Teacher sensemaking on computational thinking in a community of math teachers

For pedagogical innovation in innovative curriculum design, much attention has been paid to the importance of teachers’ attitudes and beliefs about teaching and learning. However, little research focuses on elucidating the thorough process of teachers’ sensemaking of pedagogical innovation such as integrating computational thinking (CT) into the school curriculum. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore how mathematics teachers make sense of integrating CT into the mathematics curriculum. This study employed a case-study design with 9 teachers during the 2019-2020 school year using observations of teacher professional development meetings, semi-structured interviews with the teachers, and teacher artifacts. Using Weick’s (1995) properties of sensemaking, our findings indicate that the most prevalent properties of sensemaking for the teachers in this study were social, ongoing, driven by plausibility rather than accuracy, and retrospective. These findings are important to support continuing professional development. Copyright © 2021 Asia Pacific Society for Computers in Education.