Computational Thinking Integration into Science Classrooms: Example of Digestive System

Abstract

Studies maintain that computational thinking (CT) is associated with science content and scientific processes as well as with many disciplines. It is thought that designing teaching processes in which science and CT processes take place together makes science learning more meaningful. With this in mind, in this study, the researchers integrated unplugged CT practices into the subject of digestive system to provide an example, and analyzed the effect of this integration on learning through students' model-based explanations by comparing it with the traditional teaching. The findings reveal that in the teaching processes that were designed based on CT practices, the total scores of the students' model-based explanations were significantly higher compared to the traditional approach. When the researchers analyzed the model-based explanations under different sub-features, it was found that this difference was mostly related to sequence and explanatory process sub-features. This reinforces the idea that CT is effective on learning complex and difficult content. Students can reflect their relational and conditional thinking, and thinking in levels practices they perform via CT activities to their scientific models and science content explanations. We believe that these findings will contribute to the scholarship on CT and science integration, which is a trending topic in the literature, and will offer insights to researchers.