Reviewing the affordances of tangible programming languages: Implications for design and practice

During the last few years, the development of tools for learning programming in primary and secondary schools (shortly K-12) has reached a significant turning point. This study reviews the published papers on the field of tangible programming languages (TPLs) in K-12 schools in order to summarize the findings, guide future studies and give reflections for design and practice. From a systematic literature search 12 TPL peer-reviewed articles were collected and analyzed. Results of this short survey show that designers should emphasize on TPLs unambiguous manipulations, and consider clear mappings between tangible and virtual commands. Despite the challenges, the studies reviewed suggest that implementing programming lessons in K-12 education using TPL could be an enjoyable and effective learning experience.