Position: The Role of Blocks Programming in Forming Computational Identity

Computational Identity (CI) is emerging as important feature to study when considering how to motivate students to continue engaging with computation. CI is not necessarily fostered by learning computing skills, and requires explicit consideration in instructional design. We hypothesize that blocks languages are specifically well-suited to the development of CI, which is related to but not the same as the previously demonstrated fitness for introducing computing concepts in general.