The effect of cognitive apprenticeship-based programming education on computational thinking skills

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of cognitive apprenticeship-based programming education on students' computational thinking skills, retention and transfer of this skill. In the quantitative part of the research, which was carried out in a mixed design, an experimental study was conducted in which the cognitive apprenticeship method and the traditionally used demonstrative method were compared to the groups. 97 sixth grade students participated in the experimental practice, which lasted for 12 weeks, and the results of 73 students who participated in all evaluation processes and training were evaluated. At the end of the session, the students were given a Scratch programming task developed by the researcher and were evaluated through the "computational thinking skills rubric" developed by the researcher. Then, to asses transfer abilities, a programming task including different problems was given and the results were evaluated with the same rubric. Permanence of learning was measured by reassigning the first task 4 weeks after the end of the process. The obtained data were evaluated by multiple analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). It can be stated that cognitive apprenticeship approach of programming education has a favorable influence on the students' computational thinking skills, as well as their retention and transfer. In order to determine the awareness of the students about the computational thinking skills they use, one-on-one interviews were conducted with the students over the codes they wrote in the application task, and they were evaluated quantitatively by scoring with a checklist. Accordingly, cognitive apprenticeship method increases students' computational thinking awareness. Three independent focus group interviews were held in order to determine the students' opinions of the cognitive apprenticeship approach and how it affected their learning. The outcomes of the interviews were evaluated by qualitative content analysis and four key topics emerged: "benefits", "deficiencies", "recommendations" and "emotions".