Teaching children the basics of programming dates back many decades, starting with the coding language LOGO which used a simple programming language which could be used by young children (Papert, 1980). While LOGO has continued to be developed, other tools like Scratch, Bee-bots and KIBO are nowadays more prevalent. Discussions regarding, not only programming and coding, but also computational thinking (Wing, 2006) has been highlighted in many countries. Countries like Denmark, France, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and the UK have introduced programming in the national curriculum during the 2010’s (Bers, 2018). The need to reform schooling to better prepare students with so-called 21^st-century skills has been a focus in academia for many years, with discussions concerning what new forms of literacy that today’s students need to tackle the problems of tomorrow (Trilling & Fadel, 2009). Therefore, learning programming at a young age is not only important in regard to changes in curricula, but also in relation to the world becoming more digitized and harder to navigate without technological completeness like programming.

Previous literature reviews related to programming education with relevance for the K-6 field have focused on a wide variety of themes. Xia and Zhong (2018) analyses articles relevant to K-12 robotics education and concludes that there is an educational potential using robotics in education. However, they also criticize studies within the field for the low number of participants and short interventions, which further studies should have in mind. Sun and colleagues’ (2022) systematic review focuses on articles related to K-12 students programming ability and concludes that block-based programming tools are common in research and that programming education cultivated students’ cognitive and operational ability. Macrides and colleagues (2022) focus on programming education in early childhood education and conclude that teaching young children programming is not only possible but can also contribute to creativity and collaboration. They also note that there is a need within the field to develop measurement instruments. Kakavas and Ugolini (2019) analyses articles relevant to computational thinking in K-6, and concludes that there has been an increasing interest in how to develop students’ computational thinking skills in later years. Furthermore, they observe that most studies in their review use visual programming tools like Scratch, Alice and Kodu. The presented literature reviews show positive aspects of programming education, but it is also of importance to understand how data was produced to fully understand the effects of programming on student learning. Since the existing systematic literature reviews on research related to K-6 programming education do not fully cover the methodological aspects of the research, there is a gap within the research field which this study aims to fill.

The purpose of this study is to present the latest developments and tendencies through a systematic review of empirical research on the methodologies used in the emerging field of K-6 programming education. This is of importance in order to understand how the field is developing, but also to find gaps in the research field, which could give rise to discussions regarding how to fill these gaps. The study also aims to contribute to teacher education and to support teachers working with younger children, through a broader approach than previous literature reviews, presenting available K-6 programming research, thereby making it easier for practitioners to find relevant research that could contribute to their practice.

Research questions

What methodologies were used in the studies and where was the data collected?

What programming tools were used and what ages were the children in the studies?

The present study comprises a systematic literature review, exploring and analytically discussing programming education in K-6. A well-developed review requires a comprehensive search strategy to ensure a good starting point for the identification of relevant papers to review and eventually for the quality of the review (Kitchenham et al., 2009). The study abides by the Prisma guidelines (Moher et al., 2009, Page et al., 2021) regarding systematic literature reviews. The databases Web of science and Scopus were both used in an effort to find all relevant articles. An example of the keywords used in the search were programming, coding, primary school, elementary school and early childhood education. The article search was finished June 2022 and includes articles ranging from that date until January 2013. Search results using Web of science was 836 articles and Scopus 1049 articles, in total 1885 articles. After removing duplicates and articles that was not possible to access the number of articles was reduced to 1104. Preliminary screening of title and abstracts according to inclusion criteria reduced the number of articles to 291. Inclusion criteria for this study is the following: • Abstract, keywords or title must include the word programming, code or scratch • Must be paper published in peer-reviewed journal and written in English. • Studies with empirical data • Studies with either teachers working in K-6 and/or studies with children in the age range of K-6 • Published 2013 or later • Focusing only on teaching programming or related things like robotics, computational thinking The 291 articles were then more thoroughly read in full and evaluated according to the inclusion criteria and this resulted in the final number of articles used in this literature review, 141.

The following results are preliminary findings that will be expanded upon later and other aspects of the present research methodologies will be analysed. Most analysed articles were published in recent years. During the years 2013-2019 in total 56 articles were published, compared to 84 papers 2020-2022. A majority of the papers used only quantitative method (77). Seventeen papers used only qualitative method in comparison with 46 papers using a mixed method. The most popular quantitative method was the use of pre and post-tests to evaluate the effect of some intervention. The study focus on K-6 as a whole, but most articles focuses on older schoolchildren, exemplified by 27 articles that focused solely on grade six students compared to three articles that focused on grade one students. This is an interesting finding as a number of countries have some sort of mandatory programming education starting from early grades (Bers, 2018). The initial analysis shows a broad field of different programming tools with some examples being Bee-Bot (6), KIBO (7) and different kinds of LEGO programming (6). The most popular tool is Scratch (27 articles using only scratch) and ScratchJR (8). Tools play a major role in how and what is thought in regards to programming and will be discussed further. The country where data collection is done is also analysed and four countries are represented with 10+ articles, USA (28), China (18), Turkey (15) and Taiwan (10). Asia is the continent most prevalent in the field of K-6 programming education. Countries like the UK have mandatory programming education in schools (Department for Education, 2013) but few articles have collected data in the UK. Presented insights in regards to possible gaps in the field of K-6 programming research will be discussed further.

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