The Scope of Autonomy Model: Development of Teaching Materials for Computational Thinking in Primary School

During the 21st century there has been an increasing interest in the field of computational thinking as a consequence of the ever faster technical development. However, educating future generations in programming and computational thinking is not trivial. Many different platforms and teaching approaches can be used for this purpose. Inspired by the UK initiative with BBC micro:bit, this paper strives to identify what may be important to consider when designing teaching materials with the micro:bit for training Swedish primary school pupils' computational thinking skills relating to mathematical and technical school subjects. This has been investigated in an iterative process, by conducting 21 workshops with the goal to support primary school teachers in developing micro:bit teaching materials. The contribution of this paper is the Scope of autonomy model, which is based on the relation between pupils learning potential, their risk of feeling overwhelmed and the amount of choices provided in exercises. The model aim to support teachers in developing material for teaching programming and computational thinking in accordance with the new curriculum.