The research on programming education in elementary schools from five countries

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to review current developments focusing on the use of programming education in primary and secondary schools in various countries. The aim of the review is not only to introduce the different types of individual countries in promoting programming education, but also to help governments, enterprises, educational practitioners and researchers to understand the current developments of the programming education and to provide a reference for promoting programming education. The review is organised into four parts that cover different aspects of current research: (a) governments' attention, (b) enterprises' support, (c) colleges and universities' assistance; and (d) implementation in primary and secondary schools. We summarised four findings: (a) governments' attention is the foundation of developing programming education effectively, (b) the enterprises can make people touch and understand the programming education more easily, (c) colleges and universities play their roles in connecting schools and programming education, and (d) the schools are like bricks in the whole programming education development framework. The overall conclusions suggest that the governments, enterprises, colleges and universities and schools work together to promote programming education.