Evaluating Patterns Across Educators in their Reflection of Computational Thinking

Abstract

As part of a computational thinking practices survey development process, five secondary educators with experience integrating computation into their physics classrooms were given a fourteen-practice computational thinking framework to reflect on and discuss. The computational thinking framework was presented to the teachers via a 54-question survey which they completed and then discussed in detail. This survey gathered data on which practices were the most important to these teachers, why each teacher felt the practices they chose were the most important, and how the practices were explicitly incorporated into their classroom. Our analysis of this survey shows that there are certain patterns across the educator’s interpretation of these practices, as well as overlapping thoughts on the importance of computational thinking in the classroom. This initial data set will be used to iterate on the design of the survey and highlights variation in teachers’ priorities related to computational thinking practices.