Cultivation Of Computational Thinking In Science Curriculum Of Primary School Education

Computational thinking is a thinking activity involving problem solving,system design,and understanding human behavior using basic concepts of computer science.Integrating computational thinking into the interdisciplinary curriculum,which can develop the ability of students that using computational thinking to solve practical problems across disciplines.Currently,the development of computational thinking for elementary school students is mainly carried out in programming courses,where programming skills are taught as a single topic,making it difficult for students to combine what they have learned with real life,which is not conducive to the transfer and expansion of computational thinking.In recent years,foreign scholars have tried to integrate the cultivation of computational thinking into the teaching of science courses,exploring the theoretical framework and innovative curriculum for the cultivation of computational thinking that integrates the teaching of scientific knowledge,and demonstrating the synergy between computational thinking and science courses.In this thesis,based on a synthesis of domestic and international research progress,we selected the "computational thinking framework for problem solving process(IGGIA framework)" as the theoretical framework,designed an elementary school science curriculum in a programming environment to develop computational thinking research,and explored the effectiveness of developing computational thinking in elementary school science curriculum.The curriculum design focuses on three core questions: Firstly,can the computational thinking skills of elementary school students be improved? Secondly,can the transferability of computational thinking of elementary school students be improved?Thirdly,can the academic performance of elementary school students in science courses be improved? The research was conducted using quasi-experimental research,questionnaires,interviews and action research.The work of this dissertation is divided into four main parts.Firstly,the literature review,by analyzing the current situation of computational thinking development at the basic education level at home and abroad.It was determined that this thesis uses the IGGIA framework as the theoretical support.And evaluation tools such as the Computational Thinking Inventory,Bebras test questions and Dr.Scratch online analysis platform was selected to systematically assess the development of computational thinking ability and transfer ability of elementary school students.Secondly,the curriculum design.According to the needs analysis,"Simple Circuits" from Unit 4 of Volume 4 of Grade 4 of the Jiangsu Education Edition was selected as the scientific theme for the cultivation of computational thinking in this study.The clear teaching goal was for students to learn to connect simple circuits and understand their working principles,so as to cultivate students’ computational thinking.The teaching contented consists of four parts: "Light Up the Light Bulb"(1 lesson),"Conductors and Insulators"(1 lesson),"Circuit Dark Box"(2 lessons)and "Electricity in Life"(2 lessons),for a total of 6 lessons;the teaching activities revolved around the five links of the IGGIA framework: link 1,"clarification of problems",teachers create problem situations,set subject problems,and help students to abstract and decompose problems;link 2,"collect representation and analysis data",teachers guide students collect key data through reasoning and algorithms;Section 3,"Developing Solutions",students work in groups to formulate reasonable solutions after analyzing the data;link 4,"Implementing Solutions",teachers use methods such as modeling and simulation to implement the plan,and use Scratch programming software to automate the plan in the programming teaching environment;link 5,"evaluate and improve the solution",teachers continue to optimize the plan for the problems existing in the implementation process.Thirdly,the curriculum implementation,the fourth grade students of Q elementary school were selected as the research subjects to carry out the practical research,introducing visualization tools such as flowcharts and mind maps in the teaching process to help students visualize and express their thinking,focusing on students’ mastery of scientific knowledge,and using Scratch programming software as a medium of instruction in the science curriculum in the programming environment to deepen students’ mastery of scientific knowledge while expanding Students’ computational thinking.Fourthly,the curriculum evaluation,based on the above research work,the main findings of this thesis were as follows:(1)First,the cultivation of computational thinking based on the science curriculum environment had significantly improved the computational thinking ability of primary school students,which made classes with significant differences in computational thinking ability basically reach the same level.Especially,students’ creativity and algorithmic thinking were significantly improved.It had a significant positive impact on students’ learning attitudes in science courses;(2)the development of computational thinking based on the science course environment could significantly improve elementary students’ transferability of computational thinking;(3)it significantly improved elementary students’ academic performance in science courses.The traditional lecture-practice method was not effective in developing computational thinking skills and transferability of elementary school students,which was not conducive to the development of students’ critical thinking and has no positive impact on students’ learning attitudes in science courses.The study showed that the interdisciplinary development of computational thinking had some educational value,and students promoted the transfer and expansion of computational thinking while solving disciplinary problems in teaching the elementary school science curriculum.This study enriched the research on the interdisciplinary development of computational thinking and had implications for the design and development of interdisciplinary integrated computational thinking curricula at the elementary school level.