Design and development of computational thinking teaching materials for secondary school – applying collaborative problem solving

Introduction Across the last years, Computational thinking (CT) has been included into the compulsory K-12 curricula in many Western countries. Collaborative problem solving (ColPS) on the other hand is a pedagogical approach that has proven effective for teaching CT as shown in a recent meta-analysis (Scherer et al., 2020), and is considered a vital 21st-century skill which has also been acknowledged in the K-12 education in the Nordic countries. However, the access to CT teaching materials which apply ColPS is limited. The TEACH21st-project aims at contributing with knowledge, teaching materials and practices to bridge this gap. This study aims at developing teaching materials and resources for grade 9 students, focusing on developing their CT and ColPS competences. Theoretical framework We apply the “Computational thinker” as the underlying framework which suggests different sub-competences and approaches for working with CT in classrooms (Csizmadia et al., 2015). This framework is also used in the new national Norwegian curriculum, implemented from schoolyear 2020/2021. In the curriculum programming has been emphasized as the way to teach CT in four subject domains. Methodology Teacher-design-team approach (Becuwe et al., 2016) was employed to develop teaching materials and approaches for teaching programming/CT as an integrated part of mathematics. The team includes two in-service teachers, one student teacher, and one teacher educator, and was supported by a group of researchers. The requirements for developing the teaching resources were: Relevance to curriculum Duration of maximum 3 weeks Feasibility and relevance for the Norwegian classrooms An iterative process resulted in seven modules of programming and CT applying both practical (un-plugged) and theoretical activities. This was piloted during autumn 2020, and the data include: student assignments, reflections, observations and meeting notes. Results The pilot was conducted in a grade 9 class (n= 22), including students at varying levels of competence and school motivation. The observations and student assignments showed that the students were more engaged in the mere practical sessions and working together in those activities that required collaboration – in particular, this was the case for the low-achieving students. Hence, in addition to some smaller adjustments and refinements, some of the theoretical activities were replaced with more practical activities. The activities were designed in such a way that they could not be conducted without the students interacting with each other and solving problems (e.g., commanding each other as robot). Moreover, from the student assignments the connection between the practical and theoretical activities seemed to enhance their CT knowledge.