Through a Design Based Research methodology, a didactic design for visual programming in mathematics has been developed. The research project presents a didactic model and materials, which support teachers without prior experience in incorporating programming in mathematics. The model is based on didactic principles for computational thinking and theory of design framework. The project illustrates how students develop ownership of their own learning process, how the visual programming languages support their learning and in what ways the students develop computational thinking as a problem solving skill.
An intervention design in the form of 2 courses targeted a 5th and 7th grade has been developed and implemented. Qualitative interviews with pupils and teachers has been conducted as research method.
Using Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory, the visual programming language is described through theories of spoken language and written-language and their significance for cognition. The study shows signs of the students developing a strong context dependent, logically constructed "third language" with fix points in the semantics of the visual programming language. This language supports students in programming and thinking with code.
The study also shows that learning is supported by Scratch redundant multimediation of text, color and form. The study concludes that all the students in the study make use of the computational thinking strategies: Algorithmic thinking, decomposition, generalization and pattern recognition. The study does not show, whether the students could use these problem solving strategies across contexts. Further research is required.