A Methodological Review of Computer Science Education Research.

Methodological reviews have been used successfully to identify research trends and improve research practice in a variety of academic fields. Although there have been three methodological reviews of the emerging field of computer science education research, they lacked reliability or generalizability. Therefore, because of the capacity for a methodological review to improve practice in computer science education and because the previous methodological reviews were lacking, a large scale, reliable, and generalizable methodological review of the recent research on computer science education is reported here. Our overall research question, which has nine subquestions, involved the methodological properties of research reported in articles in major computer science education research forums from the years 2000-2005. The purpose of this methodological review is to provide a methodologically rigorous basis on which to make recommendations for the improvement of computer science education research and to promote informed dialogue about its practice. A proportional stratified random sample of 352 articles was taken from a population of 1306 computer science education articles published from 2000 to 2005. The 352 articles were coded in terms of their general characteristics, report elements, research methodology, research design, independent, dependent, and mediating/moderating variables examined, and statistical practices. A second rater coded a reliability sub-sample of 53 articles. Based on the results of this review, recommendations for improving computer science education research are given. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]