A Study On The Compilation Of Test Tools For Computational Thinking Of Junior Middle School Students

In recent years,computational thinking has received widespread attention from academia and education.Computational thinking is the fourth basic ability after reading,writing,and arithmetic,and is considered to be a necessary basic skill for citizens in the21 st century.Therefore,since computational thinking was formally proposed,it has begun to attract the attention of researchers and practitioners.With the development of computational thinking training activities,the evaluation and measurement of computational thinking has gradually become a research hotspot.The evaluation of computational thinking is related to whether the cultivation of computational thinking is achieved.In order to incorporate computational thinking into the basic education curriculum and effectively evaluate the effectiveness of computational thinking training in basic education,we must first have reliable and effective measurement tools.How to evaluate the level of computational thinking of junior high school students has become an urgent need.And computational thinking is not the same as program thinking or algorithmic thinking.It is not only the ability to show when programming,but to use computer ideas and methods to solve complex problems in life.It is a basic,universal problem-solving ability.For this reason,this article is based on the research of computational thinking assessment tools at the junior high school.It attempts to break away from the computer programming environment and is aimed at seventh-grade students.It designs and compiles a general-purpose,non-programming environment of computational thinking test.It is expected to effectively measure the seventh-grade students' computational thinking ability,and provide a reference for the junior middle school computational thinking education and evaluation.This paper mainly uses the literature research method,Delphi method and interview method to construct computational thinking test tools.First,in order to clarify the composition of computational thinking,through reading and combing the connotation elements of computational thinking,understand and define the connotation of computational thinking,and construct the measurement dimension of computational thinking.Secondly,in order to ensure that the prepared test does not deviate from the content range,a two-way specification table is made according to the content of the measurement dimension,and the preliminary calculation thinking test is compiled by referring to the existing research on the calculation thinking measurement.Third,use the Delphi method to determine the final computational thinking measurement dimension and computational thinking test.According to the preliminary constructed computational thinking measurement dimension and computational thinking test,it is designed as an expert consultation questionnaire.Ask the expert about the importance of each dimension to computational thinking and whether each question of the test question clearly points to the corresponding dimension.At the same time,we conducted interviews with front-line elementary and middle school information technology teachers to discuss in depth the feasibility of the constructed measurement dimensions and prepared tests.Finally,the students in grade seven are selected as research samples to verify the quality of the test.The research results of this paper show that:(1)Measurement dimensions of computational thinking: abstraction,problem decomposition,algorithmic thinking,evaluation,and generalization are the processes or abilities of computational thinking skills development.(2)Computational thinking test structure: After verification and analysis,the structure of the computational thinking test tool for junior high school students compiled by this research is composed of 13 questions consisting of multiple-choice questions and multiple-choice questions,including 9 multiple-choice questions and 4 short-answer questions.(3)Computational thinking test: The difficulty of the test is between 0.23 and0.95,and the average difficulty of the test is 0.69.The discrimination of the test is between0.13 and 0.77,the average discrimination of the test is 0.43,and the items with a discrimination index equal to or greater than 0.4 account for 71% of the total.From the perspective of the discrimination index,the higher discrimination indicates that the test item Is well distinguished and can distinguish subjects of different levels.The Cronbach's alpha of the test was.732,indicating that the internal consistency of the test is high.The results of content validity and criterion correlation validity show that the test has good content validity;and the Pearson correlation coefficient between the test and the score of the test is.917,which is significantly related,indicating that the test Better validity-related validity.The study provides front-line teachers with a method for evaluating seventh-grader students computational thinking.It is expected that the research in this paper will bring some inspiration to the compilation of computational thinking tests for junior high school students and provide feedback for the development of computational thinking in junior high school education.