Developing students computational thinking with a recursive polydisciplinary approach

Abstract

The formation and development of many of the competencies identified in the Federal State Educational Standard of Higher Education cannot be fully implemented within a separate discipline. For example, to develop a high level of computational thinking is extremely important for modern specialists in engineering, technical and natural sciences. The disciplinary model of educational programs of higher educational institutions does not allow purposeful and effective development of this student’s competence. In this regard, it is of interest to create new organizational and meaningful approaches to training specialists without a significant restructuring of the traditional educational process. The purpose of the study is to substantiate a recursive-polydisciplinary approach in the special construction of the content and organization of student training on the principles of clustering of several disciplines. On the example of three disciplines (Programming, Computational Methods, Information Technologies in Education), a cluster model for teaching students to be trained in "Mathematics and Computer Science" was designed and implemented using cognitive and didactic techniques and methods. The recursive-polydisciplinary approach has shown a high efficiency of teaching students in the considered disciplines of the cluster. An analysis of the experimental teaching of students of the Institute of Mathematics and Fundamental Informatics of the Siberian Federal University in the context of the implementation of the proposed cluster model over the past few years has shown the possibility of purposeful formation and development of their computational thinking. The proposed recursive-polydisciplinary approach can be used to create clusters of disciplines that allow their meaningful collaboration and form given general groups of student’s competencies.