Coding in K-8: International Trends in Teaching Elementary/Primary Computing

The teaching of computing is becoming an essential addition to twenty-first-century learning. An important part of this new addition is the teaching of computing in earlier grades, starting as early as kindergarten in some countries. Yet, there is little research that reports on computing practices in earlier grades. The purpose of this study was to paint a broad picture of the teaching of computing in primary education from teachers’ perspectives through a 20-min snowball survey sent out to elementary computing groups. This study reports on the teaching of over 300 teachers who are responsible for teaching computing to nearly 60,000 primary-aged students. The results principally represented teachers in the US and the UK, though smaller samples of teachers from 23 total countries are included. We report on teachers’ responses by analyzing quantitative data and open-ended responses to questions about their experiences in teaching computing to children. Results highlight teachers’ level of preparation to teach computing, the most commonly taught programming languages, teacher successes and challenges, and observations on how learning to program has affected students.