Principles to facilitate design-based learning environments for programming in secondary education while making learning visible in an authentic way

Design-based learning (DBL) environments seem a promising instructional approach to facilitating students’ learning of programming concepts via applying them to develop various digital artifacts such as games, websites, robots, and software applications. However, there is a lack of theory-grounded principles to facilitate DBL environments for programming in K-12. In the absence of such principles, some essential elements of DBL such as the reciprocal link between ”design” and ”learning” processes might be easily neglected which can sacrifice ”learning” in favor of ”making” and degrade constructionist-based learning-by-making initiatives in programming to a form of ”shallow constructionism” or doing for the sake of making with no significant impact on the students’ programming knowledge.

In this study we formulated a set of principles to facilitate DBL environments for learning programming concepts in K-12 while making learning visible in an authentic way (i.e., without breaking the realistic design setting using separate tests), built upon related educational theories and concepts, including Constructionism, scaffolding, Context-based learning, Collaborative learning, and design-based learning. We instantiated these principles to develop a course for learning about algorithms for secondary school students. The developed course was implemented in five secondary schools (with 5 teachers and 87 students) and evaluated based on the experience of the participating teachers and students. The results of the evaluation helped us to reflect on the applicability of the principles and refine them.