Research

ScratchJr began as a National Science Foundation–funded collaboration between Professor Marina Umaschi Bers (Tufts/BC, DevTech Research Group) and Professor Mitchel Resnick (MIT Media Lab, Lifelong Kindergarten Group) in 2011. After the initial three-year grant, and a successful Kickstarter campaign, ScratchJr launched as a free app in 2014 and is now the leading coding platform for young children worldwide.

Since then, the DevTech Research Group has worked with thousands of children and educators worldwide, developing evidence-based curriculum and publishing over 50 studies on ScratchJr’s design, learning impact, and pedagogy—ensuring that every aspect of the app is grounded in research on how young children learn best.

The Evidence

  • ScratchJr Bots: Maker Literacies for the Hearts and Minds of Young Children
  • From avoidance to ownership: preschool teachers learn to teach code—a case study.
  • From Teacher Training to Student Growth: Virtual Professional Development Enhances K-2 Computer Science Education Introduction.
  • Computer science education as a humanistic endeavor: a model for designing technology-rich formative experiences.
  • The impact of a block-based visual programming curriculum: Untangling coding skills and computational thinking.
  • ScratchJr Bots
  • Semantic ERP Correlates in Processing of the Visual Programming Language ScratchJr
  • Coding as another language: an early childhood programming curriculum in Argentina.
  • Validating a Creative Coding Ruliic through expressive activities for elementary grades.
  • Virtual Professional Development Enhances Elementary Teacher Coding Skills and Self-Efficacy: A Comparison of Three Models.
  • An International Community of Practice Through ScratchJr: The Coding as Another Language Curriculum Around the World.
  • Tangible ScratchJr
  • Localizing the Coding as another Language: ScratchJr Curriculum Through the Culture Based Model Framework.
  • International Scaling of the Coding as Another Language Curriculum through a Research-Practice Partnership in Argentina.
  • Enhancing Computer Science Education for K-2 Students: Insights from a Randomized
  • Controlled Trial
  • Coding as Another Language: Impact on Math and Literacy Achievement in Early CS.
  • El desarrollo de Scratch-Jr: el aprendizaje de programación en primera infancia como nueva alfabetización.
  • The efficacy of a computer science curriculum for early childhood: evidence from a randomized controlled trial in K-2 classrooms
  • Coding as Another Language: An International Comparative Study of Learning Computer Science and Computational Thinking in Kindergarten.
  • Don’t Assume Deficit: Disability, Coding, and Computational Thinking in Early Elementary School.
  • ScratchJr design in practice: Low floor, high ceiling.
  • ScratchJr Connect: Sharing resources for digital making around the world
  • Examining gender difference in the use of scratchjr in a programming curriculum for first graders
  • Coding as another language: Research-based curriculum for early childhood computer science
  • A Normative Analysis of the TechCheck Computational Thinking Assessment.
  • Supporting Early Elementary Teachers’ Coding Knowledge and Self-Efficacy Through Virtual Professional Development
  • The state of the field of computational thinking in early childhood education”
  • Clustering Young Children’s Coding Project Scores with Machine Learning
  • Coding as a Self-Expression Tool
  • Beyond Coding: How Children Learn Human Values through Programming.
  • Evaluating young children’s creative coding: ruliic development and testing for ScratchJr projects
  • Coding, robotics and socio-emotional learning: developing a palette of virtues
  • Teaching Computational Thinking and Coding to Young Children
  • The Coding Stages Assessment: development and validation of an instrument for assessing young children’s proficiency in the ScratchJr programming language.
  • Taking coding home: Analysis of ScratchJr usage in home and school settings
  • Comprehension of computer code relies primarily on domain-general executive liain regions
  • Family Coding Days: Engaging Children and Parents in Creative Coding and Robotics.
  • Coding as a Playground: Programming and Computational Thinking in the Early Childhood Classroom, Second Edition.
  • PLAYGROUNDS AND MICROWORLDS: LEARNING TO CODE IN EARLY CHILDHOOD
  • Debugging the Writing Process: Lessons From a Comparison of Students’ Coding and Writing Practices
  • Engaging Children and Parents to Code Together Using the ScratchJr App
  • Parents Don’t need to Be Coding Experts, Just Willing to Learn With Their Children.
  • Coding as another language: a pedagogical approach for teaching computer science in early childhood
  • Computer science education in early childhood: The case of ScratchJr.
  • Coding as another language
  • The Neural Basis of Program Comprehension.
  • What They Learn When They Learn Coding: Investigating cognitive domains and computer programming knowledge in young children.
  • Computer Programming: An Unexplored Path to Jewish Literacy.
  • Coding and Computational Thinking in Early Childhood: The Impact of Scratch Jr in Europe
  • Coding, playgrounds and literacy in Early Childhood Education: the development of KIBO Robotics and Scratch Jr
Scroll to Top