Developing Chinese Elementary School Students' Computational Thinking: A Convergent Cognition Perspective

Computational thinking is considered a fundamental skill of children in the 21st century. In 2017, the new national curriculum standards of China included computational thinking as a core literacy of students. In this poster session, the authors will introduce their research on developing Chinese elementary school students' computational thinking skill. The authors have developed a new information technology course with the focus on computational thinking. The research uses the convergent cognition theory as the theoretical framework. The convergent cognition theory posits that learning computer programming affects students' mathematical thinking and vice versa. The programming environment is Scratch. A group of third grade students and a group of fourth grade students are the participants. Their computational thinking skill and math ability will be measured to see whether this course develops students' computational thinking skill and whether convergent cognition effects exist. Examples from the instructional materials will be presented as part of the poster. The authors will also report on the preliminary results of the course's effectiveness on developing students' computational thinking.