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An Analysis of Use-Modify-Create Pedagogical Approach's Success in Balancing Structure and Student Agency

Published: 07 August 2020 Publication History

Abstract

As computer science instruction gets offered to more young learners, transitioning from elective to requirement, it is important to explore the relationship between pedagogical approach and student behavior. While different pedagogical approaches have particular motivations and intended goals, little is known about to what degree they satisfy those goals.
In this paper, we present analysis of 536 students' (age 9-14, grades 4-8) work within a Scratch-based, Use-Modify-Create (UMC) curriculum, Scratch Encore. We investigate to what degree the UMC progression encourages students to engage with the content of the lesson while providing the flexibility for creativity and exploration.
Our findings show that this approach does balance structure with flexibility and creativity, allowing teachers wide variation in the degree to which they adhere to the structured tasks. Many students utilized recently-learned blocks in open-ended activities, yet they also explored blocks not formally taught. In addition, they took advantage of open-ended projects to change sprites, backgrounds, and integrate narratives into their projects.

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  1. An Analysis of Use-Modify-Create Pedagogical Approach's Success in Balancing Structure and Student Agency

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        cover image ACM Conferences
        ICER '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research
        August 2020
        364 pages
        ISBN:9781450370929
        DOI:10.1145/3372782
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        Published: 07 August 2020

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        1. computational thinking
        2. k-12 education
        3. scratch

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        • (2024)Observing Students' Behavior During Problem Solving: Determinants of SuccessProceedings of the 19th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3677619.3678109(1-10)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
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