An Investigation of In-service Teachers’ Perceptions and Development of Computational Thinking Skills in a Graduate Emerging Technologies Course

Abstract

This study investigated in-service teachers’ perceptions and development of computational thinking (CT) skills in an online graduate emerging technologies course. Participants perceived that they increased their CT problem-solving and creativity skills and decreased their collaborative learning and critical thinking skills. Additionally, teachers increased their CT test scores after taking the course. Most teachers used CT terminology correctly (i.e., algorithms and decomposition). However, only 59% correctly described abstraction and pattern recognition, while most teachers did not mention debugging. The authors call on teacher educators to address in-service teachers’ knowledge gaps in their CT skills and select appropriate strategies for CT preparation.