The determinants of impact of personal traits on computational thinking with programming instruction

ABSTRACT

Computational thinking is an important skill in computer science since the 1960s, and it is closely related to problem solving. Almost all research related to computational thinking mentions problem solving. Although some research has been conducted on computational thinking, few studies examined the impact of personal traits on students’ computation thinking skills and problem solving. This study modeled cooperative attitudes of programming, learning style, self-regulation, and enjoyment as its key elements, investigated personal traits as predictors of problem-solving skills, and examined the correlation between variables and computational thinking. The 252 research participants were all sixth-grade students in an elementary school in Taipei, Taiwan. After a 10-week experimental curriculum, a posttest was conducted, and a total of 244 observations were collected. Correlation and regression analyses show that computational thinking is positively correlated with problem-solving skills, and learning style has the predictive ability for computational thinking. Furthermore, cooperative attitude and self-regulation of programming are important variables for predicting problem-solving skills; the degree of students’ enjoyment in the curriculum will affect the cooperative attitude and self-regulation of their programming. In summary, the personal traits above could improve the participants’ problem-solving skills hierarchically and help them achieve better computational thinking.

KEYWORDS:

• Computational thinking
• problem-solving skills
• enjoyment
• cooperative attitude
• self-regulation
• learning style

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Yuan-Chen Liu

Yuan-Chen Liu is a professor in the department of computer science at the National Taipei University of Education. He is an expert in website design and management, programming, interactive website, mobile learning, and e-book design. In addition, his researches are about information education, animation game design, digital video processing, and digital image processing.

Tzu-Hua Huang

Tzu-Hua Huang is an associate professor in the department of education at the University of Taipei and a visiting scholar at the University of Glasgow in the UK. He is an expert in aboriginal science education, information technology integrated into instruction, digital teaching aids design, special course design, and digital learning. The main courses are teaching media and operation, teaching technology, practical educational training, interactive multimedia teaching, digital learning curriculum design, Special study of curriculum and instruction (including paper writing), school curriculum design, national primary school teaching practical training, counseling of learning at university, research of information technology integrated into instruction and independent study.

Chia-Ling Sung

Chia-Ling Sung is a computer teacher from elementary school who is an expert in information and communication technology education.