How to Learn and How to Teach Computational Thinking: Suggestions Based On a Review of the Literature

In this episode I unpack Hsu, Chang, and Hung’s (2018) publication titled “How to learn and how to teach computational thinking: Suggestions based on a review of the literature,” which is a content analysis of 120 publications written between 2006 and 2017 that reveals that CT means many things and that people are implementing it through a variety of means.

Welcome everyone to the CSK8 podcast my
name is Jared O'Leary and today I'm
going to unpack some scholarship so the
article that I'm going to unpack is
titled how to learn and how to teach
computational thinking suggestions based
on a review of literature this is by the
authors Tim Josue Xiao Cheng Cheng and
Yu ting hung again apologies as always
for butchering anybody's names if this
were Japanese names that do a little bit
better because watashi wa nihongo Oh
Linette I am us anyways as always in the
show notes I will include links to the
google scholar profiles when available
and links to the papers if they are
freely available if not I will at least
link to the publishers so you could
potentially choose to purchase paper if
you are interested in doing so alright
so I'm going to read the abstract for
this paper it's a long abstract so bear
with me
computational thinking or CT is seen as
an important competence that is required
in order to adapt to the future
however educators especially k12
teachers and researchers have not
clearly identified how to teach it in
this study a meta review of the studies
published in academic journals from 2006
to 2017 was conducted to analyze
application courses adopted learning
strategies participants teaching tools
programming languages and course
categories of CT education from the
review of results it was found that the
promotion of CT in education has made
great progress in the last decade in
addition to the increasing number of CT
studies in different countries the
subjects research issues and teaching
tools have also become more diverse in
recent years was also found that CT has
mainly been applied in the activities of
program design and computer science
while some studies are related to other
subjects meanwhile most of the studies
adopted project-based learning
problem-based learning collaborative
learning and game based learning in the
CT activities in other words such
activities as aesthetic experience
design based learning and storytelling
have been relatively less frequently
adopted most of the studies focus on
programming skills training and
mathematical computing while some
adopted across domain teaching mode to
enable students to manage and analyze
material
of various domains by computing in
addition since the cognitive ability of
students of different age of Aries the
CT ability cultivation methods and
content criteria should vary accordingly
moreover most studies reported the
learners as CT performance and
perspectives while their information
society ability was seldom trained
accordingly the research trends and
potential research issues of CT are
proposed as a reference for researchers
instructors and policy makers alright so
that's the end of the abstract and that
was a very long abstract and it actually
does a pretty good job of summarizing
most of the main findings in this study
if however I were to kind of summarize
this into a one sentence summary of this
particular paper I would say that it's a
Content analysis of 120 publications
written between 2006 and 2007 teen that
reveal that CTE means many things and
that people are implementing it through
a variety of means now notice I said
content analysis the title of the paper
says review of literature but I would
respectfully disagree and say that what
they basically did here was more of a
Content analysis in terms of kind of
counting what was going on coding things
and what not rather than summarizing the
literature but it could just be because
I have a different background in
research then the people who wrote this
okay so it's paper begins by kind of
summarizing wings definition of
computational thinking as a life skill
that everyone needs to know in
particular they argue that computational
thinking encourages people to think like
computer scientists to identify research
or solve problems using computers but
through a mode of thinking that can be
understand by humans rather than just
computers alone now one of the
interesting parts about this is they
spend several paragraphs actually kind
of like unpacking what CTE means and how
its implemented in different parts of
the world so for example in 2014 there
was a survey of 21 countries in Europe
that revealed that 17 of the countries
were attempting to incorporate CT into
k12 classes in curricula they also
mentioned in Australia that CT has been
a part of the k-12 education for several
years or it's actually integrated into
multidisciplinary courses known as
digital technology it mentioned several
other examples of countries for
interested in reading more about how
Ct is being used around the world I'd
highly recommend checking out the intro
few paragraphs now one of the big points
that kind of kept coming up was that the
author's indicate that it can be
difficult to incorporate CT into other
subject areas when teachers are asked to
change their teaching material materials
I can't speak today or pedagogical
practices in a short period of time so
in other words they will likely need
some kind of professional development
and ample amount of support in time to
effectively integrate CT in fact on page
the government needs to train the
teachers in how to design CT activities
and learning content so that the
students can actively participate in the
activities improve their high-level
thinking and apply CT capabilities to
other subjects end quote so in the US
there's a lot of states and national
initiatives are assisting with providing
funding for doing PD and I know that as
somebody who works at a non-profit PD
provider which is great but a lot of
districts still need this kind of
professional development or support in
order to implement CT or CS now when
they get into the literature review
section they begin by discussing various
definitions of CT however they mainly
focus on wings definition of it and
conclude this section by basically
saying that there are many definitions
of CT so what they decided to do is
provide different taxonomy zuv what CT
means so in the following section they
summarized wings suggestions of the CT
taxonomy x' and they say that quote CT
can be classified into eleven thinking
processes including abstraction
algorithm design decomposition pattern
recognition and data representation
unquote
that's on page 298 now however the
authors provide a table on page 299 that
also includes the following automation
data analysis data collection
parallelization pattern generalization
simulation transformation conditional
logic connection to other fields
visualization debug and error detection
efficiency and performance modeling and
problem solving what's nice is they kind
of have definitions that unpack what
those means to the right side of the
table if you want to take a look at that
it's again on page 299 now in table 2 on
page 300 the authors provide an
explanation of 16 different CT learning
strategies that were discussed
throughout many of the papers these
include problem-based learning
collaborative learning project-based
learning game based learning scaffolding
problem solving system storytelling
systemic computational strategies
aesthetic experience concept based
learning human-computer interaction
teaching design based learning embodied
learning teacher centered lecture
critical computational literacy and
Universal Design for Learning in other
words CG can really kind of be used with
any kind of learning strategy that you
can probably think of you can find some
way of incorporating CT into it now one
of the interesting things they did in
this analysis is they actually went
through and kind of counted all the
different papers
that's mention or use these different
approaches so the most frequently
discussed approaches were 22 papers with
problem-based learning 22 papers with
project-based learning 16 papers with
collaborative learning 12 papers with
game based learning and several more
learning strategies with between 1 and 5
papers each now on the subject side of
things computational thinking was
combined with a few different subject
areas however many are still teaching CT
by using programming some have even gone
as far as suggesting that perfect I
can't speak today he suggests that
programming is the easiest or most
appropriate way to explore computational
thinking now the findings from this
content analysis seem to reinforce that
so the most frequently discussed
applications of CT in various subject
areas were 31 papers on programming 26
papers on computer science eleven papers
on mathematics
nine papers on biology eight papers on
robotics and several more examples with
the papers learned computational
thinking through a programming languages
the next-highest programming language
only had four mentions so the papers
that they found of the 120 papers that
they were
between 2006 and 2007 teen scratch was
by far the most popular programming
language that was mentioned in it and
having had experience working with
grades K through 8 where kids could
choose several different programming
languages of their choice to kind of
work on a project that was interesting
to them by far scratch was the most
popular choice that kids worked on at
the start of each quarter we would go
through and they would get a little
sampling of like one day on each one of
the programming languages and platforms
they could pick from scratch they could
pick from Ruby using sonic PI they could
pick from JavaScript in Khan Academy and
then they could pick from using swift in
Xcode to like make apps for the class
set of iPads or their iPhones if they
happen to have them with them this is
like a rough estimate but at least 80%
of every class chose scratch out of all
those options scratch was the most
popular one that kids really wanted to
work on and in some classes it was like
almost 100% of the kids however
sometimes a couple of classes most of
the kids would like really want to work
on sonic pike so you just wanted to code
music but for the vast majority probably
there were some more sections that kind
of like unpacked which grade levels used
particular strategies or things like
that however I'm going to skip that for
this podcast because I don't think it's
as applicable to practitioners who might
be interested in the findings from this
study now towards the end in the
discussion and conclusion they have some
suggestions for the design of future
research on page 308 however I'm gonna
kind of translate their suggestions for
CS educators so one is to educate other
teachers about computational thinking
the next one is find ways to effectively
assess learning next one is know the
kids you work with and differentiate to
support them kind of combine two of
those suggestions into one there and
then the last suggestion is to
incorporate computational thinking into
several subject areas to build off of
kids as interests all right so that's
kind of a summary of the main findings
for this particular study what I'd like
to do now is just kind of provide for
you some of the lingering questions or
thoughts that I have so one of them is
that having spoken with a lot of people
who don't know the difference between C
and CT I think CS educators could do a
better job explaining that computational
thinking is a process for thinking
through problems and that CS is an
entire field of study or academic
discipline now in particular I've had
some conversations where people are like
well why do we need a standalone subject
that focuses on computer science all
they have to do is just think through
processes in their science or math class
and then they'll go to blah blah blah
basically they're saying that
computational thinking was computer
science well I'd say that that is a part
of computer science or at least can be
it is not an entire field of study it's
just a way of thinking now one of the
questions that I have is who is
initiating the application of
computational thinking into a subject
area and why now the reason why I'm
asking that is because I'm just curious
I where is this coming from
and why are we doing research studies
related to this thing and in particular
what I want to know as a follow-up
question is when do or don't teachers
continue to use computational thinking
after the conclusion of a study so there
have been some research studies that
have basically found that as long as
there's buy-in for some kind of a method
or a process or like way of thinking
like a heuristic or something then it's
going to generally have positive effects
on what's going on in a learning
environment so the reason why I'm asking
these questions because I'm wondering if
okay and we went in and we did these
computational thinking studies and we
found a positive thing yeah-ha but I'm
wondering do teachers actually continue
to do them when the researchers leave
like five years from now is that
teachers still gonna be incorporating
computational thinking because they
think it's beneficial or because it's
just mandated by their administrators or
whatever now this isn't a critique of
computational thinking I think it's very
helpful I'm just curious what educators
actually think about it after the
conclusion of a study now a final kind
of question that I had is more flipping
the idea of computational thinking and
so the question is in what ways might CS
benefit from thinking processes from
other disciplines so as an analogy
Ct is two other separate check areas as
blank is two CS in other words taking
this idea of thinking like a computer
scientists and we are saying hey we
think this is beneficial let's apply to
other subject areas so that we can help
them out but I'm wondering what other
subject areas might be able to do the
same thing for us so my backgrounds in
music education so I might flip it and
say in what ways might we engage in
musical thinking in a way that would
help computer science so that's just
kind of one example that came to mind
when I was thinking through this now if
you're interested in learning more about
computational thinking
I do recommend taking a look at this
article because it does point to a lot
of helpful publications that you can
find more information about it however
just know that computational thinking is
this very sticky word that's kind of
turned into a buzzword that doesn't
really have a consensus on what it means
so when you're talking to somebody about
computational thinking it might help to
kind of clarify what it means in advance
just to make sure they're not conflating
it with computer science or just coding
or whatever I hope you found this
episode useful I know this was a fairly
quick review of a Content analysis but
as a reminder to you can check these
show notes to read the actual paper and
click on the author names to find out
more publications by the authors you can
check my websites for more podcasts and
resources related computer science
education and I ask that if you enjoyed
this episode consider sharing with
someone or with the broader community or
even providing a review of the podcast
itself thank you so much for listening
and I look forward to creating another
episode

Article

Hsu, T.-C., Chang, S.-C., & Hung, Y.-T. (2018). How to learn and how to teach computational thinking: Suggestions based on a review of the literature. Computers & Education, (126), 296–310.

Abstract

“Computational Thinking (CT) is seen as an important competence that is required in order to adapt to the future. However, educators, especially K-12 teachers and researchers, have not clearly identified how to teach it. In this study, a meta-review of the studies published in academic journals from 2006 to 2017 was conducted to analyze application courses, adopted learning strategies, participants, teaching tools, programming languages, and course categories of CT education. From the review results, it was found that the promotion of CT in education has made great progress in the last decade. In addition to the increasing number of CT studies in different countries, the subjects, research issues, and teaching tools have also become more diverse in recent years. It was also found that CT has mainly been applied to the activities of program design and computer science, while some studies are related to other subjects. Meanwhile, most of the studies adopted Project-Based Learning, Problem-Based Learning, Cooperative Learning, and Game-based Learning in the CT activities. In other words, such activities as aesthetic experience, design-based learning, and storytelling have been relatively less frequently adopted. Most of the studies focused on programming skills training and mathematical computing, while some adopted a cross-domain teaching mode to enable students to manage and analyze materials of various domains by computing. In addition, since the cognitive ability of students of different ages varies, the CT ability cultivation methods and content criteria should vary accordingly. Moreover, most studies reported the learners' CT performance and perspectives, while their information society ability was seldom trained. Accordingly, the research trends and potential research issues of CT are proposed as a reference for researchers, instructors, and policy makers.”

Author Keywords

Applications in subject areas, pedagogical issues, programming and programming languages, and teaching/learning strategies

My One Sentence Summary

A content analysis of 120 publications written between 2006 and 2017 reveals that CT means many things and that people are implementing it through a variety of means.

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

Having spoken with a lot of people who don't know the difference between CS and CT, I think CS educators could do a better job explaining that CT is a process for thinking through problems and that CS is an entire field of study or academic discipline.
Who is initiating the application of CT into a subject area and why?
- When do/n't they continue to use CT after the conclusion of a study?
In what ways might CS benefit from thinking processes from other disciplines?
- As an analogy -> CT : other subject areas :: ?? : CS