Digital Game-Based Learning and Computational Thinking in P-12 Education: A Systematic Literature Review on Playing Games for Learning Programming

Introduction

Because of the explosive growth of Computational Thinking (CT), many educational programs are formulated around essential CT skills. Though, several curriculum designers that aim to implement CT education into the school settings use programming tools and environments to expose students to coding. However, problem-solving skills are not something that can be developed by every student over a short period of time or over the same conditions. It requires students to experience and reflect on the consequences of their actions. This takes time, practice and effort that sometimes school’s time and place do not permit. At the same time, learners continue to face difficulties in CT education, even though they use fluently computers and one could indicate that studying programming would be easier today (Buitrago Flórez et al., 2017). Extended research conducted over the past years show that these difficulties are still present and that students seem to be even less interested in programming (Grover & Basu, 2017). To this end, come the digital or else called computer games. Games that can reinvent CS in schools by motivating and educating all students, including girls and underrepresented populations, to acquire CT skills.

Positively, there are plenty of works that deploy digital immersive technologies such as computer games to improve CT skills in several educational contexts. The most frequently occurring outcomes and impacts seem to be knowledge acquisition/content understanding and affective and motivational outcomes (Basawapatna et al., 2010; Combefis et al., 2016). Moreover, playing digital games to learn programming is linked to a range of perceptual, cognitive, behavioral, affective and motivational impacts and outcomes (Theodoropoulos et al., 2017). The topic seems to be increasingly interesting because of its effectiveness, and therefore there are studies that summarize previously published works within computing education. In a recent review study, Lindberg et al. (2019) present games that consume numerous programming topics in their gameplay, by searching common game stores. Authors preformed an investigation into K-12 programming curriculum standards from seven countries and suggested which age groups match the games found. Vahldick et al. (2014) evaluated 40 games which claim to support the development of competencies in introductory computer programming courses (many were used in higher education) and found that most of them aim to develop students’ skills, through solving problems. In another study, Lockwood and Mooney (2017), conducted a literature review with common programming tools used in secondary education. The authors listed programming tools (programming languages environments such as Python and game-development tools such as Scratch) as the main tools used to teach CT. They do not, however, identify papers where students play games to develop CT within schools. Moreover, the CT education domain is still in its infancy and requires research for developing theories of the learning mechanisms occurring in computer games (Kazimoglu, Kiernan, Bacon, & MacKinnon, 2012).

Although for the field of CT education it is clear that playing digital games leads to a variety of positive outcomes and impacts, it is also acknowledged that the literature on games is fragmented and lacks coherence (Lee et al., 2011). This lack of organization is regarded as an obstacle to progress in understanding the effects of games, developing more effective games and proposing guidance about how best to use them in programming learning. Zhao and Shute (2019) point out that the impact of digital games on CT development has only evaluated to a small extent. It also should be taken into account, that CT education is particularly challenging for students underrepresented in the fields of computing and engineering, such as girls and other learners from nondominant groups (Eordanidis et al., 2017). For these students, programming learning methods and digital games have been used together in such a way that one benefits from another.