“Start from scratch”: Integrating computational thinking skills in teacher education program

Abstract

In the digital age, our lives become more dependent on technology, yet the digital gap is intensifying especially because most people lack digital literacy. As a modest step to handle this challenge, we designed a course named "Play with me in Code" to develop pre-service teachers' (PSTs) thinking skills and expose them to learning by creation using computational thinking and programming as part of the constructionism paradigm. The added value of using Scratch in the context of teacher education lies not only in familiarity with a programming language but with an emphasis on experiencing self-directed learning tackling with problem solving situations, creativity, socioemotional competencies, and logical computational thinking. The present study aims to examine 25 PSTs' attitudes towards facing challenges of coding with Scratch. To this end, a mixed-method approach was activated by using questionnaires, blog posts, and reflections. Findings revealed that the learning environment encouraged PSTs' use of abstraction and decomposition to address a complex problem or to design a complex game. Study's conclusions relate to the importance of providing PSTs opportunities to experience learning by programming for raising their awareness of the importance of enhancing thinking skills and creativity in the future.