Reflection 3

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Topic: Computational thinking in our classrooms. Is it every teacher's responsibility?

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Reporting

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Every day there are new problems with jobs created in the hopes to solve them. For our students to be ready to succeed and solve these issues, we need to instil a strong understanding of problem-solving skills. Given this, I believe that all teachers should be responsible for teaching life skills like computational thinking (CT), as it presents students with a method of logically organising data, breaking down problems, defining abstract concepts and then designing models to solve problems; which can help them with their decision making in the future ("Digital Technologies", n.d.). Whilst also establishing a structure for both students and teachers to communicate, understand problems mechanisms and later implement solutions that can be applied in a variety of solutions (Barr & Stephenson, 2011). Which for teachers also helps with teaching general concepts and meeting the needs of more students in the classroom.

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Relating

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Coming from a commerce and economics background where critical thinking and problem-solving are essential skills, I personally have found myself using the concept of CT in many occasions, using it with and without technology. For me as a student, learning and implementing it has allowed me to both plan and solve problems including my assignments and personal decisions, in a more productive and apprehensive context. Which is shown in both research and my own experiences, as it being found that students utilising CT concepts or solutions performing at a high level than other students (Webb et al., 2017); due to its underlying structure breaking down concepts to make them more understandable chunks. Which in reflection as a teacher, shows CT’s importance in the future growth and career prospects of my students.

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However, in saying this, I can also already see students utilising underlying concepts of CT like decomposition when completing investigations and creative activities. Which shows me a need for more explicit teaching of the CT process across the curriculum; as through embedding it like a general capability, we can refine it more as a skill and have more students benefit from its application, as well as its ability to foster creativity and logical sequencing (Yadav, Hong & Stephenson, 2016). Given this, I also believe more teachers need to be able to teach and implement CT in the classroom, as it’s use when planning lessons has been shown to create more effective scaffolding for meeting student’s needs (Webb et al., 2017), with it breaking down the various classroom factors and allowing teachers to more thoroughly incorporate theories like Bloom’s taxonomy and Tomlinson’s framework into learning.

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Reconstructing

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In my opinion, a teacher’s purpose is to do as much as possible to prepare our students for a successful future, whether it is teaching them knowledge, skills or even just guiding them at times. Given this, teaching computational thinking is going to be essential; as it’s going to give them the skills and knowledge to make their own decisions and shape their futures. Due to this, in future practice, I’m going to incorporating more sequential activities that utilise the concept of CT in both assessments and general activities. Such as, through implementing exit activities that ask the students to break down their learnings and ask for an example of application; creating an activity that uses CT to creatively solve a problem through any curriculum.

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References

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Barr, V., & Stephenson, C. (2011). Bringing computational thinking to K-12. 2(1), 48–54. https://doi.org/10.1145/1929887.1929905

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Digital Technologies. Retrieved 3 May 2020, from https://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/technologies/digital-technologies/

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Webb, M., Davis, N., Bell, T., Katz, Y., Reynolds, N., Chambers, D., & Sysło, M. (2017). Computer science in K-12 school curricula of the 2lst century: Why, what and when? Education and Information Technologies, 22(2), 445–468. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-016-9493-x

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Yadav, A., Hong, H., & Stephenson, C. (2016). Computational Thinking for All: Pedagogical Approaches to Embedding 21st Century Problem Solving in K-12 Classrooms. TechTrends, 60(6), 565–568. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11528-016-0087-7

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