Entering the Clubhouse: Case Studies of Young Programmers Joining the Online Scratch Communities

Entering the Clubhouse: Case Studies of Young Programmers Joining the Online Scratch Communities

Yasmin B. Kafai, Deborah Fields, William Q. Burke
Copyright: © 2012 |Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0140-6.ch013
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Abstract

Previous efforts in end-user development have focused on facilitating the mechanics of learning programming, leaving aside social and cultural factors equally important in getting youth engaged in programming. As part of a 4-month long ethnographic study, we followed two 12-year-old participants as they learned the programming software Scratch and its associated file-sharing site, scratch.mit.edu, in an after-school club and class. In our discussion, we focus on the role that agency, membership, and status played in their joining and participating in local and online communities of programmers.
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Background

Traditionally end-user development has been concerned with professionals and how they can customize tools to accomplish their work. Much of the research has either studied what problems end-user designers encounter in this process or how to design tools that would be supportive of their endeavors (e.g., Lieberman, Paterno, & Wulf, 2006). This research has been largely separate from efforts that have covered the same territory, albeit with young end-users, in school contexts. Here end-user development has been concerned with designing environments and tools that support novices in learning of programming (Guzdial, 2004). Ultimately, end-user development for professionals was seen as facilitating the modification of tools, whereas the focus for youth was on designing tools for ease-of-use, taking into account the differences in motivation, background, and developing expertise between young learners and adult professionals (Soloway, Guzdial, & Hay, 1994).

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