Learning Computational Thinking

Through the Use of Flash Action Scripts

Preparing Trainee Elementary School Teachers for Teaching Computer

Programming

Erni Marlina Saari, Peter Blanchfield and Gail Hopkins

School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, Jubile Campus, Nottingham, U.K.

Keywords: Computational Thinking, Flash Action Scripts, Trainee Teachers.

Abstract: The teaching of Computer programming is now mandated in UK state run primary and secondary schools

but few elementary teachers have any exposure to programming and are generally from backgrounds that

have not given them fluency in using such technology. This paper outlines an attempt to develop a training

scheme for trainee teachers that will introduce them to computational thinking through the use of the Flash

Action Script Development environment. It is believed that learning how to use this tool will provide them

with greater motivation to learn how to program as the scripts will be used to develop teaching instruments

that they might use in their classroom. The current paper reports progress on the development of a tool that

will allow the teaching of Flash Action Scripts and the testing of this approach on groups of trainee and

experienced teachers. It reports on an experiment and the relative level of enthusiasm, motivation and

attitude of the experienced teachers and the trainee teachers both before and after exposure to the pilot tool.

As expected the trainee teachers had a more positive attitude towards the potential of the learning tool but

both groups had improved attitude and enthusiasm after the experiment.

1 INTRODUCTION

The Computing and Schools (CAS) initiative in the

UK was launched in 2008. It was in response to

concerns that previous moves towards teaching

Information & Communication Technology (ICT) in

schools has led to misleading pupils as to what

constitutes Computing and demotivation of pupils

who already have Computing skills (Crick and

Sentence, 2011). This led in the autumn term of

2013 to a program of curriculum changes to increase

the degree of computer programming taught at

secondary schools. This was also influenced by a

response to leading industrialists asking that schools

should be teaching the basics of programming to a

wider audience. At the start of the 2014 autumn term

this process was extended to cover elementary

(primary) schools. This second process is likely to

be even more difficult than the first as the nature of

the elementary school teacher training programmes

is not to produce teachers who are specialists; rather

it necessarily attracts and develops generalists. The

generalist nature of teaching in elementary schools

has already meant that earlier programmes to

promote maths and English teaching in elementary

schools has required retraining programmes for

teachers in those schools and further development of

subject specialist teachers in those schools and

school districts (Williams, 2008).

The CAS initiative has been built around certain

facilitating universities with specialist teacher

training or retraining programmes. For example

Nottingham Trent University offers an MSc degree

titled Computing in Education that includes modules

that help teachers to learn how to teach

programming skills. Regular meetings of the CAS

allow experienced teachers in different areas to share

their findings on how to run programming classes in

schools. Different approaches have been taken but

the focus must now be more on training the

elementary teachers to be able to handle the material

as they are seldom from a technical background and

generally have less natural inclination to program.

Many elementary teachers are in fact quite nervous

of the whole area of technology. (See for example

teacher comments in Section 4.1.)

Saari E., Blanchﬁeld P. and Hopkins G..

Learning Computational Thinking Through the Use of Flash Action Scripts - Preparing Trainee Elementary School Teachers for Teaching Computer

Programming.

DOI: 10.5220/0005442600750084

In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU-2015), pages 75-84

ISBN: 978-989-758-108-3

 2015 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

2 THE ROLE OF

COMPUTATIONAL THINKING

IN LEARNING TO TEACH

PROGRAMMING

Much work is currently being undertaken to help

learners overcome the inability to program. Of

particular value is work being undertaken with

young learners themselves. Scratch (Franklin et al,

2013) and Python (Begosso et al 2012,

Bogdanchikov, Zhaparov & Suliyev, 2013) have

been popular for these studies. However, based on

our experience with many elementary teachers,

using a visual system like Scratch is off-putting due

to its child-centred look and feel, and teaching a

programming language like Python can seem

daunting due to its considerably increased

complexity over Scratch. Either way, programming

languages seem intrinsically hard to learn and most

of the examples of using them are of little intrinsic

value to teachers. The teachers can see that children

might be drawn to programming games and

animations but feel a level of fear when approaching

the idea of learning programming themselves. We

illustrate this further in Section 4.1. below.

Much of the work of the CAS has been to

emphasise the use of “Computational Thinking”

(CT) as a valuable thinking skill for all aspects of

life (Wing, 2006, 2008, Grover and Pea, 2013). CT

involves using the aspects of developing computer

solutions to problems, algorithmic thinking,

decomposition, abstraction, generalisation and

evaluation (Dorling 2014). Wing (2008) has

stressed that CT can be adopted in everyday life but

it is doubtful that many people would consciously

apply many aspects of this thinking when

approaching most real life problems. In everyday

life it is probably more appropriate to apply aspects

of CT such as evaluating, looking for generalisations

and use of decomposition. For example, a satnav

will work out computationally the best route to take

according to the algorithm it has been programmed

to use but the user needs to evaluate the solutions

and understand what is being prioritised in order to

know whether to take the advice being given.

Generalisation is used when we try to see how

previous solutions might easily be adapted to new

problems. Decomposition is used when we look at

how to break down problems into parts that can be

tackled more easily than the whole. For some groups

the development of algorithms may be more

valuable – for example those learning to program.

In that regard we must now include elementary

school teachers in this group as they will need to

have some appreciation of how algorithms are

designed and implemented in order to lead the pupils

towards this understanding. To some extent this is

going to be limited by how much abstraction an

elementary school pupil is able to understand.

Languages that are being used to teach programming

in elementary school usually try to make the

algorithms as concrete as possible, by using graphics

and games design.

The motivation for the research presented in the

current paper was our prior experience in trying to

teach trainee teachers how to use ICT tools at a

teacher training institute in Malaysia. Problems

encountered in practice were largely due to a lack of

computational thinking in the process applied. The

students had a tendency to “copy and paste”

examples which they felt were similar to the task

they had to do rather than analyse the task, break it

down into sub tasks, understand the set of steps

needed to achieve the sub task and so on. This lack

of CT may have been largely due to their

unfamiliarity with building such processes.

However, it leads us to pose the question: “how can

we encourage primary school teachers to learn to

think computationally and thereby be able to learn

the languages they need to deal with to teach young

children to program also?” Coming from a non-

technical (engineering/physical science) background

can make elementary school teachers fearful of

using technology in general and view learning to

program as a difficult task. One aspect of this, from

previous observations and discussions, is their lack

of intrinsic motivation to learn programming. A first

step in answering the question of how to encourage

them to think computationally will therefore be how

can we provide intrinsic motivation to think

computationally? The position taken in this paper is

that using an approach where they can see that they

could gain facility in using a tool that will enhance

their ability to produce really attractive teaching aids

will enhance their motivation to learn to think

computationally if computational thinking is

intrinsic to using that tool. Lin (2012) highlights that

educators can become courseware designers and no

longer just play the role of submissive users but

instead become creative developers. For this reason

this research has chosen to look at the ways in which

teachers can learn to produce Flash Action Scripts to

develop attractive teaching aids. It is believed that

this will enhance their motivation to learn to think

computationally and we move on to discuss this

further in the next section.

CSEDU2015-7thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

3 TRAINING OF TEACHERS IN

THE USE OF EDUCATIONAL

TECHNOLOGY USING FLASH

ACTION SCRIPT

One of the challenges identified for a teacher

education program is engagement of pre-service

teachers and teacher educators in conversations

about their attitudes regarding the role technology

should play in teaching and learning. Hammond

(2013) mentions the significance of ICT even if

engagement is not to be taken for granted and the

effect of the learning is complicated. Others have

sought to emphasise the need to integrate technology

into education. For this to be done successfully it

needs to be integrated into the training of the

teachers. The arguments around this have been

summarised in Tondeur et al (2012).

It is our aim that we can develop an electronic

learning tool specifically aimed at helping trainee

teachers in which ability to use Flash Action Scripts

and the Flash development environment are the

learning objectives. Utilisation of such an

environment builds upon the views expressed by

others of the value of using instructional video in e-

learning (Zhang et al, 2006, Wieling & Hofman

2010).

The interface that is provided for the Flash

Action Script developer is quite complex but has a

lot in common with other IT tools that users will be

familiar with – for example Photoshop and

storytelling software like Microsoft Photo Story.

Skills learned will also be generalizable to other

animation development tools such as Anime Studio,

Blender and even the Unity 3D game engine. The

scripting language itself is similar in form to many

other programming languages but the purpose of the

scripts – such as actions performed when buttons are

clicked – has a much simpler to understand

connection to the purpose that is being looked at.

During interviews many of the teachers and

trainees met during these studies indicated that they

were familiar with using storyboarding software, for

example, to produce artefacts to aid their teaching.

The actual level of scripting needed to make simple

animations within a Flash program is low. However

as the complexity of the artefacts increases so also

does the complexity of the scripting needed. This

therefore potentially leads to a staged introduction to

the scripting and at the same time help to develop

the aspect of algorithm design within computational

thinking. It can also introduce the concept of

generalisation as the same basic format will be

needed in many different problems. As the user

progresses aspects of abstraction will also be

possibly developed, for example through the use of

functions to undertake often needed processes.

The ultimate aim of our learning environment is

to make this a self-help tool that will analyse a

user’s performance in lesson exercises and that any

lesson will be automatically adapted to a given

user’s needs. In order to investigate this a pilot tool

was developed in which a set of lessons was

produced aimed at teaching the use of the Flash tool

to qualified school teachers and to a set of trainee

teachers on a PGCE course. The lessons took the

learners through the stages of building an artefact

that they were expected to see as useful for their

intended teaching. The progressive development of

the artefact focused on providing a set of

increasingly complex animations aimed at helping

children in early years’ education to obtain basic

literacy and numeracy skills. The teachers and

trainee teachers were taken individually through a

set of their own lessons to build the artefact. During

this process faulty or non-computational thinking

approaches adopted by the teachers/trainees were

identified. Any incorrect approaches were then

corrected by the trainer and the success or otherwise

of the strategy taken in attempting to correct them

was examined.

4 EXPERIMENTAL METHOD

In order to investigate the difficulties observed in the

Malaysian trainee teachers and the role of our

proposed tool in teaching CT, two groups of

Malaysian test subjects were recruited for a pilot

study. The first was a group of experienced teachers.

The second was a similar set to those in the original

Malaysian trainee classes, except that they were

studying on a PGCE course in the UK. Both groups

had no background experience in the use of software

development.

The study was subject to the ethics approval

process. All participants were informed of the

nature and purpose of the study before partaking and

were aware of the recording methods that were to be

used. They all signed consent forms for their data to

be gathered and used in the study.

Prior to using our pilot tool each subject was

interviewed initially about their attitude to using the

Flash environment and other aspects of using

technology, particularly the learning of

programming tools including the use of Scratch. The

purpose of this was to identify attitudes already held

LearningComputationalThinkingThroughtheUseofFlashActionScripts-PreparingTraineeElementarySchool

TeachersforTeachingComputerProgramming

by the subjects and enable us to identify in post-

session interviews whether their attitudes had

changed as it was expected that encounter with the

actual process would improve their attitude. They

then individually took part in a staged set of training

lessons using the tool. The lessons were presented

one-on-one but otherwise in a way similar to the

original group (lecture, PowerPoint presentation and

subsequent practical exercise). Each subject’s

comments and progress were recorded during their

performance. The data captured included length of

time to complete actions, evidence of enthusiasm for

the task and number and types of errors made. After

the lesson the subjects were once again interviewed

about their attitudes towards use of Flash tools. The

recordings were transcribed for analysis. A set of

thematic codes was developed to use in determining

the level of motivation and engagement with the

activity. The codes reflected the following positive

attitudes:

• I - Interest

• E - Engagement

• M - Motivation

• C - Confidence

• En - Enjoyment

• A - Affordance

And the following negatives:

• B - Boredom

• L - Lack of Motivation

• Co - Confusion

• F - Fear

• D - Difficulty

The transcriptions were then coded to identify

statements and actions that indicated successful and

failed understanding of the task and enthusiasm for

the process (such as their attitude towards the Flash

tool). Examples of positive and negative statements

for each of the codes are given in Table 3 in Section

5.4 below. The time taken to develop a level of

engagement was also recorded as a separate measure

of participant engagement/motivation.

These lessons used in the pilot study are

described in more detail in the next section.

3.1 Format of the Lessons

In the pilot study each participant worked through

the sequence of lessons which aimed to start the

development of the teaching/learning asset. As the

lessons progressed the participants attempted to

produce the asset. Their performance was

monitored in order to determine causes of any

failure to produce the expected outcome. These

were then classified to determine if they were due to

a lack of application of computational thinking. An

example of non-computational thinking was the

previously described use of a copying and pasting

approach rather than understanding the development

algorithm and following the algorithm for a new step

in the process. As the stages of the lesson developed

so did the complexity of the scripting needed to

produce the correct performance.

In the lesson being followed an artefact was

developed to create a teaching/learning aid for

Elementary Level learning in Literacy and

Numeracy. The lesson content is a subset of

foundation level lessons in reading and number

concepts. The artefact being produced was designed

to meet expectations of early years learners for an

attractive interface with colourful illustration and

animations designed to gain attention. In the various

stages the test subjects were given lessons in

producing elements for the artefact that were

successively more difficult to produce. The first

step was to produce a simple menu – see Figure 1.

This task was also broken down into stages, such as

producing the title text, and then adding simple

graphic elements, such as the button shapes. The

next stage was producing the action for the buttons.

The process of breaking tasks down into a set of

simpler stages is a fundamental part of CT so in

addition to the learning of the development tool

users also got the opportunity to see the value of the

CT approach in solving tasks.

Figure 1: Original page.

This first stage of the lesson leads the learner

through the process of producing the first screen to

CSEDU2015-7thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

the point of producing an action to display the next

screen. So, for example, a second screen is designed

to appear when the Literacy button is pressed. This

will display a view as shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Literacy screen.

Each of the letters in the screen shown in Figure

2 will be turned into a button that leads to an action.

The learner has to add the required components and

thus practice the process from the earlier learning

activity. (The letters and heading are all originally

added as text.) The symbol requires the adding of a

picture and the action script required is like that of

the original button but the appropriate action had to

be added to the letters which themselves had first to

be converted into “buttons”. While the next stage

can be more or less derived from the previous the

level of “scripting” required increases as the action

now becomes more complex leading to the need to

create an animated scene after an intermediate

button press (see Figure 3). However, the repeated

process has a lot of commonality so it should be

possible for the participants to begin to understand

the value of generalisation (one of the CT skills) and

apply this by adding function calls to the Action

Scripts to allow common code to be reused. This

would not be done in early exercises as the needed

instruction for using such functions is not given

early in the set of tasks. Figure 3 also shows an

additional feature that is taught at this point. The

green path shown in the figure is added as the

movement route (Tweening in Flash Action Script

terminology) for the apple to follow during the

animation that will be prescribed in the script.

Figure 3: Scene with added animation path.

The next section details the results that were

obtained from the pilot study and we then move on

to draw our conclusions and suggestions for the next

stage of this work in the final section.

5 RESULTS

The experimental subjects were all volunteers and

were not incentivised to take part in the study. They

fell into two groups. All the subjects were

Malaysians. The subjects included a group of

practicing teachers and a group of trainee teachers

engaged in pursuing a PGCE qualification. There

were significant differences between the qualified

and trainee teachers both before and after the

sessions and these differences will be explored in

future publications.

5.1 Initial Interviews

As mentioned above a set of pre interviews were

undertaken in order to allow for comparison between

the pre and post session attitudes to programming

and the use of Flash Action Scripts in particular.

Certain differences also emerged between the

qualified and trainee teachers in this session. Of the

established teachers the responses to questions

regarding the likely usefulness of learning Action

Scripting were negative and all were nervous of the

need to use a technical tool. A typical response was

“I am not good in using technology especially

programming. I am afraid of using technology

actually. I don’t like to use computers …”

The PGCE students were less reticent to take

part. They all felt it would be good to learn to use

LearningComputationalThinkingThroughtheUseofFlashActionScripts-PreparingTraineeElementarySchool

TeachersforTeachingComputerProgramming

Action Scripts as it would enable them to use the

tool to make their own teaching/learning

instruments. However, they generally did not feel it

would be easy to learn as it appeared to involve a

similar process to learning more formal

programming systems like C++. A typical quote

from this group was “I want to learn this

programming language and I will come out with my

own teaching module soon!” There were some

negative attitudes, for example one subject asked

“Why would I need to learn Flash or have to design

a learning tool as all of my lesson material will be

provided by the school?”

5.2 Performance in the Practical

Sessions

During the practical sessions the volunteers were

required to produce codes that performed the set of

functions shown in Figures 1 to 3. The performance

was monitored and the actions were recorded using

screen capture so they could be analysed afterwards.

The major problem was the tendency to copy and

paste previous examples rather than to analyse the

problem, understand the components that were

needed and develop the appropriate set of steps to

produce the artefact. When they found their actions

had not produced the correct behaviour they were

asked to analyse why this had happened. They were

taken back to previous steps and the lesson was

repeated until they were able to produce the correct

output. Different processes in producing a good

learning artefact were identified against the

Computational Thinking approach. A good example

is the idea of abstraction as embodied in the concept

of a layer. In Flash Action Scripting the layer is a

basic abstract component that gets non-abstract

components – actual text, pictures, and scripts –

attached to it. As a result a user thinking

computationally would be expected first to engage

with the abstraction – by invoking a new layer for a

new action – then to populate it. Thinking non-

computationally exhibited itself in various different

ways. One typical example was when users wanted

to remove an existing layer. Instead of selecting the

layer and deleting it the users who were not thinking

about the abstraction would delete the contents of

the layer rather than the layer. This would lead to an

error when the code was compiled and an error

message that was not understood by the user. Such

error statements alert the teacher with experience to

the lack of correct thinking. The user is then

directed to the part of the lesson on layer creation.

The PGCE students all grew in confidence and

enthusiasm for the process of learning Flash Action

Scripting more quickly than the experienced

teachers, however, all participants were able to

finish the first task correctly. Enthusiasm for and

motivation to use the tool were indicated by

comments made by the experimental subjects. The

trainee teachers generally were more enthusiastic to

start with and thus were more motivated to

understand and correct their mistakes.

The average time to complete the initial task was

35 minutes. The longest time taken for the process

was one hour and this was from a subject who had

shown the lowest motivation for the task as he

intended to return to administration within a school

and not teaching.

5.3 Post-session Interviews

After the first practical session the subjects were all

re-interviewed. They were asked questions about

their attitude to learning Flash Action Scripting

having now been exposed to it. Questions centred

on their views regarding the potential usefulness of

learning to use Flash Action Scripting, technology in

general, their motivation and ability to learn Flash

Action Scripting and their understanding of the steps

used in computational thinking.

Most of the experienced teachers felt an

improved attitude towards the usefulness of the

process. The teacher who intended to return as an

administrator had not improved his attitude at all.

One of the others still did not see that it could be

useful to them in their teaching or to teaching in

general. The other five were enthusiastic about the

possibilities. Of the PGCE students all were

convinced not only of the value of the tool but also

of their ability to learn to use it.

When asked about the use of technology in

general to support their teaching the experienced

teachers had generally gained an improved attitude.

Most of the experienced teachers did not feel

intrinsically motivated to learn programming but had

found the process of the lesson enjoyable and felt

they had been successful in learning how to use the

tool. Eight of the ten trainee teachers expressed the

idea that they found the learning intrinsically

motivating as they felt they would benefit in their

own careers. These have all moved on to the further

study of the subsequent lessons and have been

willing to try to learn further by themselves!

The CT skills needed in the task to perform it

efficiently were those of Algorithmic thinking and

Abstraction. Eight of the trainees exhibited

CSEDU2015-7thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

Algorithmic thinking by the end of the first lesson

and seven had demonstrated use of Abstraction.

However, only four of the experienced teachers had

developed this CT approach. For example in the use

of layers – linked to the concept of abstraction –

seven of the trainee teachers and one of the

experienced teachers had understood how to

properly use layers.

5.4 Thematic Analysis

As was explained in Section 4 above the recordings

of the interviews during the practical session were

all transcribed and the transcriptions were then

thematically coded looking for different indicators

explained in section 4 relating to positive and

negative attitudes. Table 1 below shows themes that

emerged prior to the experiment taking place.

Table 1: Frequency of appearance of code phrases in use

by the Trainee Teachers (TT) and the Experienced

Teachers (ET) before taking part in the experiment.

Codes TT

Frequency

ET Freq. Total

Interest (I) 23 17 50

Engagement (E) 24 15 39

Motivation (M) 27 15 42

Confidence (C) 8 0 8

Enjoyment (En) 12 11 23

Affordance (A) 2 3 5

Boredom (B) 3 11 14

Lack of Motivation

(L)

6 15 21

Confusion (Co) 27 32 59

Fear (F) 15 12 27

Difficulty (D) 32 26 58

As can be seen from the results in Table 1 the

trainee teachers demonstrated higher levels of

positive attitudes to the potential value of the

training they were about to undergo, when compared

with the experienced teachers (indicated by a total of

96 coded positive statements by the trainee teacher

group and only 61 by the experienced teachers).

However both groups had negative attitudes in some

of their statements and in particular felt the process

of learning Flash Action Scripting would be difficult

(roughly equal numbers of negative comments on

difficulty) and that they found what they were being

asked to do potentially confusing (again with similar

numbers of negative comments from both groups).

None of the experienced teachers expressed any

confidence that they would develop the ability to use

the tool but eight comments from the trainee

teachers expressed such confidence.

Table 2: Frequency of appearance of code phrases in use

by the Trainee Teachers (TT) and the Experienced

Teachers (ET) after taking part in the experiment.

Codes TT Frequency ET Freq. Total

I 39 19 58

E 29 24 53

M 54 27 81

C 22 20 42

En 22 19 41

A 12 8 20

B 0 2 2

L 0 2 2

Co 13 10 23

F 0 0 0

D 7 3 10

Table 2 demonstrates the frequency of code

words in the post-experiment interviews and it can

be seen that both the trainee and experienced

teachers had significant improvements in their

attitudes towards learning Flash Action Scripts and

programming technology in general. Of particular

note is the fact that no phrases emphasising “Fear”

(F) were recorded in the post-experiment responses

by either group though some “Confusion” (Co) still

remained in both groups (a total of 23 such

comments roughly equally divided between the

groups) and there was still a residual view that the

process was “Difficult” (D) though this was much

reduced with a total of ten comments expressing

difficulty after the experiment compared to the 58

difficulty comments made before the experiment.

Only one of the participants (the experienced teacher

now moving into administration) used “Boredom”

(B) and “Lack of Motivation” (L) phrases – two

responses fitting this description for both categories.

Together with the increased number of positive

comments on motivation (a total of 81 such

comments after the experiment compared to 42

before the experiment) this indicates that those who

were expecting to be teachers after their courses all

believed the use of Flash Action Scripting to be

interesting and motivating. There were few phrases

mentioning “Confidence” (C) before the experiment-

8 from the trainee teachers and none from the

experienced teachers; after the experiment only one

of those involved (the administrator) failed to

respond with any confidence statement. A total of 42

such comments were recorded from the rest of the

subjects.

The time taken to begin to show signs of

engagement and enjoyment of the use of Flash was

generally lower for the trainee teachers than for the

experienced teachers but only one (the

LearningComputationalThinkingThroughtheUseofFlashActionScripts-PreparingTraineeElementarySchool

TeachersforTeachingComputerProgramming

administrator) failed to complete the task and failed

to become engaged in the process after 20 minutes.

Examples of quotes reflecting the codes used are

listed in the Table 3 below. Some of the phrases

quoted show more than one of the coded attitudes.

They were coded as representing both attitudes but

are only shown as illustrating one. All of the

comments listed were given by trainee teachers

(respondent TT5 means trainee teacher 5) though

similar comments were made by the experienced

teachers.

Table 3: examples of coded comments given by the

Trainee Teachers (TT4 to TT10).

Code Quote

"As a first time learner like me, this software is

easy to learn and the instruction is quite

simple..." (respondent TT5)

“Very good! I think students will feel more

enthusiastic to learn the subject if the teaching

instrument used is interesting" (respondent TT4)

“I think it is attractive software to learn and teach

also. Besides teachers learn how to program, I

think we can teach our students to learn how to

program as well." (respondent TT10)

“I am looking forward to studying more on this

and producing my own lesson.." (respondent

TT9)

"I knew that Flash can do interesting tasks like

interesting courseware to gain students'

attention." (respondent TT6)

“Can you give me a few minutes to try on my

own on this software? I would like to produce a

small interactive lesson about our lesson just

now. I am just so excited to do animation and

navigation buttons." (respondent TT4)

It is too hard for me to start learn the new

software and need to struggle about the technical

terms...." (respondent TT5)

"... there is just a waste of time to learn new

software, I prefer to get the teaching tools that

will be provided..." (respondent TT5)

make me feel confuse about technical terms and

interface too..." (respondent TT5)

" I am afraid I could not produce the module at

all because I am not good handling the technical

tasks.." (respondent TT5)

" ..sometimes it very hard to understand

especially the complex syntax..." (respondent

TT7)

Our results demonstrate that use of the tool

increased interest in Flash Action Scripting and

enhanced enthusiasm for programming with reduced

levels of confusion and frustration. The next section

provides some conclusions from this study and

proposes the next stage of our work.

6 CONCLUSIONS

The need for elementary school teachers to engage

with learning to program and to think

computationally has been identified. Pressure in the

UK and elsewhere has led to the development of

programming as a required part of the curriculum in

both elementary and secondary schools. However,

elementary school teachers are for the most part ill-

equipped to learn to program themselves. It is vital

that they also learn to understand the Computational

Thinking (CT) process. However, they find that the

programming languages they encounter are difficult

to learn and lack the ability to motivate them to

learn. They are at the same time wary of technology

and this also makes them nervous of their potential

to learn to program. The current research contends

that learning the use of Flash Action Scripting would

be viewed as more motivating as a first approach to

learning to program for elementary teachers. This is

in agreement with the findings of Lin (2012) which

sees the need to motivate teachers to become

creators of courseware rather than just consumers.

Thus the current research aims at producing a

software tool for helping teachers to learn to use

Flash Action Scripting. It is acknowledged that

Flash is not without its issues in terms of

compatibility with some systems and security issues.

Ultimately the ideas expressed in this paper could be

applied to another programming environment such

as JavaScript, although this isn’t typically used in a

visual programming environment. However, Flash

has provided an appropriate environment for our

study and upon which we could build our idea. In

order to test this idea out and to find out how such a

tool might be designed a pilot study has been

undertaken. In this study lessons have been

developed and presented to subjects in a more or less

conventional manner through one-on-one tuition.

The purpose of this was to observe the learners and

ascertain where they were developing “non-

computational” approaches to completing their

tasks. The pilot study consisted of a total of

seventeen participants consisting of established

teachers and PGCE students. The attitudes of the

PGCE students towards the idea of learning Flash

Action Scripting were generally more positive than

those of the established teachers. For example after

coding of the interviews that took place before use

of the pilot eight comments expressing motivation

were found from the trainee teachers while none

were given by the established teachers. Both groups

were then given one-on-one training in the use of

Flash Action Scripting. While the trainee teachers

CSEDU2015-7thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation

with their higher level of motivation were quicker to

learn and had established good computational

thinking processes by the end of the study compared

with the established teachers, the latter group (of

experienced teachers) were still generally found to

have improved attitudes after the exercise. In fact

only one of the latter group (one who was intending

a future in administration rather than active

teaching) failed to overcome boredom and a lack of

interest in the scripting process. The results from our

pilot study indicate that the use of Flash Action

Scripting as a means to develop teaching lessons

motivated and engaged both experienced and trainee

teachers to learn to program and to develop in their

Computational Thinking skills. For example both

groups gave increased numbers of responses

indicating motivation to learn the Flash Action

Scripting after the experiment – the trainee teachers

giving 54 positive responses after the study

compared to 8 before and the established teachers

giving 27 positive comments after the study

compared to none before.

In addition valuable information was gained

through the experiment into how poor CT skills

interfere with learning and how good CT skills can

be nurtured. Examples of this were the use of the

Flash Action Script concept of layers. All users had

not encountered this idea initially and did not

initially understand how this concept worked. This

invariably led to errors in performance. A particular

example was given in section 5.2 where the contents

of a layer were deleted rather than the layer itself.

This led to a subsequent error statement from the

compiler. This error statement was then used to help

direct the learners back to the lesson component on

layers. However, in the current pilot only eight of

the seventeen users were able to complete such a

task on their own after a second experience of this

tutorial component. It is expected that the tool

developed will use these lessons to provide a

training tool that will work in a standalone context

and provide encouragement to use CT as well as

teaching the use of Flash Action Scripting. Error

statements from the compiler can be parsed to get

inputs to direct the user to the correct part of the

lesson to tackle the error they encountered.

The next stage of the work is to develop the

automated set of lessons in which the performance

of the learners will be monitored by the system and

the lesson adapted to their needs as perceived by the

system. These lessons will be built in a learning

instrument that will take the trainees through a set of

steps to build a teaching/learning artefact. Currently

the users are expected to be trainee elementary

teachers or other teacher trainees from non-computer

science/engineering backgrounds and, we surmise,

therefore likely to be motivated to learn to produce a

teaching/learning asset for early years’ education.

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CSEDU2015-7thInternationalConferenceonComputerSupportedEducation