Online Professional Development on Computational Thinking with Elementary School Teacher in SouthEast Asia (Poster 2)

• In Event: Integrating Computational Thinking in K-12: Strategies for Elementary Education and Teacher Development

Abstract

Objectives:
Most teachers are unaware of the concept of computational thinking (CT). Particularly, the teachers who are not CS focused. Thus, the goal of online professional development (PD) is to develop teacher capacity to integrate computation thinking within various subjects.

Background:
CT skills are increasingly seen as essential for all students, not just those pursuing CS careers (Grover & Pea, 2013). As our world becomes more computational and data-driven, CT provides valuable problem-solving approaches that are applicable across disciplines (Weintrop et al., 2016). Integrating CT into K-12 curricula, especially starting in elementary school, can help students develop crucial analytical reasoning abilities needed for a world in which computing has a large impact (Yadav et al., 2018). Prior research has found that PD on CT has limited research in the developing countries, particularly the region of southeast asian (Espinal et al., 2024). Thus, we focused on developing countries (such as Thailand) and we partnered with SEAMEO STEM-ED to conduct this study which focused on integrating CT into STEM classrooms.
Methods & Data Sources:
We conducted the online PD centered CT with in-service teachers in south east asia. Participants were asked to complete a pre- and post-survey on their CT confidence that is adopted from Weintrop et. al (2021). These teachers (N=60) came from a wide range of backgrounds, meaning that they were teaching in various subjects (including local language, Math, Science, Social studies, and CS. These teachers were grouped into two cohorts with 30 teachers in each. The online PD lasted for 16 weeks with three breaks in the middle for teachers to teach the lesson plan they created. Participants utilize an online professional learning community to analyze each other’s lesson plan and provide constructive feedback. These lesson plans were required to (a) include CT in the lesson plan and (b) be culturally relevant to their local communities or populations.
Results:
Our analysis has revealed that the participants utilized these online PD via zoom to create culturally relevant CT lesson plans. Through the discussion from the online professional learning community, these participants were able to showcase their unique input from their own culture and connect the robotics and CT concepts through the PD. Through the poster, we will showcase several vignettes showcasing how teachers integrate CT into their lessons and how they iterated their lesson plan throughout the semester long PD. During the poster session, we will bring the lesson plan and invite attendees to complete some of the challenges the participants designed.
Scholarly Significance:
This paper presents results of elementary school teachers integrated CT in their classroom in a variety of contexts through online PD in South East Asia. We build on the knowledge that exists of conducting CT PD (Killen et al., 2023) to figure out how to conduct PD remotely and utilize the co-design strategies for teachers to create their culturally relevant lesson plan in hopes to bridge the gap of CT PD in the developing countries.

Authors

• Yuhan Lin, VEX Robotics

• Jason McKenna, VEX Robotics