The Effects of Flipped Classroom on Learning Achievement in Block-Based Programming Education

With the rapid development of science and technology over the world, programming education has shown as a trend in decades. Programming courses have been offered in primary education to promote students’ computational thinking skills. However, teaching and learning programming in primary schools involve different knowledge including complex mathematical concepts and programming syntax. Also, traditional teaching methods may not effectively cater for students’ individual needs and learning trajectories. Thus, learning difficulties are common among students. Teachers keep examining innovation on programming education to improve their teaching. This study investigated used a pretest-posttest method with two groups of grade five students in Macao, to compare the influence of two pedagogical strategies, flipped classroom and traditional teaching, in students’ learning achievements. The major findings of the study showed that the experimental group in flipped classroom had significantly higher learning achievements than the control group in the programming course. Moreover, the students in the flipped classroom showed a significant effective mastery of more complex programming concepts, such as conditions and loops.