Informatics in Education

Computational thinking (CT) is widely recognized as a key 21st-century competence, yet its integration across disciplines remains unclear for many educators. This study explores how prospective teachers identify and express CT through scripts representing computational processes in school subjects of their choice. The challenge of integrating CT in teacher preparation programs in non-STEM-related fields is also addressed. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analyze projects and accompanying reflective analyses from 375 prospective teachers who created Scratch-based scripts aligned with computational processes in STEM and non-STEM subjects. Data analysis yielded a taxonomy of pedagogical strategies reflecting diverse instructional approaches. The study underscores the value of guided, discipline-specific CT activities in teacher preparation programs and highlights how script development of computational processes fosters both subject-matter understanding and computational thinking. The results suggest holistic lens in evaluating CT integration and offer evidence-based insights for embedding CT meaning-fully into teacher preparation programs across disciplines.

This study aims to examine the impact of interdisciplinary computational thinking (CT) skills training on primary school teachers’ perceptions of CT skills. The sample of the study consisted of 30 primary school teachers in Istanbul. In this study, where quantitative and qualitative methods were used together, qualitative data were obtained from the teacher identification form. Quantitative data were obtained from the scale for CT skills. After the pre-test was applied to the study group, “CT Skills Training” was applied. During the training, the basic concepts of CT skills and the subskills were covered theoretically and practically. From the quantitative data, the education applied was determined to have had a positive effect on the primary school teachers' perceptions of CT skills. From the qualitative data, it was determined that the participants had a positive opinion about the applied training and thought that they gained skills related to CT.

Multiple choice questions are a convenient and popular means of testing beginning students in programming courses. However, they are qualitatively different from exam questions. This paper reports on a study into which types of multiple choice programming questions discriminate well on a final exam, and how well they predict exam scores.