Scaffolding Computational Thinking – Enchancing Nordic Teacher Education/2019

About the Project

The project enriches higher education curricula for preservice teachers in the Nordic-Baltic countries by developing relevant new digitalisation and Computational Thinking (CT) content in order to promote the ability to offer school pupils XXI century competences. Consequently the project leverages existing insights and pedagogical content knowledge as well as technological pedagogical content knowledge to provide support for developing preservice teachers' CT knowledge. Given the integrated approach to CT content in Finland and Sweden we have a particular focus on mathematics and STEM education. The approach develops a range of resources, and the resulting educational-technology courses serve as a foundation for developing content knowledge in CT.

The project endeavours to complement preservice teacher education curricula by designing, developing and implementing four open access teaching modules in CT for preservice teacher education. The modules are based on modern and innovative aspects of CT, are flexible and easily integrated into existing university courses, and structured to follow existing higher education curricula.

Results:
2019 – 2021

The developed Modules are the main results of the project.
Module 1. Challenges faced in CT content (leading by Vilnius University)
Module 2. Taxonomy of CT resources (leading by KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
Module 3. Understanding the main concepts of algorithms and practical use for solving problems (leading by University of Turku)
Module 4. Understanding data. Pattern recognition (leading by Tallinn University)

Future plans:

Module 5. Problem solving and decomposition (leading by Vilnius University)
Module 6. Basics of modelling and simulation (leading by KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
Module 7. Relevance of mathematics in CT education (leading by University of Turku)
Module 8. CT and STEM for teacher education (leading by Tallinn University)

Co-Funding:
Nordplus Higher Education
Finish National Agency for Education EDUFI