Exploring high school computer science course teachers’ instructional design processes for improving students’ “computational thinking” skills

Abstract

The importance of developing individuals’ computational thinking (CT) skills has given rise to many practices and research and development initiatives. Although there is a considerable volume of research on improving students’ CT skills, remarkably little is known about teachers’ design work to improve students’ CT skills. This multiple case study aimed to explore high school computer science teachers’ instructional design (ID) process. Data were collected through interviews, lesson plans, and classroom observations from three K-12 cases. The results showed that teachers’ ID processes had both similarities; including the design steps, the analysis step predominance, and the interaction intensity between the stages, and differences; included the number of interactions and the connections within the stages. Moreover, teachers’ beliefs about teaching and learning CT affected ID process.

Keywords:

• Computational thinking
• instructional design
• multiple case study
• high school teachers

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Zerrin Dagli

Zerrin Dagli, M.Sc, has been working as an instructor since 2006 at secondary school level. She has conducted research on instructional design models and implementations.

Hatice Sancar Tokmak

Hatice Sancar-Tokmak, Prof. Dr., has been working at Mersin University since 2011. She has taught and conducted research on technology integration, distance learning, game-based learning, virtual learning environments.