Computer science and computational thinking in primary schools.

As computational devices have become ingrained in modern society, a basic understanding of these, and the Computer Science theories they operate on is now a critical component in understanding our world. Because of this, the subjects Computer Science, programming, and Computational Thinking are becoming a part of school curricula around the world. However, effective integration and teaching of these topics at a pre-tertiary level faces many challenges, as these have not traditionally been taught in school, in the majority of countries. Additionally, many of the claims surrounding how and why these subjects, particularly Computational Thinking, should be taught have not been extensively investigated. The work reported on in this thesis aims to address several of these challenges, with a specific focus on primary school curriculum. The goals of this thesis are to 1) establish if Computer Science (CS) and Computational Thinking (CT) can be taught effectively in a typical primary school environment; 2) investigate the impact that studying CS and programming can have on CT skills; 3) investigate the impact that developing CT skills can have on general problem solving skills; and 4) document additional impacts, positive or negative, that studying CS, programming, and CT may have on primary school students. To begin addressing these aims, discussions of four topics are first presented. The many motivations for teaching CS and CT in primary school, and the ambitions of new curricula, are catalogued; a comprehensive literature review on CT, and its place in education, is presented; a history of CS and CT in the New Zealand curriculum is documented, to give context to work conducted with New Zealand schools through this research; and, a literature review on CS and programming teaching approaches and resources is presented. Three studies, conducted in New Zealand primary schools during the years 2014-2017, are then documented. This began with an exploratory pilot study with one school, then a wide-scale teacher study that expanded on the pilot, followed by a targeted intervention study, focussed on validating the results and conclusions of these prior studies. In total, over 50 teachers and two thousand students participated in these. The initial pilot study and wider teacher study also addressed the first goal of this thesis, how these topics can be taught in primary schools, by providing ongoing evaluations of teaching resources used by participants. The contributions to knowledge that this thesis makes are: evidence to support the previously un-validated theory that developing CT skills can improve students’ problem solving skills; evidence that, while students who develop CT skills can transfer these to other areas of learning, this requires facilitation and is unlikely to occur implicitly; a map of connections between CS, programming, and CT, and the core skills the NZ curriculum aims to develop in students; evidence that concepts from CS, programming, and CT can be taught effectively at all levels of primary school; observations of disengaged students, who struggle with the usual curriculum, being highly successful and engaged with these subjects; an evaluation of a collection of CS Unplugged resources; and, a review of existing CS school curricula, and a framework CS and CT curriculum that contributed to the design of the new NZ Digital Technologies|Hangarau Matahiko curriculum.