Integration of computational thinking skills in STEM-driven computer science education

Abstract

In the context of Computer Science (CS) education, one of the most important goals is the development of computational thinking (CT) and problem solving skills. Computational thinking skills are closely related to the CS concepts and approaches. These skills cover fundamental programming concepts such as task decomposition, abstractions and generalization, data structures and algorithms. On the other hand, CS education challenges, promote the search for new educational tools, methods, activities and resources. Consequently, CS education should be extended by adding the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) paradigm principles. The aim of this paper is to show how STEM-driven CS education supports and ensures the development of computational thinking at the high school. We present the already published STEM-driven CS education approach aiming at extending it by introducing a model to assess student achievements, according to the revised Bloom's taxonomy in the connection with CT skills. As a practical implementation, we describe a curriculum of Programming Basics at the high school with respect to STEM-driven aspects and CT skills. We introduce two case studies implemented in the real educational environment. They provide the evidence of availability of our approach.