Confidence is the Key: Unlocking Predictive Factors of Latinx Elementary Students on a Computational Thinking Measure

As computing education begins to grow in K-12 classrooms, it is increasingly important to understand the relationships between a student's coding attitudes and computing outcomes. While work has been done at the undergraduate and high school level, less is known about elementary students, and even less about Latinx students. We sought to explore the connections between Latinx elementary students' coding attitudes and computational thinking (CT) skills after participating in a year-long, remote computing curriculum in a public school district in Southern California. We collected validated measures on coding attitudes and CT skills for 164 fourth-grade students. We used structural equation modeling to analyze the relationship between the coding attitude constructs (i.e., confidence, utility, perception of coders, social influences, and interest) and scores on a CT assessment while controlling for demographic factors (i.e., gender, English language fluency, free or reduced lunch status, reading and math standardized test scores). In a model demonstrating acceptable fit, only math scores were a significant predictor of CT scores and coding confidence. Confidence was found to be significantly associated with the other attitude constructs except for perception of coders. Our results indicate that confidence plays a prominent role in student computing learning, especially at a young age. Efforts to better support Latinx students in computer science should include strategies that address students' coding confidence, such as developing positive perceptions of a student's learning process (e.g., failures as learning opportunities) in specific coding skills and practices (e.g., tinkering, debugging).