Coding to Cope: Teaching Programming to Children with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

Digital and computing literacy are essential skills in our modern society, but children with emotional and behavioral disorders are often left out, especially during their treatment in a clinic for child and adolescent psychiatry. This paper explores addressing this exclusionary gap by introducing children with emotional and behavioral disorders to programming at an early age, using the popular programming environments SCRATCH and SONIC Pi. The primary aim of this initiative is to provide children with such disorders an opportunity to develop critical skills through programming, ultimately promoting their affections and empowering them. Overall, our programming courses demonstrate that it is feasible to successfully teach children with emotional and behavioral disorders basic programming skills while having fun and significantly increasing their self-efficacy. There are, however, unique challenges in running such courses. Based on our experiences, we therefore provide recommendations for educators and researchers working with children with emotional and behavioral disorders in programming education.