Screen-Free Coding: What 50 Studies Reveal About Unplugged Learning and Its Inclusion Gap

Teaching children to think like computers without using computers sounds like a paradox, yet it has become one of the most active areas in education research. A new systematic review published in Discover Education has mapped five years of empirical work on so-called unplugged activities, classroom exercises that build computational thinking through cards, board games, paper worksheets and physical movement rather than screens. The review, conducted by Ariadni Avramidou and Ioannis Kazanidis of Democritus University of Thrace in Greece, analyzed 50 peer-reviewed studies published between 2020 and 2025, and its findings are both encouraging and sobering: unplugged pedagogy appears to deliver a broad range of learning benefits, but its celebrated promise for inclusive education remains almost entirely untested.

Computational thinking, a concept rooted in the work of Seymour Papert and famously articulated by Jeannette Wing in 2006, describes a set of cognitive skills that include breaking problems into parts, recognizing patterns, abstracting essential features and designing step-by-step algorithms. These skills are increasingly viewed as foundational for the digital era, applicable far beyond programming. Unplugged activities are widely regarded as a practical entry point because they foreground algorithms, the core of computational thinking, in a tangible form. According to embodied cognition theory, knowledge is constructed through sensorimotor experience, so physically acting out a sorting algorithm or guiding a classmate who plays the role of a robot may anchor abstract concepts in the body before students ever meet a programming language.

The scale of the underlying literature is striking. The researchers searched five major databases, including SCOPUS, Web of Science, ERIC and the ACM Digital Library, and identified 2,469 records. After removing 1,119 duplicates and screening titles, abstracts and full texts against strict inclusion criteria, only 50 studies survived. Conference papers, preprints and book chapters were excluded because they often report preliminary findings lacking the methodological detail required for rigorous synthesis. The final corpus was appraised with the Joanna Briggs Institute checklists: 64 percent of the studies were judged to be of high methodological quality and 36 percent of moderate quality, with none rated low. Even so, the authors caution that heterogeneity in designs, sample sizes and outcome measures prevented any meta-analysis.

Where is this research happening? Overwhelmingly in early and mainstream education. Seventeen studies focused on primary schools and eight on pre-primary settings, with another twenty in secondary or combined levels. The pattern makes developmental sense: younger children, still transitioning from concrete to abstract reasoning, benefit from play-based and embodied activities, while secondary students are more often assessed with structured pre- and post-tests such as the Bebras challenge or the Computational Thinking Skill Test. Forty-seven of the fifty studies took place in mainstream classrooms. Only three were conducted in inclusive or special-education settings, a figure that sits awkwardly beside the frequent claim that unplugged methods, being low-cost and technology-free, offer equal access to all learners, including those with disabilities.

The activities themselves fall into recognizable families. Paper-based exercises such as the Treasure Hunt, in which students draw step-by-step maps to a hidden prize, were the most common format, appearing in seventeen studies. Board games featured in ten, including tools like BoCaGa, which teaches coding concepts through cards and physical manipulation, and FlowBlocks, where learners connect blocks to construct logical paths. Six studies used purely physical, kinesthetic tasks, and a handful employed story-based designs or unplugged programming simulations. The most popular instructional frame was problem-based learning, used in 23 studies, followed by collaborative learning in 22 and game-based learning in 13. Notably, most studies blended several approaches, suggesting that unplugged activities function best as components of mixed instructional designs rather than standalone methods.

The reported outcomes cluster into three categories: performance skills, soft skills and attitudes. Algorithmic thinking dominated, cited in 23 studies, with decomposition and abstraction each appearing in eight. On the soft-skill side, problem-solving and collaboration led the tally, reported in 21 and 16 studies respectively. Attitudinal outcomes, particularly motivation, satisfaction and engagement, were consistently highlighted across activity types. From the perspective of self-determination theory, this makes intuitive sense: tangible, screen-free tasks may satisfy learners’ needs for autonomy and competence while lowering the technology anxiety that some students bring to coding. The authors stress, however, that these frequencies describe the focus of the literature, not proof of effect sizes or comparative effectiveness.

One of the review’s most interesting findings concerns the factors that supposedly influence performance. Gender and age were the most frequently examined variables, yet the evidence is strikingly inconsistent. Four studies found no significant gender differences, while others reported male advantages in specific contexts such as drawing or algorithmic tasks, and one found that boys’ scores actually declined as question difficulty increased. Age-related findings were similarly contradictory, with some studies emphasizing benefits for young children and others for lower-secondary students. The authors conclude that neither gender nor age acts as an independent predictor; observed differences likely depend on task type, difficulty and instructional context, variables that most studies failed to test systematically.

The three inclusive studies offer tantalizing but limited evidence. The INFACT program, designed for neurodiverse learners including children with ADHD and autism, combines tactile puzzles, embodied logic games and role-play under Universal Design for Learning principles, and was co-designed with educators and therapists. A separate study built physical, multimodal activities for students with mild disabilities and low working memory, reporting improved problem-solving and social interaction. A third explored unplugged programming for learners with visual impairments, finding that tactile and audio stimulation supported engagement and autonomous learning. These are promising designs, but three heterogeneous studies cannot establish effectiveness, and the authors are explicit that improved accessibility should not be conflated with proven learning gains.

The review also exposes a curricular blind spot. Twenty-seven studies were situated in computer science and eight in STEM or STEAM education, while art, English and social sciences appeared in exactly one study each. This concentration suggests unplugged activities are treated mainly as a gateway to programming rather than as a transversal skill. The authors argue that embedding computational thinking across the curriculum, through storytelling in the humanities or algorithmic modeling in biology, could help generalize these skills and potentially narrow gender and socioeconomic gaps in digital literacy. Yet without standardized outcome measures across domains, it remains unknown whether unplugged integration produces comparable learning in different subjects.

For educators and policymakers, the message is one of cautious optimism. Unplugged activities appear to be a flexible, low-cost and engaging way to introduce computational concepts, and the short-term evidence on skills, collaboration and motivation is broadly positive. But the field suffers from small samples, short interventions, inconsistent assessment tools and poor reporting of implementation fidelity, and it has barely begun to test its own inclusive rhetoric. The authors call for longitudinal studies, standardized measures, comparisons between unplugged and plugged modalities, and, above all, robust empirical work with learners with disabilities that distinguishes clearly between accessibility, participation, social inclusion and actual learning effectiveness. Until then, the cardboard-and-crayons revolution in computing education remains a promising hypothesis awaiting its proof.

Subject of Research: Unplugged classroom activities for developing computational thinking, examined through a systematic review with an inclusive education perspective

Article Title: A systematic mapping review and narrative synthesis of unplugged activities for developing computational thinking from an inclusive perspective

Article References: A systematic mapping review and narrative synthesis of unplugged activities for developing computational thinking from an inclusive perspective. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-02303-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44217-026-02303-1

Keywords: computational thinking, unplugged activities, inclusive education, systematic review, algorithmic thinking, board games, embodied cognition, special education, STEM education, problem-based learning, digital literacy, classroom interventions