Developing a model for computational thinking for grades 1-9 in Sweden

Purpose and goal

The purpose was to study how to scale up the introduction of Computational Thinking to a whole city. We have made good progress on understanding the process. We have developed practical solutions and material for the teachers. Two major conclusions are that it is relatively easy to provide professional development for teachers to get them started with computational thinking and programming and that it is much harder to get more teachers to adopt the material and use it in their classes since it requires much more support for the principals.

Expected results and effects

Linköping has 50 school and about 14000 students. We had 70 teachers from more than 40 schools, i.e., more than 80% of the schools. The number of students involved is hard to tell, but at least3756 students, about 30% of all, from 47 schools participated in Bebras 2016. Probably many more. The national and international impact has been very large including the National Agency for Education and 4 peer reviewed conference papers in international conferences. The paper summarizing the project was awarded the SIGCSE 2018 Best Paper Award in the Experience and Tools category.

Planned approach and implementation

The project has been carried out in close collaboration with the municipality, where they recruited teachers and had most of the contact with them. We provided most of the content. This has worked well. A lesson learned is to involve the principals more. We have produced material for and given 11 half-day workshops and we have developed introductory material for Computational Thinking including a handbook for teachers with suitable activities in several different subjects. Our experiences, lessons learned and results have been published in peer reviewed scientific conferences.

External links

http://datalogiskttankande.se/