ACADEMIA Letters

Computational thinking: the road to success in education

Elisa Martínez-García, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

Nowadays the education system has been changing on account of a few countries in which
Computational Thinking (CT) has become a paramount element that every citizen has to de-
velop and must be carried out since early years.
Looking at the results on the last three editions of PISA It’s shocking that the top 3 coun-
tries are always from the Asian continent (China, Singapore, Japan). One of the main dif-
ferences between their education system and that of the other countries is that they teach CT
since kindergarten. So it seems that teaching CT could be one of the clues in order to achieve
school success.
It has been proven that CT improves logical-mathematical skills, reasoning, problem solv-
ing, as well as academic performance (Korkmaz, 2016; Psycharis y Kallia, 2017). Also,
Scherer, Siddiq & Sánchez (2018) added that favors creative thinking and Wong & Cheung
(2020) show other areas of knowledge that would be boosted.

Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Elisa Martínez-García, emg9708@gmail.com

Citation: Martínez-García, E. (2021). Computational thinking: the road to success in education. Academia
Letters, Article 3973. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3973.

1
 Table 1: Top 5 of results on the last three editions of PISA Source: own elaboration.

However, should we give a second look at table 1, one could find quite interesting that
one European country, Estonia, has been inching up and currently they are within the top 5
countries. Which raises the question, how were they able to get there?
Estonia has incorporated in their education system a program called ProgeTiger since
2012. Through this program they transversally incorporated CT in their curriculum (HITSA,
2020). This fact can corroborate the previous hypothesis about school success. Nevertheless,
what is truly CT and how is it taught?
The beginning of CT in education could be found with Wing (2006) who defines it as
a process that “involves solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human be-
haviour , by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer science”.
Despite it being linked with abstract-mathematical thinking and with the field of computer
engineering, it requires thinking at different levels of abstraction that does not go hand in hand
with electronic devices (Wing, 2006; Roig-Vila y Moreno-Isac, 2020).
Wing (2011) added that the CT is a technology-independent thought process that does not
mean knowing how to use Word or knowing how to program in Java or Linux. It is another
way of thinking that uses different capacities in order to design solutions that can be carried
out by both computers and humans.
Riesco et al. (2014) highlighted that same idea in favor of distinguishing between knowing
how to use technology and developing another way of thinking based on abstraction. Still
and all, 60% of researchers about CT consider that it is closely related to programming and
robotics, to such an extent that CT is reduced to the acquisition of specific skills for these two
areas of knowledge (Jiménez y Albo, 2021).

Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Elisa Martínez-García, emg9708@gmail.com

Citation: Martínez-García, E. (2021). Computational thinking: the road to success in education. Academia
Letters, Article 3973. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3973.

2
 It should be pointed out that this idea is extremely dangerous because if we introduce CT
at schools only through programming or robotics we are not teaching the cognitive process of
CT we are just flourishing memorization because students will only be able to make simple
programs while relying on parts of differents codes previously seen (Ortega-Ruipérez, 2018).
Hence, to incorporate CT properly in the education system, it’s paramount to under-
stand that CT is not equal to programming. CT is another way of thinking, technology-
independent, based on abstraction and critical thinking. With this process you understand
how things work searching for the common pattern in all of them. Besides, it is an essential
skill in order to live in the XXI century without being dominated by technology. Every citizen
must have this competence to be inhabitant of the current digital society.
Had the ministries of education of each country incorporated the CT as a competence
before all inhabitants wouldn’t be struggling with technology and would be getting the most
out of it. What’s more, each country could be enhancing the existing one by being part of the
producers, not just settling being consumers.
For the sake of incorporating CT in education, it is necessary to know about how it is
formed, i.e. which are the components of it. Gouws et al. (2013) explained that CT was
formed by: algorithmic thinking; decomposition; data abstraction and functionality; general-
ization and evaluation.
Later, Zapata-Ros (2015) increased it and said that CT implicated: bottom-up and top-
down analysis; heuristics; divergent thinking; creativity; problem-solving; abstract thinking;
recursion; iteration; methods by successive approximations: trial-error; collaborative method;
patterns; synectics; metacognition.
On the other hand ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) deems that
decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition and algorithm design are the main compo-
nents of CT (Valenzuela, 2020). Hence, by teaching these 4 components we are introducing
CT in our lessons. However, I believe that metacognition should be as important as the others.
Looking at Singapore, Estonia education systems and other researchs about CT in edu-
cation (Lee & Chan, 2019; Kong, 2019; Tan, Yu & Lin, 2019; Bers, González-González y
Armas-Torres, 2019; Perez-Martín et al, 2020; Nouri et al, 2020) I found that the trend on
implementing CT in the education systems is to start with unplugged activities to plugged
activities until teaching students to program in operative systems like Python.
Unplugged activities are the ones that don’t use devices connected to the internet. The pro-
gram CS Unplugged has a lot of these kinds of activities. Other examples of unplugged activi-
ties are the projects of Singapore: PlayMaker and Dances from Around the World (Zapata-Ros,
2018; Bers, 2018).
Plugged activities are referred to as the ones in which it’s indispensable to use devices

Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Elisa Martínez-García, emg9708@gmail.com

Citation: Martínez-García, E. (2021). Computational thinking: the road to success in education. Academia
Letters, Article 3973. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3973.

3
connected to the internet such as computers or tablets. For these activities Scratch, Scratchjr
and App Inventor are used (Bers, 2017; Kong, 2019). Also, Hong Kong, as of today, is helding
a Computer Science Challenge for elementary, middle and high school students (Tan, Yu y
Lin, 2019).
In light of this evidence, it is crystal clear that CT is a skill carved by decomposition, ab-
straction, pattern recognition, algorithm design and metacognition that aids to achieve school
success and that citizens can live without any struggle while surrounded by technology. There-
fore, CT ought to be incorporated in the education system as a new competence.
In a nutshell, CT is a new competence, technology-independent that each citizen should
acquire in order to live struggle-free in the current digital society. However, there are still a
lot of things about CT that are yet to be investigated like, what is the best way to introduce it
in the Spanish education system? What kind of activities should we do: unplugged, plugged
or both? How do we assess CT?

Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Elisa Martínez-García, emg9708@gmail.com

Citation: Martínez-García, E. (2021). Computational thinking: the road to success in education. Academia
Letters, Article 3973. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3973.

4
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Corresponding Author: Elisa Martínez-García, emg9708@gmail.com

Citation: Martínez-García, E. (2021). Computational thinking: the road to success in education. Academia
Letters, Article 3973. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3973.

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Citation: Martínez-García, E. (2021). Computational thinking: the road to success in education. Academia
Letters, Article 3973. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3973.

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Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0

Corresponding Author: Elisa Martínez-García, emg9708@gmail.com

Citation: Martínez-García, E. (2021). Computational thinking: the road to success in education. Academia
Letters, Article 3973. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL3973.