Computational Thinking in Primary School: An Examination of Abstraction and Decomposition in Different Age Groups

• Published in: Informatics in education Vol. 17; no. 1; pp. 77 - 92
• Main Authors: Rijke, Wouter J, Bollen, Lars, Eysink, Tessa H. S, Tolboom, Jos L. J
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Vilniaus Universiteto Leidykla 01-01-2018; Vilnius University Press; Vilnius University
• Subjects: abstraction; Computational Thinking; decomposition; ICT Information and Communications Technologies; perceived difficulty; primary school; programming; Social Sciences; computational thinking; primary school; abstraction; decomposition; perceived difficulty; programming; flow
• ISSN: 1648-5831; 2335-8971
• DOI: 10.15388/infedu.2018.05

The paper focuses on the parallels, which are rooted in the simultaneous development of mathematics and informatics. Both mathematics and informatics are based on problem-solving. However, the approaches to determining problems, solution techniques and interpretation of results are different. The paper shows different approaches of mathematics and informatics for solving a simple problem from the informatics competition. It was presented for students, who would be future informatics teachers, and it has become the beginning of the discovery of unexpected relationships and rules' chain, the source of successive tasks, and various methods of their solution. The paper brings the results of the constructivist teaching of students in the form of a fictional interview of mathematician and informatician. Fictional cooperation of a mathematician and an informatician in analysing and solving problems will allow for a detailed analysis and comparison of both fields, which will lead to determining both common and different elements.Despite a growing effort to implement computational thinking (CT) skills in primary schools, little research is reported about what CT skills to teach at what age. Therefore, the research questions that guide this study read: (1) How is age related to students' success in computational thinking tasks? (2) How are computational thinking tasks perceived by students? (3) How do students' experience learning with respect to computational thinking? 200 primary school students between the age of 6 and 12 participated in this study. These students got introduced to two CT subjects: abstraction and decomposition. We found that age seems to be related with these concepts, with an interaction effect for gender in the abstraction task. No differences found between young and older students in the constructs perceived difficulty, cognitive load, and flow indicate that young primary school students can engage in learning these CT skills.