Toward computational apprenticeship: Bringing a constructivist agenda to computational pedagogy

On Computational Thinking and STEM Education

“…Consequently, researchers and educators alike have devoted much time and efforts to debate and define its nature over the past decade (see for example, Grover and Pea 2013;Li et al 2020a;NRC 2010;Shute et al 2017). At the same time, many scholars have also noted the need for further research on CT and related education in both undergraduate and pre-college school levels, especially the need for empirical studies (Fennell et al 2020;Grover and Pea 2013;Kalelioglu et al 2016). Simple Google searches with the terms "computational thinking research," "computational thinking education," or "computational thinking in education" all returned more than 43,000,000 items.…”

“…Several articles published over the past several years have summarized and highlighted related development in CT research (e.g., Fennell et al 2020;Grover and Pea 2013;Ilic et al 2018;Kalelioglu et al 2016;Shute et al 2017;Tang et al 2020a). For example, Shute et al (2017) searched several databases (e.g., ERIC and PsycINFO) and selected, reviewed, and discussed 45 articles published since 2006 to come up with a working definition of CT, which emerged from their review primarily as a way of thinking and acting.…”

“…As discussed and summarized above, there is a growing trend of work that tries to integrate CT with disciplinary education. One approach commonly used is to follow the conception of CT outlined by Wing (2006), and then discusses possible activities and approaches to develop students' CT within different disciplines (e.g., Barr and Stephenson 2011;Fennell et al 2020;Lee et al 2020;Swaid 2015). For example, early efforts in this direction involved the identification of possible inclusion of CT in various school subjects, with explanation about which aspects of CT can be included for a specific school subject (e.g., Barr and Stephenson 2011;Swaid 2015).…”

“…Recent efforts in this direction involve more in specific integration designs and/or empirical follow-up studies (e.g., Fennell et al 2020;Lee et al 2020;Tucker-Raymond et al 2019). For example, in the special issue of Journal of Science Education and Technology, researchers reported particular strategies taken to make connections between existing STEM subjects in pre-college education and CT, CT-integrated disciplines such as computational sciences (Lee et al 2020).…”

Supporting Computational Apprenticeship through educational and software infrastructure. A case study in a mathematical oncology research lab

“…3 Ongoing and future work: extending computational apprenticeship to classroom instruction and scholarly communication For many computational research labs, the educational infrastructure of the undergraduate research experience is often considered to be distinct from the software infrastructure developed by the lab. However, there are key parallels: as a platform that facilitates computational modeling, PhysiCell provides 'software-realized scaffolding' that enables scientists to more easily engage with disciplinary biology questions within the computational realm [66,67]. Students with moderate programming experience can extend sample projects to implement complex models that integrate cutting-edge stochastic processes, 3-D diffusion, discrete processes without building these capabilities "from scratch," allowing them to focus more deeply on (1) "translating" biological behaviors into mathematical submodels and agent rules, (2) rapidly testing and visualizing the emergent nonlinear behaviors of these complex systems, (3) analyzing their results, and (4) communicating what they have learned.…”