Computational Thinking in Teacher Education

Teacher education programs are beginning to acknowledge the important role they play in preparing teachers to support students in the area of STEM, coding, Computational Thinking and robotics. As a result, new courses are being developed that connect research, pedagogy and technology within this nascent field. An example of this is Western University's Computational Thinking in Mathematics and Science Education course, which has been offered in year one of the Bachelor of Education program since 2015 and is part of the STEM cohort. Research has been conducted during each iteration of the course and subsequent adjustments were made in order to better serve the preservice teachers as well as respond to new insights in the field. The preservice teachers have completed at least one university degree, mostly in the areas of science or mathematics, prior to beginning their Bachelor of Education degree. This lightning talk presents highlights from the most recent version of the course following this iterative process of course design. The 36-hour course provides pre-service teachers with opportunities to explore hands-on-activities and theoretical-based approaches to Computational Thinking and pedagogy in grades 7-12, all within a blended learning context. The researchers will be further studying the pre-service teacher experience and are looking to provide recommendations for other preservice teacher education programs as well as in-service professional development programs.