GDSE/RES - Programming with a Purpose: An Experimental Investigation on the Role Narrative Plays in Supporting Girls' Understanding of Programming Concepts

Education Development Center, Waltham MA

Investigators

Abstract

The Center for Children and Technology at the Education Development Center will conduct a two-year experimental research project to systematically investigate the power of narrative in enabling girls to learn key programming concepts and skills. The hypothesis is that when girls are given the opportunity to learn programming situated in a meaningful narrative context their understanding of core programming skills will be enhanced. The experiment consists of teaching an introductory programming curricular unit to a treatment and control group of ninth grade students attending computer application classes in a predominantly Latino urban high school, Union Hill High School in New Jersey. The basis of the curricular unit involves students using a research tool built on top of an object-oriented programming language, such as JAVA, which is easily customizable. The research tool will consist of a flexible drag and drop software environment that uses the metaphor of choreographing ice-skating routines to make the task of learning computer programming more familiar to girls. In the treatment group, the research tool will enable users to design ice-skating performances by combining and shaping various routine elements into an executable, cohesive program. In the control class, students will use the same research tool and assemble identical subroutines as the treatment class, but instead of a graphic interface that shows skaters dancing in a rink, the research tool will be customized to enable students to work with abstract shapes moving across the screen (as in a screen saver). Using pre-post surveys, clinical interviews, and transfer tasks, the study will investigate whether girls' understanding of core programming skills and concepts (i.e., sequential thinking, understanding parameters and variables, and the structure of code) are increased when exposed to programming tasks within a rich narrative context. According to research, programming is not intrinsically interesting to many girls. They are more likely to be attracted to learning skills situated in a meaningful context, and especially as a way to solve a genuine social, personal or environmental problem. With the advent of object-oriented programming languages (such as JAVA), it is possible to make programming more accessible to girls since object-oriented languages allow one to program by manipulating the relationships between objects in a narrative context rather than executing abstract, linear code. The broader aim of the study is to investigate whether girls can learn as much or better if a traditional programming curriculum is reverse-engineered to provide a meaningful context for the investigation of core programming skills and processes (i.e., reading, using, modifying, and implementing aspects of code) advocated by the Advanced Placement Computer Science curriculum and the Association for Computing Machinery. Findings from this study will help drive the future development and reform of computer science curricula for youth, particularly as Advanced Placement guidelines move toward the use of JAVA programming as the basis for introductory computer science at the high school level.