An experience of conducting online teacher development for computational thinking teaching in a primary school context

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Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted an online-only teacher development course (TDC) on computational thinking (CT) teaching in a primary school context. Twelve in-service primary school teachers participated in the course, which consisted of thirteen 3-hour lessons. Analysis of the participants’ CT concepts test results showed that they successfully developed a good understanding of CT. They also significantly improved in all four content knowledge-related dimensions of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) of programming for CT development. Participants’ evaluation of teaching survey reflected that they agreed the course was of high quality. These positive results implied that TDCs on CT teaching can be conducted online successfully. This study indicated the importance of providing a sustained TDCs for teachers to gain sufficient CT knowledge and pedagogies of CT teaching. For successful online teaching, it was essential to maintain the teachers’ engagement in class by adjusting the teaching pace to ensure all of them can follow the tasks and assigning sufficient tutors to render timely assistance when support was needed in completing the programming tasks. Copyright © 2021 Asia Pacific Society for Computers in Education.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 5th APSCE International Conference on Computational Thinking and STEM Education (CTE-STEM 2021)
Place of PublicationTaiwan
PublisherAsia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education
Pages58-61
Publication statusPublished - 2021

Citation

Kong, S.-C. (2021). An experience of conducting online teacher development for computational thinking teaching in a primary school context. In Proceedings of the 5th APSCE International Conference on Computational Thinking and STEM Education (CTE-STEM 2021) (pp. 58-61). Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education.

Keywords

  • Computational thinking
  • Online learning and teaching
  • Primary school
  • Programming
  • Teacher development

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