Computational Thinking and Educational Technology: A Scoping Review of the Literature

Abstract

Interest in computational thinking (CT) in the scientific community has increased significantly in the last 4 years, as evidenced by the numerous systematic reviews carried out. However, there is a lack of reviews that update the emerging conceptualization of CT and which also examine the roles of the school curriculum and teachers in the face of CT. A systematic literature review (SLR) consists of a collection of research conducted according to previous criteria with the aim of answering research questions with validity and quality. For this reason, the PRISMA-ScR statement was followed. Articles published in scientific journals, from Scopus and WoS, between January 2018 and August 2021 were included, in the English or Spanish language. The initial search resulted in 492 articles, to which the inclusion-exclusion criteria were applied. The final sample of texts for the present systematic review was n = 145. The texts were analyzed from three perspectives: conceptual, documentary and pedagogical. Thus, a renewal of previous literature reviews was carried out, updating the situation with research from recent years and new data, obtained to contribute to the collective intelligence on methodological strategies (80% of the sample was divided into “plugged” and “unplugged”); educational (more than 50% studied CT evaluation); and resources, including a collection of more than 119 educational resources.

Rubrica construcionista para avaliação de atividades didáticas

“…Para reforçar, a Figura 1 procura evidenciar ainda mais a relação entre o PC e o construcionismo. É possível observar, no lado direito da figura, que as abordagens comumente utilizadas para desenvolver o PC como programação, robótica educacional, desenvolvimento de jogos e outras [Acevedo-Borrega et al 2022] podem ser planejadas e executadas tendo como referência os pressupostos teóricos da aprendizagem construcionista, tais como a ludicidade, a construção de artefatos significativos, a vinculação com situações do cotidiano e o trabalho em equipe. Outra relação evidente envolve a relação entre projetos e problemas, destacado no lado esquerdo da figura.…”

Pattern Recognition in Computing Education: A Systematic Review

“…As previously mentioned, PR has been fairly associated to CT and there are several recent SLR on CT. They explore the concept both in STEM [Wang et al 2021] and by itself [Acevedo-Borrega et al 2022]. Although, most of them doesn't mention PR beyond CT definitions, let alone explores how specifically PR is being approached and/or assessed.…”

Social robotics in music education: A systematic review

“…Although the use of robotics in education can be described as an innovation, an extensive research base has already been generated around it (Lau et al, 2020;López-Belmonte et al, 2021;Arocena et al, 2022;Van den Heuvel et al, 2022). It is normal to think of experiences where students learn to design robots, thus developing their computational thinking (Acevedo-Borrega et al, 2022;Bati, 2022).…”