Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for the Future: Computational Thinking as a Scaffold for Critical Thinking

Computational Thinking

We have seen increased interest in computational thinking in recent years as a means of developing students’ analytic thinking skills and interest in inquiry-based literacy learning tasks (Yadav, Stephenson, & Hong, 2017; The Royal Society, 2012). Yadav, Mayflied, Zhou, Hambrusch, and Korb (2014) defined computational thinking as, “the mental activity for abstracting problems and formulating solutions that can be automated” (p. 1). Likewise, Barr & Stephenson (2011) posit that computational thinking manifests through the process of critical thinking and problem solving. For example, they describe computational thinking as a problem-solving process in which they imagine students “engaged in using tools to solve problems, comfortable with trial and error, and working in an atmosphere of figuring things out together” (Barr & Stephenson, 2011, p. 49.) In such classrooms, you might hear words like sequence, inputs or outputs. Barr and Stephenson (2011) note that the problem-solving process is key. Students must be provided with a fluid work environment and guided to see that problems can be solved in multiple ways, so that they may have more tolerance for equivocation. When the production of a working solution that is malleable becomes the goal, students begin to focus less on the “correct” answer and more on the flexible and productive process of forming a conclusion.