benefit for their students. We are now hearing similar early concerns from our teachers. This concerns me.

Underlying all the claims is an assumption that the goal of computational thinking is to solve problems. Is everything we approach with computational thinking a problem? No. We respond to opportunities, threats, conflicts, concerns, desires, etc by designing computational methods and tools—but we do not call these responses problem-solutions. It seems overly narrow to claim that computational thinking, which supports the ultimate goal of computational design, is simply a problem-solving method.

I have investigated three remaining trouble spots with computational thinking—the definition, the assessment methods, and the claims of universal benefit. It would do all of us good to tone down the rhetoric about the universal value of computational thinking. Advocates should conduct experiments that will show the rest of us why we should accept their claims. Adopting computational thinking will happen, not from political mandates, but from making educational offers that help people learn to be more effective in their own domains through computation.

 

References

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Peter J. Denning ( [e-mail]) is Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Cebrowski Institute for information innovation at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, is Editor of ACM Ubiquity, and is a past president of ACM. The author’s views expressed here are not necessarily those of his employer or the U.S. federal government.

I extend personal thanks to Douglas Bissonette, Mark Guzdial, Roxana Hadad, Sue Higgins, Selim Premji, Peter Neumann, Matti Tedre, Rick Snodgrass, and Chris Wiesinger for comments on previous drafts of this Viewpoint.

Copyright held by author.

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