Wolz et al. are taking a different approach than most of
what we’ve read so far. They’re not trying to define CT. I don’t think they
even say what their definition of CT is in this paper, but they seem to imply
that they draw on Wing’s views of CT. Instead, they’re trying to improve access
to computing fields and improve the representation of women and people of color
in the STEM pipeline. They approach that by “infusing” CT into language arts
instruction. In that way, they’re a little bit like Weintrop et al. in that
they’re looking at CT’s connections to other disciplines, but Wolz et al. are
not trying to define CT or its practices through those connections, they’re
just trying to expose more people to CT and computing in general. They say that
they didn’t even have CT learning goals for their programs in this paper, but
they’re trying to increase teachers’ and students’ enthusiasm for CT.
On the other hand, Brennan and Resnick are trying to work
towards a definition of CT by categorizing some of its concepts, practices, and
dispositions. This is kind of similar to Weintrop et al. in that they’re
developing a framework of the practices and things involved in CT, but Weintrop
et al.’s taxonomy specifically relates CT practices to practices in science and
math, while Brennan and Resnick are naming practices (and concepts and
dispositions) used by programmers (in Scratch). They’re starting to get at what
people learn by programming (like programming to learn, the title of this
course).
The assessment piece that Brennan and Resnick touch on (and
that Wolz et al. mention they didn’t think about in terms of CT because the
teachers didn’t have explicit CT learning goals) is an important gap in CT education
research. What's good about what Brennan and Resnick did for assessments and how can we improve on their limitations? And what do we actually want kids to learn?
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