The Impacts of a Constructionist Scratch Programming Pedagogy on Student Achievement with a Focus on Gender

Abstract

Learning to program is a challenge for many novice computing students. This may be partially due to the inadequacy of many conventional pedagogical approaches resulting in dropouts and failure, especially among females and minoritized students. Consequently, more effective methods to increase success rates and effectively broaden participation are needed. We investigated the effectiveness of a constructionist programming pedagogy with college-level CS1 students, and how that effectiveness varies by gender. Our quasi-experimental design includes participants from CS1 classes at several polytechnics in Nigeria who were assigned to either experimental or control groups receiving six weeks of constructionist instruction using Scratch and a more conventional approach. Findings indicated that the constructionist cohorts had significantly higher mean post-test scores than the conventional classes. We observed no significant difference in post-test scores between genders. However, a significant gender difference was found in gain scores within one study where we also observed a significant relationship between gender and academic background. Overall, our approach demonstrated positive effects on the programming achievements of novice programming students, emphasizing the need to consider the role of contextual factors such as academic background and regional disparities across gender differences.