The Determination of Teachers' Trends in Coding Education

Year 2020, Volume: 9 Issue: 1, 52 - 64, 24.06.2020

Zehra Sayın

Abstract

Nowadays, the students’ taking basic programming and computational thinking education-coding education with its extending usage- at K-12 level is considered significant to make them gain foreseen skills which they will need in the future. Also coding education is being accepted as an effective method to develop the students’ digital skills and computational thinking skills. It can be told that application of coding education at schools successfully and integrating it into the curriculum depends on the teachers’ developing positive attitudes and behaviors towards coding education. It is well known that the teachers’ participating in the studies for establishing innovative teaching and learning environments as volunteers has important contributions in reaching the objectives requested.
This descriptive research includes the results of a quantitative questionnaire which has been realized with 2705 teachers from 21 branches who organized an activity related to coding education in Code Week as volunteers from all around Turkey. Most of the teachers participating in the research had been information technologies and software teachers (1.000; % 36,97), elementary school teachers (723; % 26,73) and pre-school teachers (377; % 13,94) follow them. Also most of the research participants had been elementary school (984; % 36,38) and secondary school (999; % 36,93) teachers. Again, most of the participants have been working less than 20 years in their career (2.359; % 87,21) and have bachelor’s degree (2.243; % 82,92).
There are seven themes which the teachers firstly prefer in coding education .These are; (1) Coding education without computer, (2) Block based visual coding, (3) Robotics, (4) Mobile application development, (5) Web design/ web application development, (6) Coding with games or game design and (7) 3D technologies or increased reality. In the content of the research, the products and technologies which the students mostly prefer have been listed according to usage frequency in the context of the themes. The teachers state the most important reason for preferring these products and equipment as they have been relevant to the level of the students and activity objective. In addition to this, preferring reasons such as easy usage, having experience, easy providing and extended usage have been the most remarkable ones.
When total 16.162 replies of 2705 participants included in the research have been examined, it has been determined that %99 (2.677 people) of the participants stated that they aimed at developing at least one skill with coding education. In addition to this it can be told that every participant gave coding education to develop more than one skill. It is observed that % 4.92 of the participants aimed at developing their coding skills, then the students’ problem solving (% 11.53), creating an awareness on coding education (% 11.47), logical thinking (% 11.40) and algorithmic skills (% 11,25). Developing a positive attitude towards computer sciences (%8,85), creativeness (%8.33), cooperative working (% 7.99), computational thinking (% 6.21), thinking as design focused (% 2,61) and gaining quality for work life (% 2,61) have been the skills which have to be developed at low level as relatively.
It is observed that nearly half of the teachers (1095; %40) did not take education related to coding. Most of the ones stating that they had education told that their education had been at basic level (829; %51). Most of the teachers (592; %37) tell that they had education from MoNE in-service education courses or from the courses taken by the way of different projects (427; %26). Nonetheless, the teachers give priority to face to face education (%84,4) in order to support their career development related to coding education. Cooperative working environment (%75,5), activity plans (%73,3) and course plans (%68,9) follow the others. They relatively give less priority to online courses (%62).
According to this research results, it can be told that the teachers develop an increasing positive attitude towards coding education. Also, research results show what kind of applications teachers make related to coding education, and their inclinations related to which instruments and products they preferred in these applications. Also, as a result of the research, some difficulties such as teacher education and deficiency in curriculum have been determined. Because of these reasons, it can be told that the results of the research will contribute to the studies to be made on the design and application of coding education at K-12 level.

Keywords

coding education, k-12 computer science, computational thinking

Öğretmenlerin Kodlama Eğitiminde Eğilimlerinin Belirlenmesi

Abstract

Günümüzde, öğrencilerin K-12 düzeyinde temel programlama ve bilgi işlemsel düşünme eğitimi – yaygın kullanımı ile kodlama eğitimi- almaları, gelecekte ihtiyaç duyacakları öngörülen becerileri kazanmaları için önemli görülmektedir. Ayrıca kodlama eğitimi, öğrencilerin dijital becerilerini ve bilgi işlemsel düşünme becerilerini geliştirmede etkili bir yöntem olarak kabul edilmektedir. Kodlama eğitimin okullarda başarılı bir şekilde uygulanması ve müfredata entegre edilebilmesi ise öğretmenlerin kodlama eğitimine dair olumlu tutum ve davranış geliştirmelerine bağlı olduğu söylenebilir. Öğretmenlerin yenilikçi öğrenme ve öğretme ortamları oluşturmak için yapılan çalışmalara gönüllü katılımları istenilen hedeflere ulaşmada önemli katkıları olduğu bilinmektedir. Bu betimsel araştırma kapsamında, Türkiye genelinden Kod Haftasında gönüllü olarak kodlama eğitimine yönelik etkinlik düzenleyen 2.705 katılımcı ile gerçekleştirilen nicel bir anketin sonuçlarını incelenmektedir. Araştırma sonucunda öğretmenlerin kodlama eğitimine dair artan, olumlu tutum geliştirdikleri söylenebilir. Sonuçlar, öğretmenlerin kodlama eğitimine dair ne tür uygulamalar yaptıklarını, bu uygulamalar da hangi araç ve ürünleri tercih ettiklerine dair eğilimlerini göstermektedir. Ayrıca araştırma sonucunda öğretmen eğitimleri ile müfredat eksikliği gibi aşılması gereken zorluklarda belirlenmiştir. Bu nedenlerle, araştırma sonucunda ortaya çıkan sonuçların K-12 düzeyindeki kodlama eğitiminin tasarımı ve uygulaması konusunda yapılacak çalışmalara katkı sunacağı söylenebilir.

Keywords

kodlama eğitimi, bilgi işlemsel düşünme, k-12 bilgisayar bilimi

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