The Education Bureau (EDB) of Hong Kong has published an official document related to computational thinking (CT) and coding education in 2020, named as the “Computational Thinking - Coding Education: Supplement to the Primary Curriculum”, to facilitate teaching and learning of computational thinking and coding education in local senior primary schools. At the same time, the Curriculum Development Council (CDC) of Hong Kong has also encouraged and recommended schools to promote a school-based CT education, to meet the needs of 21st century learners. To examine the effect that integrating computational thinking into mathematics education in senior primary education, a 3-year research will be conducted from January, 2021 to December, 2023, to demonstrate the importance of the concepts of integrated teaching which may change teachers’ views from teaching computational thinking to programming independently, to considering teaching computational thinking as applicable to any other fields, especially in mathematics education. In addition, the study aims at helping computational thinking educator to understand what computational thinking is, how to teach computational thinking in mathematics education as an integrated subject, and to develop computational thinking educator the essential skills and pedagogical knowledge in teaching computational thinking activities. Copyright © 2021 Global Chinese Conference on Computers in Education.

Educators and policy makers have increasingly recognized the importance of computational thinking (CT). Despite the growing body of CT literature, how to cultivate CT is still underexplored and undertheorized in early childhood education. Informed by Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development, this exploratory study was conducted with a focus on three CT skills: pattern recognition, sequencing, and algorithm design. The framework for the study was developed in two stages. First, we designed two sets of unplugged activities (relying on tangible materials), aiming to (1) provide students with more concrete experiences of CT and (2) equip them with the necessary vocabularies/instructions for the subsequent plugged activity (with a digital device). The theoretical foundation for such an unplugged and plugged design comprised Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development and Asher’s Total Physical Response. In the second stage, we offered our CT course in a kindergarten in Hong Kong, involving six teacher participants and a total of 11 students from K1 to K3 (aged 3 to 6). After 10 h of CT training, almost all students demonstrated their mastery of pattern recognition and sequencing. However, the K1 students could only partially complete the tasks of algorithm design while the others generally reached the target level of achievement. Strengthening preschoolers’ training on CT language and differentiated instruction are some possible strategies to improve the CT instructions. Copyright © 2019 De La Salle University.

As digital technology is increasingly a part of all sectors of society, educational approaches must be developed in order to nurture students’ ability to see the world through a computational lens. One way to achieve this goal is to promote Computational Thinking (CT) for young learners. The CoolThink@JC project is a four-year curriculum pilot designed to integrate CT into Hong Kong upper-primary level schools. The CoolThink framework for curriculum development is structured around computational concepts, practices and perspectives adapted from the framework of Brennan and Resnick (2012). This adapted framework motivated the choice of learning activities for CoolThink. This paper focuses on one aspect of that framework, namely computational practices. Here, we describe how activities in the CoolThink curriculum can promote the computational practices highlighted by the framework.
[Copyright © 2017 The Hong Kong Jockey Club.]