An investigation into the current status of information technology teachers' efficacy in teaching computational thinking
<p>Baitong Zhu</p> · Frontiers in Educational Research · 2024
In the 21st century, as the importance of computational thinking is increasingly emphasized, information technology (IT) teachers have gradually assumed the important responsibility of cultivating students' computational thinking, and how to effectively improve students' computational thinking has become the focus and difficulty of the IT curriculum. In order to improve students' computational thinking, teachers as instructors need to be equipped with high computational thinking ability and strong sense of teaching efficacy. It is thus necessary to pay attention to how to improve teachers' computational thinking ability and teaching efficacy. However, relevant literature on the research status of teachers' computational thinking teaching efficacy is currently very limited. Most of the literature research mainly focuses on the cultivation of computational thinking of college students, primary and secondary school students as well as high school and vocational students, while the literature on how to improve the computational thinking teaching efficacy of information technology teachers is very scarce, and in-depth systematic research and practice in this area has not yet started. In this paper, the concepts of computational thinking and computational thinking teaching efficacy are first interpreted by combing relevant journals, and certain articles are organized that can represent the current status of computational thinking and teaching efficacy of IT teachers. Further, this paper gains insight into analyses of scholars on the level of computational thinking teaching efficacy of IT teachers in various dimensions. Finally, corresponding strategies are proposed to improve the computational thinking teaching efficacy of teachers in the light of the current situation, hoping to contribute to the enhancement of the effectiveness of IT teachers worldwide.