The importance of coding and translation between programming languages in sequential activities of pre-service teachers: an approach

Abstract

In the last two decades, computational thinking has gained wide relevance in international educational systems. The inclusion of this new type of thinking poses educational challenges with some underlying research questions that need to be answered to meet these challenges with quality. Thus, this study focuses on analyzing the difficulties that teachers in initial training experience have, when carrying out translation tasks of programming languages used by certain educational robots, in this case, the Cubetto. For this purpose, a specific learning sequence has been designed to work with different programming languages (Cubetto, Bee-Bot, Scratch) and natural language. The work of early childhood and elementary trainee teachers in these tasks has been analyzed using a descriptive approach. The main results are: (1) some of the difficulties encountered are clearly caused by the Cubetto hardware (regardless of the language to which it is translated) and (2) the designed learning sequence has enabled coding skills to be improved remarkably. We conclude that translation tasks between programming languages are necessary in initial teacher training to improve their ability programming and their computational thinking, and for them to be able to detect the disadvantages and benefits of educational robots in their transposition to the classroom.