A preliminary investigation on computational abilities in secondary school

Abstract

For many years, several countries have been committed to the introduction of computer science and, more recently, computational thinking in primary and secondary schools. Nevertheless, students of the first year of university often encounter difficulties in dealing with introductory courses in computer science and, in particular, programming. One of the main issues is related to the difficulty of thinking about algorithmic solutions, a skill that should be acquired from secondary school. A good knowledge of difficulties and the discovery of efficient strategies to overcome them are vital tasks. In this work, we discuss a first step in this direction. We have prepared a brief test focused on the algorithmic abilities and other processes potentially involved with it. The idea is to build a useful tool that can give assistance to the introduction of computational thinking skills in secondary school education. The test has been proposed to a small sample of secondary school students, aged 11 to 16 and its outcomes analyzed.