Practitioner Integrated Education for Vital Computational Thinking Skills

Abstract

The leap from formal education to a modern work environment is often surprisingly difficult. Having young people struggle in these transitional periods while entrepreneurs and businesses strive to merge new team members is a worthy cause to investigate. The process of teacher education can not adequately cope with the intensity of technological and methodological progress. Based on expert-driven, participatory workshops in Austria, the effects and benefits of practitioner integration are evaluated. In multiple stages based on an action research methodology, the problem-solving approach of Computational Thinking (CT) was introduced to learners aged 16 to 18 (K-12) with the help of outside practitioners. This research project reveals the immense potential of expert integration in a secondary school classroom setting. The primary research question of “What consequences has practitioner integration on Computational Thinking education?” is answered...