January 2012 Volume 15 Number 1 - Educational Technology ...

they had wished (as in Case 2). Moreover, all the three children mentioned that they tended to try their best
when their parents were learning with them side-by-side because they did not want to disappoint their parents.
Parents gained a better understanding of their children.
Through parent-child collaboration in programming, the parents gained a better understanding of how their
children approached problem-solving challenges and their children’s strengths and weaknesses. They also felt
that the course enabled them to develop closer relationships with their children, especially for Peter’s father who
rarely participated in his son’s learning.
All parents and children enjoyed MSWLogo programming greatly.
The participants liked MSWLogo because it was easily grasped; it allowed one to draw a relatively complex
figure with only a few instructions; it gave immediate, visual feedback; and it increased one’s understanding of
geometry. They said they would like to be able to learn advanced features of MSWLogo as well as other
programming languages in the future.
Results of Programming Tests
Table 5 shows the five figures that the three children were asked to draw in the two programming tests, the first three
figures for the first test and the remaining two for the second test. Those cells marked with “” mean that a problem
was solved successfully by the child whose name appears in the column head. Out of the five test problems, Peter
(Case 1), Sean (Case 2) and Jade (Case 3) solved 3, 2, and 4 problems respectively.
Table 5. Test problems solved successfully by each child
It can be seen from Table 5 that Jade, though showing greatest anxiety at the beginning of the camp, performed the
best. Jade’s good performance may be attributed at least partly to the more proper guidance provided by her mother,
who was neither over-involved (as was Sean’s mother) nor under-involved (as was Peter’s father). Another possible
reason may be the more effective communication that occurred between Jade and her mother. As compared with
Peter’s father whose suggestions rarely generated responses from Peter and Sean’s mother who was constantly
giving orders for Sean to follow, the communication between Jade and her mother seemed more effective and
productive.
It may not be surprising that Sean did not perform as well as Jade and Peter. As Neuharth (1998) has noted, because
authoritarian parents demand more control and dependence from their children, their children tend to be dependent
on parental and external validation, which result in weaker decision making skills when they have to solve problems
independently. Since Sean’s mother seldom allowed him to contribute problem-solving ideas, it is understandable
that Sean might not have learned as much from doing the programming exercises as Peter and Jade did. It was
observed that Sean made errors more frequently during the tests. For example, though he solved the fifth problem in
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