Vviewpoints

I M A G E B Y O L L Y Y

the tools of carpentry, the way a carpenter thinks.

Closer to home, the “kids these days” use all manner of digital—read: computational—tools. Before drawing the obvious conclusion, consider the following vignettes.

Vignette 1: Consider the following two problems, drawn from a research study1:

˲ (Algebraic Context): Given the following statement: “There are six times as many students as professors at this

JEANNETTE WING’S 2006 Com- munications Viewpoint on computational thinking5 ig- nited a worldwide movement o give students new knowledge and skills to solve problems in their daily lives. Quickly, teachers, curriculum and standards writers, and other education specialists were proposing what children needed to know about computation and how to develop a computational mindset. There is still little evidence that knowing about computation improves everyday problem-solving, but there is no doubt that Wing’s call to action led to a broad and dramatic response.

The computational thinking movement puts the onus on the student and on the education system. They argue that if we change humans to think in ways that are informed by how we now work with computers, that will have problem-solving advantages for the humans.

Maybe.

If a city does not work for the residents, we could change the residents. Alternatively, we could redesign the city. The best urban redesign has citizens understanding the purpose and actively participating, so there is parallel development of both the city and the citizens.

Children today already think with
computation. If we want better think-
ing and problem-solving, we have to
improve the computing and use that to
change our teaching. We put the onus
back on the computer scientists and
other computationalists. It is our job to
design better.

For Our Children, Computational Thinking Is Just Thinking

Tool use shapes thinking. While we might not think like a carpenter when we start using carpentry tools, if we apply ourselves (for example, reflect on our doing, as Dewey suggests2), we can develop carpentry thinking. We can learn to see what is possible with

Education
Computational
Thinking Should
Just be Good Thinking
Seeking to change computing teaching to improve computer science.
DOI: 10.1145/3363181