Despite continuous efforts to promote ICT related career paths, statistics still show a clear underrepresentation of women in both ICT professions and education. The Dig-Equality FF project develops a set of educational materials for young adolescents to address this issues early on. The following paper presents a part of this tool box: a gamified survey and reflection tool aiming to identify and tackle potential obstacles on the way to a gender balance in the field of ICT. This playful educational tool gathers data to analyse prevalent gender stereotypes regarding job sectors among young adolescents but also to spark discussion and reflect on related aspects. Thus, we aim to alleviate potential misconceptions and point out new perspectives.

The under-representation of women in IT has multiple possible causes, ranging from sociocultural aspects to individual dispositions and social attribution. This full research to practice paper explores secondary school students' (age 12–15) stereotypical perspectives of computer scientists and possible ways to challenge them. The major goal is to let young students form a more accurate concept of a computer science professionals by alleviating distorted images, often transmitted through media and the environment. Students who might not think of themselves as fitting in the prevalent stereotype of a computer scientist and may even lose interest in the field. Consequently, our approach challenges stereotypes in order to make any effort to raise young students' interest in computer science and in pursuing careers in this field. As part of this endeavor, we analyzed the drawings and descriptions of IT professionals made by 87 students aged 12–15 to determine what sets of preconceived perspectives and misconceptions are present in the learners' minds regarding persons in the IT profession. Our results have shown that that stereotypical views on IT actually exist in students' mindsets, but are subject to change when systematically challenged in a friendly and safe atmosphere. Aside of the scientific contribution, the paper aims to inspire and support educators in their efforts to help women and underrepresented groups in computing outgrow inaccurate stereotypes and to uncover young students' potential interest in the field. With this we aim to contribute to overcoming the gender imbalance and foster more equality in the occupational field of information technologies. Strategically, by creating a more sensitive, diverse and harmonious future that computer scientists knowingly and unknowingly co-shape.

This Research to Practice Full Paper depicts and evaluates a secondary school project on using pair- and solo-programming of mini-games in introductory programming classes. In addition to investigating various factors influencing students' problem-solving skills (K9; age 14-15), we introduce the software metric Lines Of Code (LOC) to compare outcomes on that specific measure in the pair- and solo-programming setting. The mini-games were developed with the free personal edition of the game development engine Unity™ and C#. In the current study, four different classes at the secondary level were instructed and researched. All classes had approximately the same number of students, the same tasks, the same tutorials, but were using a different social setting for programming. In response to the worldwide pandemic in the years 2020 and 2021, instruction and research proceeded either in virtual or in hybrid-learning mode. We chose participatory action research to accommodate for the complexity of factors inherent in the field as well as for its iterative, cyclic nature. The current cycle is the third of a series on studies that have investigated various aspects of introductory pair-programming. The evaluation phase employs a digital questionnaire with open and closed questions aimed to capture student's perceptions regarding problem solving. In addition, the software metric Lines Of Code” (LOC), traditionally used to measure the size of a computer program by counting the number of lines of the program's source code, was adapted to measure students' achievement in pair- and solo-programming. With our research we aim to contribute to make learning to program more effective, engaging, and inclusive, and we would like to promote 21stcentury competences besides programming skills. In addition, we are eager to share our practice of pair-programming with educators in order to inspire them to experiment with pair-programming as a social setting with high potential, even in times of required social distancing.

This Full Paper in the research to practice category explores pupils' motivation to learn programming by game development in the game development environment (GDE) UnityTM. After getting to know block-based programming through controlling robots, 66 students with minimal computer literacy between 14 and 16 years of age got in touch with Unity in six Informatics courses with group sizes between 8 and 14 students each for approximately 40 course hours. In particular, we are interested in experiential factors that underlie students' perceived competence in coding in high school computer science. We conducted an evaluative qualitative content analysis of 21 semi-structured interviews among students in six high school Informatics courses. Self-determination theory (SDT) identifies competence, autonomy and relatedness as basic needs that underpin motivation. We evaluated in how far students expressed these needs in their reciprocal interviews. Further, we explored student statements to find out about factors influencing their perceived competence. We were specifically interested in students' future expectancy to get in contact with coding - which we attributed to the need for autonomy. According to our findings, most students were rather motivated to code in Unity. Yet, many did not express a future interest in (game) development. The majority of students expressed perceived competence in the programming tasks. A few students also explicitly mentioned relatedness as important learning factor. In line with SDT, relatedness appears to be important for students' ability to deal with frustration along the journey of learning to code. It is open to consideration in how far students' social environment - including student peers awareness of technology use in their current personal surroundings and possible future opportunities for getting in contact with coding in their lives - is deeply relevant to students' perceived competence in programming apart from coding tools, such as Scratch or Unity, and incentives, such as programming games.

Learning how to code by creating video games promises high motivation, engagement and fun for the students. In this study, the Unity Game Development Environment, a widely spread tool for professional game developers, was employed for teaching secondary school students to develop their own video games. The research design for the game development activities followed a Design-Based Research approach. The learning design was based on situated learning accompanied by a mix of tutorials, teacher explanations and support & collaboration amongst the students. The results of the first iteration of Design-Based Research confirmed the hypotheses that video game development was fascinating and engaging for the majority of young learners. Using a professional tool with an embedded physics engine provided additional attraction for teenagers. From the first cycle of game development we learned that dealing with the complexity of the development environment in a systematic way, time management, advanced teachers' competencies in handling the environment, and providing well balanced learning materials are crucial to successfully employ a professional tool like Unity in secondary education. Besides improved materials and a stepwise process of adding complexity e.g. by starting with developing mini-games, the most important change for the second cycle is to significantly extend the time allocated for game development. This seems justified due to the vast spectrum of skills and competences students tend to acquire when collaborating on complex and exciting issues like developing games.