The Effects of Spanish-English Bilingual Instruction in a CS0 Course for High School Students

Abstract

Prior studies in multilingual computing education have shown that many non-native English speakers (NNES) in India struggle with introductory programming courses as they learn both a programming language (e.g., Java) and a natural language (e.g., English) concurrently. Although multiple studies have been conducted with NNES in India whose first language is Hindi or Tamil, we do not yet know the influence a students' native language may have among Spanish speaking students in the United States. This replication study investigates the effects of an instructional design integrating the students' native language along with English on high school students' learning and engagement in a two week CS0 course using the block-based programming language, Scratch. We designed an experiment to teach introductory computing topics (e.g., algorithms, variables, loops, conditionals) to two groups of students from a rural area spanning multiple institutions in the US. The experimental group was taught using English and Spanish (students' native language) and the control section was taught using only English. A pre-test and post-test was conducted to test students' programming knowledge before and after the course. We also recorded all the questions students asked during the course to measure student engagement. We found that teaching Scratch programming using Spanish and English is no different than teaching Scratch programming using only English to high school students whose native language is Spanish. We also found that the students in the experimental group asked more questions when compared to the control group.