A scoping review of the literature on computational thinking in education in the Arab world

Abstract

This study aims to identify the nature and the extent of recent research studies on computational thinking in the Arab educational systems. The analyzed studies were gathered from English and Arabic educational sources. The selected publications were peer-reviewed journal articles over the past ten years that dealt with computational thinking in education in the Arab world. The selected studies were analyzed based on language, publication date, educational setting, educational discipline, site, primary purpose, research method, sample, and adopted definition of computational thinking. Twenty-eight research articles were selected for the investigation. The analysis revealed that the majority of the examined research studies were published in the Arabic language after the year 2020 in K-12 educational settings. The majority of the examined studies were conducted in programming and computer science in a few Arab countries. In addition, the majority of the examined studies focused on how to develop students’ computational thinking levels using various interventions. The majority of the studies employed a limited number of participants and used different forms of experimental research designs. The studies adopted different forms of the definition of computational thinking. Based on the findings, recommendations for future studies were presented.