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Computational thinking in a bilingual kindergarten classroom: Emergent ideas for teaching across content areas

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Abstract

Our study documents how a Spanish-English bilingual elementary teacher learned computational thinking while working to incorporate it into mathematics and language arts lessons in a bilingual classroom. We classified the elements of the teacher’s process into two practices: intentional and unintentional use of computational thinking. Intentional use of computational thinking included the teacher’s explicit incorporation of any of the four computational thinking elements (abstraction, algorithms, decomposition, and patterns) into her teaching practice. The unintentional use of computational thinking included those instances where the teacher used computational thinking as a means for teaching content not specifically oriented toward computational thinking. In addition, our work identifies how this bilingual teacher’s instructional dynamics integrated computational thinking and Spanish in a nearly inseparable manner. With this work we intend to contribute to the emergent scholarship committed to understanding the promotion of learning computing in K-5 settings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. William & Mary School of Education, Williamsburg, Virgina, USA

    Gladys H. Krause

  2. Computer Science, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR, USA

    Maggie Vanderberg & Eping E. Hung

  3. Southern Oregon University Research Center, Southern Oregon University, Ashland, OR, USA

    Eva Skuratowicz

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  1. Gladys H. Krause
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  2. Maggie Vanderberg
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  3. Eping E. Hung
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  4. Eva Skuratowicz
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Krause, G.H., Vanderberg, M., E. Hung, E. et al. Computational thinking in a bilingual kindergarten classroom: Emergent ideas for teaching across content areas. Educ Inf Technol 28, 9767–9782 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-022-11454-1

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