Effects of Scratch-Based Learning Media on Elementary Students’ Creative Skills in Social Studies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.26740/jrpd.v12n1.p107-115Keywords:
Scratch, Creative skills, social studies learning, quasi-experimental design, elementary educationAbstract
Creative skills are central to 21st-century learning, and limited research has examined how block-based programming media can support these skills within elementary Social Studies. This study aims to examine whether Scratch-based learning media is associated with a greater improvement in fifth-grade students’ creative skills in Social Studies than conventional digital presentation media, using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest nonequivalent control group design with 60 students from one public elementary school (experimental class n = 30; control class n = 30) and a rubric-scored, project-based creativity task analyzed as normalized gain (N-Gain) with an independent-samples t-test. The experimental group showed a significantly higher N-Gain than the control group, t(58) = 6.559, p < .001, with a mean difference of 0.230, a 95% confidence interval from 0.160 to 0.300, and a large standardized effect (d = 1.69). Given the nonrandomized design and the single-site sample, the findings should be interpreted with caution, and they suggest that Scratch-based project activities are a feasible option for elementary Social Studies that warrants replication in randomized, multi-site, and longitudinal studies.
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