The Future Nexus of Computational Thinking Education: A Preliminary Systematic Review of Reviews

Abstract

Recent years have seen a high volume of computational thinking (CT) review studies. However, there have been no existing studies that map these reviews with the goal of achieving comprehensive understanding of the field of CT. This paper utilizes Tikva & Tambouris’ (2021) K-12 CT research domain conceptual model as the basis for identifying and defining CT reviews, then maps the identified 38 CT reviews onto the identified domains. We pinpoint eight potential future review topics, including "communities" of tools, "modeling simulations," "problem-solving" and "scaffolding" of learning strategies, "demographic attributes" of factors, "practices" and "perspectives" of the knowledge-based areas, and the "teacher training" of capacity building. We also examine the topical keywords of the reviews and identify that the scope of the term "unplugged" is vaguely defined among the existing research, suggesting a need to refine the definition of this frequently discussed topic so as to be able to more effectively conduct supplementary reviews. Our results help to better understand the CT review field and formulate future directions.