Coding Connections: Exploring Relationships Between Computer Science Learning and Mathematics Achievement in Secondary Education
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This dissertation in practice explores the intersection of computer science education, specifically computational thinking and programming, with mathematics achievement among 15-year-old students in selected English-speaking countries. The research addresses a gap in understanding whether skills developed through computer science can positively influence mathematics performance by assessing the extent to which learning in computer science transfers to mathematics. To achieve this, a quantitative methodology was employed, incorporating pilot study data from a single school and large-scale survey data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022. The analysis assessed the correlation between regular participation in programming activities and mathematics attainment, controlling for covariates such as gender, mathematics anxiety, growth mindset, socio-economic status, immigrant status, and reading ability. Key findings reveal that programming's impact on mathematics performance is context-dependent. In New Zealand, students who regularly engaged in programming significantly outperformed their peers in mathematics, particularly in higher-order thinking, problem-solving, and spatial reasoning --- indicating evidence of near transfer. However, in countries like Canada, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, the effect was negligible or non-significant, suggesting that programming's influence is not uniform across contexts. Additionally, mathematics anxiety, socio-economic status, gender, and reading ability emerged as significant predictors of mathematics performance across all countries, highlighting the multifaceted nature of mathematical achievement. Results from this study suggest that integrating computer programming into the curriculum can enhance mathematics learning when programming activities are intentionally aligned with mathematical objectives. Cross-disciplinary teaching, intertwining computer programming and mathematics shows promise in boosting outcomes. However, the effectiveness of such integration depends on contextual factors like curriculum design and instructional quality. A well-structured curriculum and teaching methods that promote skill transfer are key to increasing both the likelihood and the benefits of successful transfer.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".