Research On Graphical Programming Teaching Strategies For Cultivating Computational Thinking Among Junior High School Student

Computational thinking skills,as an important core skill in the 21 st century,are emphasized in teaching objectives at China and other counties.As an important carrier for the cultivation of computational thinking,the graphical programming classroom is one of the ways to cultivate computational thinking,and cultivating students’ computational thinking skills through graphical programming teaching is an important issue.This study addresses the problems in the teaching of graphical programming: 1)the lack of flexible and targeted teaching strategies for teaching graphical programming;2)the emphasis on results rather than process in teaching graphical programming;and 3)the low motivation and initiative of students in learning graphical programming.Based on the literature study,we extracted students’ programming behaviors and constructed a model of graphic programming teaching strategies that point to the cultivation of computational thinking of junior high school students,and then applied it to the teaching experiment in order to provide teachers with strategic references for teaching graphic programming.Firstly,nine key programming behaviors that point to the development of computational thinking were summarized using literature research,including extracting project themes,analyzing project components,referring to programming cases,designing project solutions,combining programming code blocks,adjusting programming code blocks,collaborating to complete the work,evaluating the work,and summarizing and improving the solutions.Meanwhile,the BEI behavioral event interview method was used to interview students who had learned graphical programming and had excellent programming ability,and the root theory method was used to extract the key behavioral traits of excellent students in programming;the Delphi method was used to solicit experts’ opinions to confirm the programming learning behaviors that point to the generation of computational thinking,and then the teaching strategy model of graphical programming that points to the generation of computational thinking was constructed.Secondly,in order to verify the validity of the teaching strategy model,a quasi-experimental research method was used to select two teaching classes in the second year of junior high school in a secondary school for teaching experiments,and both the experimental class and the control class used the project-based teaching method,while the experimental class used the teaching strategy model.Cross-validated by questionnaire,interview and work analysis methods,the experimental results concluded that 1)students in the class using the instructional strategy model were more likely to trigger programming behaviors that point to computational thinking generated during the learning process of graphical programming.2)students in the class using the instructional strategy model had higher motivation during the learning process.This demonstrates that the instructional strategy model can effectively increase students’ motivation and students’ ability to improve their computational thinking skills in teaching graphical programming.