DIDACTICAL STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY TEACHERS WHEN TEACHING PROGRAMMING IN K-9 EDUCATION

The interest in programming education has been significantly strengthened recently as a consequence of an increasingly digital world that demands development of digital skills. More and more countries have introduced programming in their K-9 curricula. In 2017, Sweden joined these countries through the government's decision to make changes to the curriculum in terms of introducing programming in compulsory school. However, the path to successful programming education is associated with a number of challenges, of which the most crucial - on an international level - is related to lack of didactical research that sheds light on good teaching practices. In this study, we reached out to 19 teachers that by now considered themselves experienced in teaching programming for young children in K-9 and conducted interviews with them. A large majority of these teachers, fifteen of them, participated in a national research project with focus on programming education. The remaining four teachers were identified in specialized social media groups with focus on programming education. In the paper, we report on an analysis of the interviews conducted asking the questions: what didactical strategies are employed by experienced teachers when teaching programming in K-9, how are teachers building progression and what digital tools, code languages and environments are they offering their pupils to explore and use? As such, the paper reports on a number of strategies employed by teachers and contributes to our understanding of how programming education are enacted by experienced K-9 teachers.