Investigation of block-based programming and unplugged coding activities' effect on 5th grade students' computational thinking skills, self-efficacy levels and academic achievements

The main purpose of the study is to reveal whether unplugged coding (B3) and block-based programming activities have an effect on students 'computational thinking self-efficacy, computational thinking skills and academic achievement, and also to get students' opinions about the activities in the "Problem Solving and Programming" unit in the 5th grade Information Technologies and Software course. The pilot study of the research was carried out with fifth grade students attending a state secondary school affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the fall term of the 2019-2020 academic year. In order to observe the functioning of the prepared lesson plans in practice and to identify the problems that may be encountered during the implementation, a pilot application was carried out for 3 weeks and 6 hours. The pilot implementation process was recorded with a video camera. Problems encountered during the pilot implementation process have been identified. Problems encountered in the main application were tried to be eliminated. 82 middle school fifth grade students (24 of whom are experimental 1, 28 of whom are experimental 2 and 30 of whom are in the control group) who continue their education in three different state secondary schools affiliated to the Ministry of National Education in the academic years of 2020-2021, constituted the participants of the main application of the study. For the quantitative dimension of the research, the study groups were determined by simple random sampling method after equalizing. The reason why the study was conducted with middle school 5th grade students is that the information technologies and software course is compulsory in the 5th and 6th grades of middle school. The main application of the research was carried out between 9 November 2020-18 December 2020. The main application was made face-to-face between November 9, 2020 and November 15, 2020, and the remaining parts of the application were completed online via the ZOOM platform, a meeting system, as the schools were closed due to the pandemic. Instructional design was implemented for a total of 14 lesson hours for the experimental 1 group and 14 lessons for the experimental 2 group, for a total of 28 lessons for both groups. Control group applications were applied by the course's own Information Technologies teacher. Unplugged coding (B3) activities were applied to experimental 1 group, and block based programming activities were applied to experimental 2 group. In the control group, practices performed with traditional teaching were applied in line with the teacher's own lesson plans. In the qualitative dimension of the study, it was thought that it would not be applicable to interview all students, so seven volunteers from the experimental 1 group and eight volunteers from the experimental 2 group were selected and interviewed with these students.While the students were selected among the classes, the students were selected by cluster sampling, and for each class, students were divided into low, middle and high levels according to their academic grade point averages, and students were randomly selected among the levels. A semi-structured interview form was used to collect qualitative data. In order to collect quantitative data, the Computational Thinking Self Efficacy Scale (CTSES), International Challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking Test (ICICTT) and the Computational Thinking Achievement Test (CTAT) developed by the researcher were collected as pre-tested before the experimental process and collected as post-test after the experimental process. Analyzes of quantitative data in the study were made with the SPSS package program after determining the appropriate parametric and non-parametric statistical analyzes. The quantitative data were analyzed using Kruskal Wallis H, dependent groups T test, ANOVA and ANCOVA tests. MAXQDA Analytics Pro 2018 program was used in the analysis of qualitative data. Inductive analysis was used to analyze the qualitative data obtained in the study. When the quantitative results of the research are examined; No significant difference was found between the Computational Thinking Self Efficacy Scale scores according to the groups. As a result of the teaching methods applied to the experimental 1, experimental 2 and control group students, it was concluded that the Computational Thinking Self Efficacy Scale did not differ according to the groups. It was found that there was a significant difference in the whole of the Computational Thinking Self Efficacy Scale and in the sub-dimensions of reasoning, abstraction, decomposition and generalization in the experimental 1 group, and no significant difference was found in the whole scale and sub-dimensions of the experimental 2 and control group. Accordingly, it was concluded that unplugged coding activities had a positive contribution to the reasoning, abstraction, decomposition and generalization sub-dimensions of the scale. A significant difference was found in favor of the experimental 2 group between the International Challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking Test scores of the participants according to the groups. This finding shows that the block based programming activities applied positively affect on the computational thinking skills of the students. When the results of the International Challenge on Informatics and Computational Thinking Test test were examined within the context of the group, a significant difference was found only in the experimental 2 group, and it was concluded that it had a positive effect on increasing the computational thinking skills. A significant difference was not found between the Computational Thinking Achievement Test scores of the participants. When the Computational Thinking Achievement Test results were examined within the context of the group, a significant difference was found in the experimental 1, experimental 2 and control groups, and it was concluded that it was effective in increasing the academic achievement of students in the programming context in all three groups. When the qualitative results of the study were examined, all of the students interviewed stated that they had not heard of the concept of computational thinking before. Most of the students used the concepts of "thinking using information", "coding" and "mathematical thinking" when asked to express the concept of computational thinking in the way they understood it. When the students were asked about their experiences in programming, it was concluded that most of them experienced it for the first time with thesis application. It was concluded that the remaining majority experienced with school facilities. When the opinions about the positive contributions of the activities applied to the students were examined, the students stated that they improved themselves in subjects such as algorithm, programming and coding. They also stated that they learned new concepts. In addition, it was concluded that authentic learning was carried out with daily life examples. When the attitudes of the students towards information technologies and software courses were examined, it was concluded that most of them already had a positive attitude and this attitude increased further with the thesis application. When the opinions about the difficulties experienced in the activities applied to the students were examined, it was concluded that almost half of them did not experience any difficulties, and some of them had problems due to slow learning. When the ideas of the students for the future were examined, almost half of them stated that they wanted to have a profession in this field. An important part of them stated that they wanted to improve themselves on programming. When the interdisciplinary ideas of the students were examined, it was concluded that they wanted to transfer their programming skills to mathematics, Turkish and science classes, respectively.