find a proper solution to a problem, it is necessary to carry out each problem-solving step in an appropriate way. Based on this need, the aim of this study is to investigate how teaching programming through Scratch affects the problem-solving skills of 5th and 6th grade middle school students and to identify the steps that students go through to solve ill-structured problems. It is also intended that these steps guide teachers in terms of the pedagogies for teaching coding. This study utilized an explanatory design, one of the mixed method research designs. In the quantitative stage of the study, a one- group pretest-posttest model, one of the simple experimental models, was used. In the qualitative stage, a case study model was used as the research design. A total of 226 5th and 6th grade students, including 109 males and 117 females, constituted the sample of the study. The data were collected using a problem-solving skills scale and interview questions. A statistically significant difference was found between the mean scores of the first and second measurements of the problem-solving skills scale according to the Wilcoxon signed-rank test result. According to the results, when teaching programming through Scratch, it is recommended to have students design games, as an alternative method, for them to develop problem-solving skills. The solution of a problem is facilitated when students construct a game in their minds in accordance with real- life conditions and design and detail it in accordance with computational expressions.

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