The effect of collaborative learning approach on 6th grade students' programming self-efficacy, self-regulation skills, and academic achievement in programming education

Programming has become one of the most important skills that students should acquire in the 21st century. Countries have rapidly integrated programming into their curricula to equip students with programming skills. To this end, studies on teaching approaches regarding programming have been conducted, especially in the last decade. One of these areas of study is the collaborative learning approach in programming education, which focuses on students acquiring programming skills through teamwork. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of collaborative learning techniques on middle school students' academic achievement, programming self-efficacy, and self-regulation skills. The study group consisted of 43 middle school students in the 6th grade level at a public school in Kastamonu during the 2024-2025 academic year. A quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test control groups was used in the study. During the Information Technologies and Software course, problem-solving and programming topics were taught to the experimental group using collaborative learning techniques for eight weeks, two hours a week, while the control group was taught using the methods and techniques in the curriculum. An academic achievement test, perceived self-regulation scale, and programming self-efficacy scale were used to collect data from the participants. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software through the Dependent Samples T-test, Independent Samples T-test, Mann Whitney-U test, and Wilcoxon Signed Ranks test. The research findings revealed that the students in the experimental group, who were taught programming using collaborative learning techniques, had higher levels of programming self-efficacy and self-regulation skills compared to the students in the control group, and there was a significant difference in favor of the experimental group. However, in the academic achievement test findings, although the experimental group's mean score was higher than the control group's, no statistically significant difference was found in favor of the experimental group. It was observed that the heterogeneous structure of the collaborative learning groups enabled all students in the learning groups to interact, help each other, and benefit from each other's experiences, successfully completing their programming tasks. This situation affected the students' programming self-efficacy levels and self-regulation skills levels. Based on the results of this study, recommendations were made for teaching programming in middle school Information Technologies and Software courses, teacher training programs for Information Technologies teachers, and in-service training programs for teachers.