The Social Nature of Programming: Children and Fluency

• Published in: Human-Computer Interaction. Interaction Contexts Vol. 10272; pp. 291 - 308
• Main Authors: Baranauskas, M. Cecilia C., Luque Carbajal, Marleny
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2017; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Computational thinking; Social construction; Tangible User Interface
• ISBN: 3319580760; 9783319580760
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-58077-7_23

Computational thinking has gained a revival as a movement to promote the early teaching of programming concepts in the schools; it has been considered a fundamental skill in the contemporary world, not only for computers scientists but also for anyone in the future. In fact, in the last decades, the digital technology has provoked profound transformations in a world in which computer systems are underlying objects of the physical and social world, mediating our actions in society. This amplified view of the computational technology in our life brings to question the reach of the ‘computational thinking’ concept and leads us to reflect on what would mean fluency with (digital) information technology. In this work, we argue that a wider understanding for ‘computing’ should be addressed if we are to construct computer-based applications that enrich human life in the world. In this paper, we revisit the concept of computational thinking from its origins in computer science to the educational use of it, and address programming as designing in different layers of sign system, bringing issues of the social and informal nature (culture, commitments) to the formal and technical levels of programming. A case study with the design and use of a low cost tangible programming learning environment illustrates our proposal. The article ends up with a discussion on how the proposal faces risks of exaggerating the enthusiasm for the subject and concludes highlighting main findings.