Construction of a Taxonomy for Tools, Languages, and Environments across Computing Education

Abstract

The sheer number of tools, languages, and environments (TLEs) used in computing education has proliferated in the last few years as more tools are developed to meet new demands of the growing amount of K-12 computing education that has been undertaken. However, there is little formalized language at either the K-12 or post-secondary level that provides for a way to classify these TLEs for discussing research and for classifying in databases. In this research study, we step through a formal process for building a taxonomy for TLEs. As part of the supporting research, we first discuss the importance of taxonomies and classification systems in computing education, provide a formal method for building a taxonomy, and provide working definitions of TLEs based on previous literature. This is followed by a systematic literature review using a widely-accepted methodology for finding articles that have examined TLEs in primary, secondary, and post-secondary computing education. This literature review focuses on studies that looked at multiple TLEs and specifically attempted to classify or categorize them. We then propose a new taxonomy for classifying TLEs and provide definitions and samples for each category. This is followed by a discussion of the next steps in vetting the taxonomy and the challenges and issues that need to be considered when evaluating it for classifying TLEs in computing education.