A validation study of TechCheck-K in Türkiye and the role of age in month and gender on computational thinking skills

The aim of this study was to investigate psychometric related issues of the TechCheck-K instrument for assessing the computational thinking skills of Turkish kindergarteners as well as explore whether age in month and gender made a significant difference in their general and domain-specific computational thinking skills. For this purpose, data were collected from 352 kindergarten-aged children attending public kindergartens in T & uuml;rkiye. Item response and comparative analysis were used to analyse collected data. Item response results indicated that the TechCheck-K instrument had good psychometric properties, was suitable for use with Turkish kindergarten children and was more powerful in discriminating kindergarten children with moderate and low ability levels. It was also shown in the results that there was a significant difference between three age groups in months regarding participants' general computational thinking skills. Significant differences in the general computational thinking skills were also observed within boys and girls according to their age in month. Specifically, boys and girls in the older month groups had statistically significantly higher mean scores. There was a significant difference in the domain-specific powerful ideas of computational thinking skills with respect to age in month. Finally, implications and directions for future research were discussed.