Quality in eighth-grade secondary school students’ computational thinking: The role of teachers' content knowledge and instructional strategies

This doctoral research project focuses on secondary school students’ computational thinking. The project coincides with the International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) of 2023. This international large-scale assessment maps the computer and information literacy as well as the computational thinking skills of eighth-grade students. Additionally, ICILS gathers contextual information through questionnaires administered to students, teachers, principals and ICT coordinators. In 2023, Flanders is participating in ICILS for the first time. As such, the study can be considered as a benchmark study concerning Flemish students’ digital competences.

The doctoral dissertation’s first goal is to map the computational thinking performances of Flemish students in 2023. The second goal is to shed light on the explanatory factors behind these performances. The doctoral project therefore supports the implementation process of ICILS 2023 in Flanders. Furthermore, the current doctoral research extends the ICILS study by investigating the content knowledge and the instructional strategies of teachers related computational thinking. Using advanced quantitative methods (e.g., multilevel structural equation modeling and latent class analysis), this doctoral research will provide more insight into these two components of effective education in computational thinking. Existing patterns in teachers’ content knowledge and instructional strategies will be studied. Next to this, the correlation of these patterns with students’ performances will be investigated.