Computational thinking, the notional machine, pre-service teachers, and research opportunities
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2015
Authors
Bower, M.
Falkner, K.
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Conference paper
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Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology Series, 2015, vol.160, pp.37-46
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Matt Bower, Katrina Falkner
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17th Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2015) (27 Jan 2015 - 30 Jan 2015 : Sydney, Australia)
Abstract
There is general consensus regarding the urgent and pressing need to develop school students' computational thinking abilities, and to help school teachers develop computational thinking pedagogies. One possible reason that teachers (and students) may struggle with computational thinking processes is because they have poorly developed mental models of how computers work, i.e., they have inadequate "notional machines". Based on a pilot survey of 44 pre-service teachers this paper explores (mis)conceptions of computational thinking, and proposes a research agenda for investigating the use of notional machine activities as a way of developing preservice teacher computational thinking pedagogical capabilities.
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Copyright (c) 2015, Australian Computer Society, Inc. This paper appeared at the 17th Australasian Computer Education Conference (ACE 2015), Sydney, Australia, January 2015. Conferences in Research and Practice in Information Technology (CRPIT), Vol. 160. D. D'Souza and K. Falkner, Eds. Reproduction for academic, not-for profit purposes permitted provided this text is included.