גיל או מדיניות: כיצד גיל תלמידים, מטרות הוראה וסוג הערכה משליכים על איכות תוצרי תכנות חזותי בבתי ספר יסודיים ובחטיבת הביניים?

Formal education systems demonstrate a growing trend of integrating visual programming
environments that enable learning consistent with the constructionist approach (Papert,
1980). In Israel, the use of the Scratch online environment as a platform for visual
programming in elementary and middle schools has expanded in recent years. Integrating
visual programming has two main purposes: (1). Developing computational thinking and (2).
Teaching programming as a field of knowledge. This study examined perspectives of code
teachers on the purpose of teaching and assessment methods in this new field. In addition,
differences in the quality of student artifacts in elementary and middle school were examined.
The findings of the study showed that elementary school teachers perceive visual
programming primarily as a tool for developing computational thinking, emphasize
formative evaluation and evaluate their students differentially. In contrast, middle school
teachers perceive visual programming as a tool for teaching programming as a field of
knowledge, and prefer standardized assessment that focuses on formal requirements. Artifact
analysis showed, surprisingly, that the artifacts of middle school students were no better than
the artifacts of students in the fifth and sixth grades and even scored lower in a number of
parameters. It seems that focusing on teaching programming and only on formal requirements
does neither promote the development of computational thinking nor improve the
programming ability of students. Based on the findings, we recommended to re-examine the
teaching and assessment policies and practices of visual programming in middle schools.