# Developing Gender-Neutral Programming Materials: A Case Study of Children in Lower Grades of Primary School

Sayaka Tohyama, Masayuki Yamada

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Sayaka Tohyama, Masayuki Yamada. Developing Gender-Neutral Programming Materials: A Case Study of Children in Lower Grades of Primary School. IFIP World Conference on Computers in Education (WCCE), Aug 2022, Hiroshima, Japan. pp.160-172, 10.1007/978-3-031-43393-1_16 . hal-05533305

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# Developing Gender-Neutral Programming Materials: A Case Study of Children in Lower Grades of Primary School

Sayaka Tohyama<fnref n="1" />(✉) and Masayuki Yamada<fnref n="2" />

**Abstract.** There is considerable literature on ways to increase the participation of girls in the programming or computer science domains. However, further efforts are needed to foster ‘gendered innovations’ in today’s digitalized world. In this study, we focused on facilitating a gender-free image of programming among young children using two types of educational materials we developed. The learning materials have an opposite order of items from each other using Scratch based on materials provided from the Japanese Ministry of Education: ‘general’ material starts with introducing ‘move X steps’ while ‘gender-neutral’ material starts with ‘say X’ and ‘when I receive X’ (message passing). We conducted five rounds of afterschool programming lessons between November 2021 and January 2022 for two groups of four second graders (two boys and two girls) in primary schools using general and developed materials. The detailed analysis using transcripts from videotaped data of children’s construction process suggests that the developed materials were more effective for both girls and boys to support their programming construction process. Additionally, boys seemed to be helped more than girls when using the developed materials.

**Keywords:** Programming Education · Gender · Lower Primary School · Scratch

# 1 Introduction

## 1.1 Programming and Gender in Primary Schools

Programming/coding education for children in primary schools is a growing trend around the world [1–3]. There are a variety of educational purposes and national/school curricula for programming education, including incorporating them as part of mathematics education [4] and positioning students for further education in computer science [5]. While several years have passed since new national curriculum for programming was introduced [6], more research is needed on how to balance gender in the programming or computer science domain. This is especially true for programming courses offered as part of primary education, which appear to be designed for both boys and girls; however, there is a need to increase girls’ consecutive participation.

<footnote n="1">¹ Shizuoka University, 3-5-1 Johoku, Naka-Ku, Hamamatsu, Shizuoka, Japan
tohyama@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² Kyushu Institute of Technology, 680-4 Kawazu, Iizuka, Fukuoka, Japan</footnote>
According to the theory of constructionism, children can think using their preferred externalized ideas [7]. During construction, the externalized ideas function as tangible artefacts for improvement of the children’s learning [8]. Both boys and girls display the ability for construction of their ideas in programming and the way they display it differs somewhat [9]. The key to performance for both genders appears to be the ability to choose their ‘objects to think with’ [10]. This indicates the construction of each child differs because the children’s preferences or specialities differ.

The difference in children’s preferences may include gender-related differences. The OECD PISA 2018, a well-known method of international student assessment, revealed that girls’ reading scores were 30 points greater than boys, while boys’ mathematics scores were 5 points greater than girls, suggesting domain-specific gender differences are relevant to subjects in schools [11]. Another study suggested that boys’ self-concept of mathematics is higher than girls’ [12]. There is a possibility that both achievement and self-concept of mathematics influences girls’ low occupation of ICT-related work because mathematics and programming are deeply related.

Based on these findings, there is a possibility for motivating students, including girls, in programming if they can use their abilities and create their own preferred works on programming. The idea does not oppose ‘mathland’ suggested by Papert [7]: the idea is to make introductions to programming more domain-free. After students’ initial participation, they can be introduced to mathematical components during construction of their preferred works.

## 1.2 Previous Efforts to Eliminate the Gender Gap in Programming Education

There are very few women working in the programming and computer science domains [13] and therefore, there have been many global efforts to introduce a gender balance. The first approach is providing girls-only programming education. For example, Linda Liukas, author of *Hello Ruby* [14], started the ‘Rails Girls’ community to involve girls in the world of programming [15]. Similarly, in 2021, European Girls’ Olympiad in Informatics was organized to encourage girls’ participation in programming; only junior-high school and high school girls could apply [16].

Second, efforts have been made to identify and eliminate unconscious gender bias. It is suggested that female programming teachers are more effective at advancing the study of programming for girls than their male counterparts, especially from kindergarten to primary education [17]. In addition, the literature suggests that there are various tacit gender-related biases around computers. For example, providing a gender-neutral room, instead of a stereotypical computer science room with science fiction books, computer parts, and so forth, can eliminate biases and further stimulate girls’ interest in programming [18, 19].

Third, efforts have been made to revise educational materials used for teaching programming. Existing educational materials may be unconsciously gender-biased because of the limited number of women who have published programming educational materials or participated in programming education. The above-mentioned *Hello Ruby* [14] is globally recognised as one of the few books on computer science written from a female perspective. Furthermore, as Medal and Pournaghshband pointed out, names and contexts in computer science educational materials should be gender neutral to make girls
confident about the subject [20]. One such approach was suggested by Kafai et al. They used e-textiles, sewing strings of conductive fibres to connect sensors, actuators, and so forth, for gender-neutral constructive programming education. E-textiles can appeal to both genders, since interest in electric circuits are traditionally attributed to men and sewing to women. In activities using e-textiles, students can engage in their own construction regardless of gender [21].

To develop gender-neutral programming educational materials, studying gender preferences in the programming domain from the perspective of gendered innovations [22] is also effective. According to Kafai, female students prefer realistic situations and avoid violent expressions when creating video games, compared to male students [9]. The same tendency was captured in a previous study on programming workshops, where sixth-grade girls in a primary school attempted to externalise their experience of climbing Mt. Fuji very realistically. The girls even expressed that it had started raining during the climb, causing them to slip [23]. Spieler and Slany also reported on such a practice using ‘pocket code’ in ‘No One Left Behind’ from the European H2020 project. They suggested that the order of work and studying items influenced female students more than male students [24].

Although existing studies offer promising ideas, most of these participants were junior high to high school students, with the exception of Tohyama et al.'s study [23]. It may a promising venture to motivate younger girls than students in upper grades of primary school, junior high, and high school because younger students seem freer from gender biases. The field of programming can be analogically considered from the situation of mathematics education: mathematics as a subject meant for only males become stronger as students get older [25]. Moreover, to encourage lower-grade primary school girls to pursue programming, it is important to relate programming to their preferences from ‘object-to-think-with’ perspectives. As Kafai suggested [9], storytelling is a promising way to introduce young girls to programming. Further, the participation of both genders in programming activities is essential for ensuring students’ conceptualisation of this domain in a gender-independent manner. There are great possibilities for young girls to engage in programming as a gender-free activity if we implement these points in an educational environment.

## 2 Purpose

Based on previous research, the purpose of this study is to develop programming learning materials which introduce storytelling, rather than movement of objects, to involve lower grades of boys and girls in programming. This study also aims to examine the effect of these materials from the viewpoint of gendered innovations. The research questions are as follows:

(1) Which of our materials is more appropriate from a gender-inclusive perspective?

(2) What is the difference in children's activities between two kinds of materials?
# 3 Method

## 3.1 Afterschool Programming Club

We organised a programming club for second graders from primary schools (7–8 years old). These students were appropriate participants because they could externalise and report their subjective perspectives and engage in programming activities that require some knowledge of mathematics. Second graders in Japan have experience in reporting their own impressions and feelings verbally in school activities, and they have also studied multiplication tables and double-digit addition/summation in mathematics.

We conducted five afterschool 90-min sessions (including rest time) on programming. These sessions were offered once a week, between November 2021 and January 2022 in a conference room of a national university. The club was designed from the viewpoint of constructionism [26], which helps children learn via the construction of objects they are personally interested in. The programming club was separated into two groups: ‘G’, with general educational materials, and ‘N’, with gender-neutral educational materials. Each group consisted of two girls and two boys. The teachers at the club included the first author (female) and an undergraduate student (male) as a teaching assistant (TA). Each child was assigned a laptop with touch screen function to construct programs on Scratch<fnref n="1" />. Scratch is a little difficult for lower grades in primary school, so schools often use Scratch Jr<fnref n="2" /> instead [27]. However, we selected Scratch to enhance the children’s construction without functional limitations.

From the applicants to our afterschool programming club, we randomly selected four boys (B1g, B2g, B3n, B4n) and four girls (G1g, G2g, G3n, G4n) who had almost no programming experience. Table 1 shows the design of the club. All children attended public primary schools in Japan near the institution to which the first author is affiliated. The selected children were randomly assigned to either group. Before the programming club, we explained our research direction, method of data collection, and compliance with the first author’s university research ethics to their parents. We obtained written informed consent from all parents. All attendees wore face masks and worked in an airy meeting room to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The room had no objects stereotypically associated with computer science.

<table><caption>**Table 1.** Design of programming club.</caption><thead><tr><td>Group</td><td>Duration of the club</td><td>Teaching type</td><td>Participants</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>G</td><td>2021/11/1–2021/12/6</td><td>General</td><td>Kids: B1g, B2g, G1g, G2g</td></tr><tr><td>N</td><td>2021/12/16–2022/1/20</td><td>Gender-Neutral</td><td>Kids: B3n, B4n, G3n, G4n</td></tr></tbody></table>

The first author developed two kinds of educational materials for teaching using Scratch: general and gender-neutral. The gender-neutral ones was developed from the

<footnote n="1">¹ https://scratch.mit.edu/.</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² https://www.scratchjr.org.</footnote>
perspective of supporting children's creation of their stories following Kafai [9], rather than the perspective of game-creation. They were reviewed by the second author. Both types of materials were based on the resource used for teaching programming in Japanese primary schools, provided by the Japanese Ministry of Education [28].

The materials used for both the G and N groups differed in the order of content but not the content itself (Table 2). The G-group material first introduced 'move X steps' block and the coordinate plane to move objects on Scratch, then explained loop and conditionals. After that, 'say X' block for the objects to say something and message passing using 'broadcast X' and 'when I receive X' blocks between objects were taught. Finally, variables and inequality signs were introduced. Meanwhile, the N-group material first introduced 'say X', 'when I receive X', and 'broadcast X' for enhancing children's creation without coordinate planes. After that, loop and conditionals were explained. Then, variables and inequality signs were introduced. Finally, 'move X steps' and the coordinate plane were explained.

A second-grade boy was asked to play the role of a student for a preliminary class to prepare for this workshop. We conducted the preliminary class using the 1st material (Table 2) from G group to check whether the difficulty was appropriate or not. No issues were noted in the preliminary class.

The participants attended an approximately 20-min lecture by the teacher at the start of each class to study new Scratch blocks and their usage, before proceeding to their own work. They were informed that they would have to present their work to their parents in the final class. They could create as many works as they desired and were informed that the teacher and TA would answer all their questions.

<table><caption>**Table 2.** Contents of educational materials.</caption><thead><tr><th>club</th><th>general (G)</th><th>gender-neutral (N)</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>1<sup>st</sup></td><td>'move X steps'<br>coordinate plane</td><td>'say X'<br>'broadcast X', 'when I receive X'</td></tr><tr><td>2<sup>nd</sup></td><td>conditional (if-then), loop (repeat)</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>3<sup>rd</sup></td><td>'say X'<br>'broadcast X', 'when I receive X'</td><td>variables<br>inequality sign (<,>)</td></tr><tr><td>4<sup>th</sup></td><td>variables<br>inequality sign (<,>)</td><td>'move X steps'<br>coordinate plane</td></tr><tr><td>5<sup>th</sup></td><td>(no new materials provided)</td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

## 3.2 Data Collection

The children answered a questionnaire sheet created by the first author at the end of each class. In the questionnaire, they were first asked whether they enjoyed their programming activities, then asked whether they considered programming more of a male or female activity. Participants asked to choose one option from a 4-point Likert scale. Their work
was saved on laptops they utilised. We recorded each participant with IC recorders and video cameras; we also recorded their laptop screens. All the classroom discourses were transcribed.

First, we analysed the 40 answered questionnaire sheets (five sheets per child) from the survey. The results are presented in 3.1. Second, we counted the number of works produced per child and extracted the theme of their first and final works from their explanations during the classes. These results are presented in 3.2. Finally, we conducted a detailed analysis using the transcripts of the two boys in each group to understand how they were able to engage in self-directed construction. We focused on boys from the gendered-innovation perspective [22] because the results from 3.2 showed almost no observed difference in girls between the G and N groups, and our developed educational material seem to be effective for boys.

In the detailed analysis, we counted the number of participants' questions based on the categories suggested by Miyake and Norman [29]. Miyake and Norman revealed an interaction between learners' knowledge levels and the material's levels: novice learners tend to ask more questions when they study with easier materials than with harder materials because they can understand the content. In our study, it was expected that participants would ask more questions when they understood what they needed to do to realise their objectives as compared to possessing a shallow understanding. If participants had a shallow understanding, they may have had difficulties in formulating questions, which may not have contained concrete plans to construct their ideas on Scratch. Based on this hypothesis, we counted two types of questions independently: 'without hypothesis or content (w/o H)' questions, which required the teacher or TA to teach them concretely about how to code and realise their ideas on Scratch, and 'with-hypothesis (w/ H)' questions, which dealt with simple things like telling them where to click or which blocks to choose on Scratch. For example, the question 'I don't know how but what should I do to create a baseball game?' was coded as the w/o H category. In that situation, the teacher or TA concretely explained ways to realise the participant's idea. On the contrary, the question 'Where should I click to start drawing?' was coded as the w/H category because the participant was engaging in self-directed programming, with a plan to realise their objectives on Scratch. For the analysis, the first author coded all the discourse, while the second author coded discourse from the two classes independently. After coding, the first and second authors reviewed each other's coding results and confirmed that there were no discrepancies. The results are presented in 3.3.

We expected that girls in the gender-neutral group would be more engaged in programming because they could experience non-game-creation programming. Furthermore, we expected that the girls would ask more 'w/H' than 'w/o H' questions because they could start constructing stories not only for game-creation; thus, they could be helped to choose their preferred blocks on Scratch.
# 4 Results

## 4.1 Questionnaire Survey

The completed questionnaires suggested that all participants enjoyed every programming club activity. Furthermore, regarding the programming impression question, none of the participants stated that they considered programming to be a male or female domain. Thus, contrary to adult impressions, the student participants had no gendered impressions of programming.

## 4.2 First and Final Works

In the first class, B1g, B2g, G1g and B4n created programs of character movement. Meanwhile, G2g and G4n created programs of talking characters. B3n and G3n drew characters without programs, and started inputting their programs into the characters in their second class. All participants completed their final work within club time and completed their presentations as shown in Table 3. As is evident, the themes of their works differed from each other based on their various preferences. Participants had constructed other works before their final one.

<table><caption>**Table 3.** Theme of final works and number of works including final works.</caption><thead><tr><td>Child</td><td>Theme of the final work</td><td>Total # of works</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>B1g</td><td>A ball thrown to a batter in a baseball field</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>B2g</td><td>Game of get away from enemies</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>G1g</td><td>Girls in a balloon party</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>G2g</td><td>Story of getting a pocket monster</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>B3n</td><td>Story of battling dragons</td><td>4</td></tr><tr><td>B4n</td><td>Community of wizards</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>G3n</td><td>Story of a pocket monster and a Japanese character</td><td>2</td></tr><tr><td>G4n</td><td>Story of a birthday girl's room</td><td>3</td></tr></tbody></table>

## 4.3 Questions in the Construction

During the construction, participants questioned the teacher and TA frequently. Although the final works showed no clear qualitative gender and group differences as shown in 3.2, the characteristics of participants' questions differed between the two groups. In the analysis, we focused on B1g and G1g from G group and B3n and G3n from group N. B1g appeared to have only vague plans to realise his ideas using Scratch, so he asked the teacher and TA to realise his ideas instead. B3n, G1g, and G3n concentrated on their construction and rarely requested the teacher and TA's support to realise their ideas. G1g
used ‘move X steps’ and some blocks of the coordinate plane, while G3n completed her work without the coordinate plane blocks and used a lot of ‘when I receive’ and ‘broadcast X’ blocks to tell her story.

The numbers of questions asked by B1g, G1g, B3n, and G3n are shown in Table 4. Compared to B1g, G1g’s ratio of ‘w/o H’ questions was lower. B1g requested the teacher or TA complete his idea on Scratch in every class by asking ‘w/o H’ questions. In the fifth class, he repeatedly requested the teacher’s help because he was in a hurry to complete his work for the final presentation. G1g also asked more ‘w/o H’ questions than ‘w/ H’ questions because she was also hurrying to complete her program.

Table 5 shows the total number of questions and the ratio of two questions. First, we focused on the G group. The ratio of B1g’s ‘w/o H’ questions was the highest among the four children. Also, G1g’s ratio of ‘w/o H’ questions was a little higher than B3n and G3n’s ratios. Compared to B1g, G1g’s ratio was lower. Second, we compared between both the G and N groups. B3n and G3n rarely asked ‘w/o H’ questions during the classes than B1g and G1g. From these analyses, B1g had more difficulty with his self-directive construction than G1g. Moreover, the N-group children seemed to have plans for realising their ideas and were more engaged in their programming activities than the G group.

<table><caption>**Table 4.** Number of questions in each class.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Kids</th><th colspan="2">1<sup>st</sup> class</th><th colspan="2">2<sup>nd</sup> class</th><th colspan="2">3<sup>rd</sup> class</th><th colspan="2">4<sup>th</sup> class</th><th colspan="2">5<sup>th</sup> class</th></tr><tr><th>w/ H</th><th>w/o H</th><th>w/ H</th><th>w/o H</th><th>w/ H</th><th>w/o H</th><th>w/ H</th><th>w/o H</th><th>w/ H</th><th>w/o H</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>B1g</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>3</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>0</td><td>8</td></tr><tr><td>G1g</td><td>8</td><td>0</td><td>9</td><td>4</td><td>8</td><td>1</td><td>7</td><td>4</td><td>2</td><td>3</td></tr><tr><td>B3n</td><td>3</td><td>0</td><td>2</td><td>2</td><td>7</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td><td>0</td></tr><tr><td>G3n</td><td>8</td><td>0</td><td>8</td><td>1</td><td>8</td><td>2</td><td>8</td><td>1</td><td>9</td><td>1</td></tr></tbody></table>

<table><caption>**Table 5.** Total number and ratio of questions.</caption><thead><tr><th rowspan="2">Kids</th><th colspan="2">Total # of questions</th><th colspan="2">Ratio</th></tr><tr><th>w/ H</th><th>w/o H</th><th>w/ H</th><th>w/o H</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>B1g</td><td>9</td><td>18</td><td>33.3%</td><td>66.7%</td></tr><tr><td>G1g</td><td>34</td><td>12</td><td>73.9%</td><td>26.1%</td></tr><tr><td>B3n</td><td>12</td><td>2</td><td>85.7%</td><td>14.3%</td></tr><tr><td>G3n</td><td>41</td><td>5</td><td>89.1%</td><td>10.9%</td></tr></tbody></table>

The detailed stories of the children’s construction are shown below. Until the fourth class, B1g’s main activities were mimicking the sample code provided by the teacher. He had his ‘baseball game on Scratch’ idea during the second class, but did not proceed with his creation until the fifth class. He mimicked the teacher’s code and tested it on his
laptop in the first class. During the second class, he whispered, ‘I want to construct my program, which shows the boy throwing the ball and the girl hitting the ball with her bat, but I can’t…’ The teacher responded by asking, ‘So, where should the ball go?’ and B1g answered ‘Umm, to her bat…’ The teacher said ‘So, how many steps should the ball go towards the right?’ to deconstruct his idea. However, he did not continue talking with the teacher and started talking with his classmate. Instead, B1g tried to realise pieces of his baseball idea by selecting a baseball image from the ‘Background’ menu on Scratch and used the ‘move X steps’ block on the ball. However, the ball only moved slightly towards the girl’s bat. During the third class, he tried to draw some pictures, selected some sprites from the ‘Choose a sprite’ menu on Scratch, painted the selected sprites, and spoke to G1g and B2g (sitting next to B1g); there was no progress in his baseball game on Scratch. His baseball work, mainly coded by the teacher using ‘move X steps’, ‘when I receive X’, and ‘broadcast X’, was finally realised during the fifth class. In his work, the ball would first move towards the right from the boy to the girl, before ‘HOME RUN!’ would appear on the screen (the TA wrote the message). The number of sprites with any code was two: the ball and the message “HOME RUN!” (Fig. 1).

Contrastingly, B3n engaged in self-directed construction during all the classes. His final work was a story of some dragons. He used ‘when I receive X’ and ‘broadcast X’ blocks to eventually show the images and dialogues between the dragons (Fig. 2). His final work seemed to be based on his learning in the second class. He was confused about how to organise his characters in sequence and discussed this with the TA for a while. He eventually understood how to use the ‘when I receive’ block in relation to ‘switch costume to X’. The default names of costumes in Scratch were in numerical order, so he was required to make the command using numbers if he wanted to change his characters’ costumes. He created his characters with some costumes and finally succeeded in changing them if the character received messages.

<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 1. B1g’s final work.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_4.png" /><figcaption>Fig. 2. B3n's final work.</figcaption></figure>

# 5 Discussion

Unlike previous results derived from studies on adults, our study's participants had no gendered impression of programming. They engaged in their activities without being affected by gender biases. However, we should consider that only three girls had applied, compared to 16 boys, during the first recruitment of the programming club. Almost the same ratio of girls and boys had received the information about the recruitment for the programming club. One girl of the four was recruited after two extra recruitment drives. These results suggest that the four girls and their parents might have had a less gendered image of programming before the programming club started than the other girls and parents who did not apply to the club.

In our study, we noted that all the children had finished their final work and completed the final presentation. Additionally, the educational materials that we developed helped children engage with programming. Further, it can be suggested that girls who used materials developed by us may feel more supported in constructing their stories than those who used general educational material. This could be because of the order of our developed materials that first introduced storytelling-familiar blocks: 'say X', 'broadcast X' and 'when X receive'. As shown in Table 3, three of the four girls presented a story for the final presentation using the storytelling-familiar blocks. Interestingly, one of the girls used general materials which first introduced 'move X steps', created her program without 'move X steps', and used 'say X' in the first programming class. Kafai suggested that girls prefer storytelling in their programming [9], and three of the four girls in this study showed the same tendency.

According to the final works of B1g and B3n, both boys used 'when I receive X', 'broadcast X', and 'wait X seconds'. Only B1g used 'move X steps' and 'go to x: X y: Y'; moving these blocks required knowledge of the coordinate plane. The teacher explained the characteristics of the coordinate plane and how to locate sprites using X and Y metrics on Scratch to both classes. However, B1g had difficulty continuing his work using the metrics lecture from the first class. B3n engaged in his construction during class and finished his work without blocks on the coordinate plane. Although 'move X steps' is often introduced at the beginning of Scratch texts for novice programmers, it might have still proved difficult for B1g. B3n tacitly avoided using the blocks of the coordinate
plane. However, this does not mean that B1g and B3n struggled with numerical values; both had dealt with numerical values outside the coordinate plane situation on Scratch. Additionally, both used ‘wait X seconds’ with numerical values. Further, B1g correctly calculated the summation of double-digit values mentally, while B3n used numbers to control the order of events in the ‘when I receive X’ and ‘broadcast X’ blocks.

# 6 Conclusion

This study suggests that younger children in primary school have no gendered impression of programming. In our club, both girls and boys engaged in programming and realised their ideas. However, contrary to previous findings on ways to involve girls in programming, we found that the gender-neutral educational materials we developed were more effective for the boys than general materials we developed. The gender-neutral educational material may have also supported the girls’ programming requirements about storytelling; however, we were unable to suggest this effect clearly because of the limited number of children. Detailed analysis and additional practices of programming education are required to understand the effect of the material in girls.

Our results also suggest that girls naturally engaged in programming activities. In the activity, the girls were dedicated in their efforts to complete their constructions and rarely got stuck. On the contrary, the boys would get stuck using blocks of the coordinate plane and had difficulty finding other ways to realise their ideas.

The limitation of this study stems from being a case study. Hence, the universal applicability of the results must be further verified. We aim to revise the developed educational materials and use them in future practices of programming education. In our future studies, we will design our programming education considering boys and girls differ in developmental order at their earlier ages [30]. Furthermore, we should improve scaffold designs from a social support viewpoint [31] in our programming club.

**Acknowledgments.** We would like to express our sincere appreciation to the children and their parents who joined our club.

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