The Effectiveness of ScratchJr in Enhancing Preschool Children's Problem-Solving Skills

ABSTRACT

Utilizing digital media serves as one of the teachers' efforts to develop children's problem-solving skills. By using the ScratchJr program, teachers can develop different play activities to stimulate children's problem-solving skills. This study sought to examine the effectiveness of the ScratchJr computer program in enhancing 5-6 years old children's skills during the Covid-19 pandemic. To this end, a quasi-experimental design was applied. The study was conducted in an Islamic kindergarten in Surakarta by assigning 29 students to an experimental group and another 29 students to a control group. The data were collected using test and nontest techniques. The test-based data collection was done using pre-and post-tests, while the non-test data collection was carried out through observation. The hypothesis was tested using parametric statistics because the data were considered to be normally distributed and homogeneous. An independent sample t-test was applied to analyze the data. The result indicates that the ScratchJr program effectively enhances 5-6 years old children's problem-solving skills, as shown by the significant difference between the score of experimental and control groups (ρ < 0.05). © 2021 ACM.