Gender Differences In Computational Thinking In Primary School Students And Its Intervention Research

Computational Thinking(CT)has receive extensive attention and is considered to be one of the basic skills needed by people growing up in the digital age.With the acceptance of CT by educational systems all over the world,the demand of CT in K-12 education has increased.Researchers and teachers have started to pay attention to the tools and teaching methods to cultivate students' CT.The existing research shows that visual programming is one of the effective ways to train the primary school students' CT.At the same time,the Project-Based Learning teaching method can develop the students'CT more effectively.In addition,in the process of cultivating students' CT,researchers also began to pay attention to the gender differences in students' CT.However,the research on gender differences in CT has not obtained a consistent conclusion.Some researchers found that there is no gender difference in students' CT,while others found that there is a significant gender difference in students' CT,and generally boys are better than girls.Therefore,the research on the cultivation of girls' CT began to increase gradually.Foreign researchers have applied the teaching method of Project-Based Learning to develop girls' CT skills.The results show that this method has a positive effect on the development of girls' CT.However,there are relatively few researches on the gender differences in students' CT in China,especially on the development of girls' CT.Based on this,this study uses the existing research results for reference.On the basis of exploring whether there are gender differences in primary school students' CT skills,this study designs the Scratch programming course based on Project-Based Learning and explores whether the teaching method based on Project-Based Learning can effectively promote the development of primary school girls' CT so as to provide opportunities and conditions for girls' CT development.In order to verify the gender differences in primary school students' CT and the effectiveness of the teaching method based on Project-Based Learning for the development of primary school girls' CT.This study focuses on the following three research issues:first,whether there are gender differences in primary school students' CT skills?Second,can the Scratch programming course based on Project-Based Learning effectively cultivate the CT skills of primary school girls?Third,can Scratch programming course based on Project-Based Learning effectively improve the primary school girls' attitude towards CT?Based on this,the study is divided into two parts.The first part is to select 586 students of Grade 3-6 in Xi'an as the subjects of investigation.By adopting investigation and research method,the study investigate the current situation of CT in primary school students in Xi'an and analyze the gender differences of CT in primary school students.The second part is that the 44 experiment students in the third and fourth grade of primary school are taken as the research subjects.The visual programming software Scratch is used as the teaching tool.The Project-Based Learning theory is the basis of this study.The quasi-experimental research method is used in this study.The experimental class adopts the Project-Based Learning Scratch programming course,while the control class uses the traditional Scratch programming course.It aims to explore the influence of Project-Based Learning methods on the skills and attitude of CT of primary school girls.This research mainly evaluates the students'CT skills through the CT skills test scale and the project analysis,and evaluates the students' CT attitude through the CT attitude scale,and comprehensively evaluates the changes of students' CT through interviews with students participating in the course.After the implementation of the teaching experiment,it is found that:(1)There is a significant gender difference in the CT skills of primary school students and boys are significantly higher than girls.With the growth of grade,the difference is more and more significant.(2)The students' CT skills of the experimental class has been improved significantly.At the same time,the girls' CT skills of the experimental class is also significantly improved,and is significantly higher than that of the girls in the control class.Both the boys in the experimental class and the boys in the control class improved their CT skills,but there was no significant difference.Furthermore,the improvement degree of the experimental class girls' CT skills of girls in experimental class is greater than that of boys under the same conditions.There was no significant gender difference in the CT skills of the experimental class students.(3)The overall attitude of CT of the experimental class students in experimental class has been significantly improved,especially in the attitude of creativity,algorithm thinking,cooperative learning and problem-solving skills.At the same time,the overall attitude of the girls in the experimental class is also significantly improved.In the attitude of algorithm thinking and problem-solving skills,the overall attitude of the girls in the experimental class is significantly higher than that of girls in the control class.There are significant differences in the attitude of creativity and problem-solving skills.The overall attitude of boys in the experimental class is significantly improved,and the attitude of algorithm thinking and problem-solving skills is also significantly improved.The overall attitude of CT and problem-solving skills is significantly higher than that of boys in the control class.Moreover,compared with the boys in the experimental class under the same conditions,the improvement degree of girls in the overall attitude of CT,creativity attitude,cooperative learning attitude,critical thinking attitude and problem-solving skills attitude is greater than boys.In the attitude of algorithmic thinking,the improvement degree is basically the same.There was no significant gender difference in the CT attitude of the experimental class students.Based on this,this study draws the following conclusions:first,there are significant gender differences in primary school students' CT skills;second,the Scratch programming course based on Project-Based Learning can cultivate the CT skills of primary school girls more effectively;third,the Scratch programming course based on Project-Based Learning can more effectively develop primary school girls' attitude of CT.In general,the Project-Based Learning of Scratch programming course not only has a positive effect on the CT skills and attitude of primary school students,but also can develop the CT skills and attitude of primary school girls more effectively.In addition,through the implementation of teaching experiments,we also get some enlightenment has been gained.Scratch programming is an important way to cultivate primary school students' CT.Project-Based Learning is one of the effective teaching methods of Scratch programming.The Scratch programming course based on Project-Based Learning is the key to effectively improve the CT of primary school girls.Therefore,this study can expand the vision for developing effective Scratch programming curriculum project activities,provide ideas for programming curriculum design and development as well as teaching status,and also offer have certain reference significance for the design and development of primary school CT training curriculum and teaching methods.