Developing computational thinking abilities instead of digital literacy in primary and secondary school students

Abstract

Core subjects by field of knowledge for official University studies have been established in Annex II of the RD 1393/2007. Computer Science appears only in Engineering and Architecture Degrees. It is therefore necessary that the training received by high school students in the Computer field is not limited only to the intrinsic knowledge of current digital technologies and their immediate practical uses. It is crucial that the training also focuses on the development of skills that enable students to adapt to new technologies that might emerge in the future, especially, in the field of smart education and next generation smart classrooms. Whereas computational thinking may be the most appropriate for developing such skills, in this work, a particular proposal for measuring the development of computational thinking abilities in students is described, together with the results obtained in an experiment carried out during the practicum of the Master’s Degree in Secondary School Teaching from the Universidad de La Laguna.