In the literature, we could not find any research investigating changes in PSET CT teaching efficacy beliefs before or after an intervention within the context of a science teaching methods course.
It requires professional development to modify current teaching methods and designing high-quality courses to prepare PSET for integrating CT into their teaching ( Yadav & Berges, 2019 Yadav et al., 2011).
Preparing preservice elementary teachers (PSET) in developing appropriate pedagogical content knowledge (knowing the ways of how to teach a discipline and knowledge of that discipline) ( Shulman, 1986) with regard to CT is a difficult undertaking. This means that elementary teachers must have the knowledge and skills necessary to integrate CT into their teaching. The Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA), The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) standards, and the Next Generation Science Standards ( NGSS) include CT and accept it as an integral part of the curriculum during the elementary grades ( CSTA, 2018 ISTE, 2018 NGSS Lead States, 2013). STEM+CS literacy can be defined as making informed decisions in science and technology-based issues and being engaged in STEM+CS fields ( Lu & Fletcher, 2009 Qualls & Sherrell, 2010 Yadav et al., 2011). Integrating CT in elementary is critical to the overall development of STEM+CS literacy in the United States. For example, the fields of neuroinformatics, computational statistics, bioinformatics, mathematics, science, and CS have been seamlessly blending to create new STEM+CS careers ( Blikstein, 2018, 2019 Sahami et al., 2011).ĬS courses require money, infrastructure adaptations, and specialty teachers, however, a more feasible solution that can still meet comparable student outcomes is to integrate computing and coding under the computational thinking (CT) umbrella in science classrooms ( Qualls & Sherrell, 2010 Weintrop et al., 2016 Yadav et al., 2016). Due to the exponential integration of CS into all science fields, there are few if any careers that will not be affected by computing. While many initiatives have made gains for the STEM pipeline, according to research, the largest industrial growth is in computer science, and yet computer science is still not taught in most schools ( Angeli et al., 2016 Blikstein, 2018, 2019). It is crucial for the United States to prepare students as early as possible for the jobs that do not exist yet in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) and Computer Science (CS) ( CSTA, 2013 Google, 2015). Furthermore, based on the results of our exploratory research with PSET, we propose implications of the study for K–12 CT teaching efficacy beliefs and CT education research. Our research findings suggest that introducing CT increases PSET CT teaching efficacy beliefs. We performed paired samples t-test for the two teaching efficacy beliefs subscales, Personal Computational Thinking Teaching Efficacy (PCTTE) and Computational Thinking Teaching Outcome Expectancy (CTTOE), to measure if there is a significant difference in teaching efficacy beliefs.
We used SPSS software to analyze our quantitative results. During the intervention, the PSET followed the CT practices by building educational robots, coding visual block-based programs, and solving puzzles in the video game “Zoombinis.” In this paper, we report the impact of the intervention on teaching efficacy beliefs of PSET. We administered a CT teaching efficacy beliefs survey at the beginning and end of the related unit (i.e., the intervention). Participating preservice elementary teachers (PSET) were enrolled in an undergraduate elementary science teaching methods course during the spring and summer 2018 semesters in a southwestern state university. Teaching efficacy beliefs is a significant identifier of teachers’ performance and motivation in teaching the specific content successfully however, K–12 science teachers’ CT teaching efficacy beliefs are rarely discussed. Bandura defines self-efficacy as awareness of the individual’s potential and capabilities to accomplish a goal. With the release of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), assessing K–12 science teachers’ self-efficacy in Computational Thinking (CT) is an important research gap to study.