Computational Participation

Examples of the parts of computational thinking:

Decomposition: being given a problem that has multiple parts or steps and figuring out how to approach it. For example, students in a home ec class may be given the task to create a menu of all new dishes with a central theme. This requires students to break down the project into smaller steps, such as figuring out a theme, groceries they need, and the dishes that fit the theme.

Pattern Recognition: Students may look for patterns in recipes, such as ratios in baking in order to understand how to make their own creations. They may also look for patterns in woodworking to understand the process of building a structure and predict whether the technique will be successful or not.

Abstraction: Reducing multifaceted issues to the main parts of the problem. For example, social studies often discusses complicated issues that have many influences or components. Being able to understand an event and break it down to its core issues is often implemented in the classroom.

Algorithm Design: Students often do labs in science. In senior grades, they may often have to create their own procedures to do the lab, writing up instructions and a materials list to search for a conclusion to their hypothesis. 

All of these examples encourage students to exercise their problem solving skills, which Kafai (2016) highlights as one aspect of computational participation. The home ec examples also provide an opportunity to share their work, as they could post their creations to digital platforms and interact with other recipes online.

References

Kafai, Y. B. (2016). From Computational Thinking to Computational Participation in K-12 Education. Communications of the ACM, 59(8), 26–27. https://doi-org.proxy.queensu.ca/10.1145/2955114

Valenzuela, J. (2020). Rev up robotics : real-world computational thinking in the K-8 classroom. International Society for Technology in Education, pp. retrieved 2 May 2021 from http://web.a.ebscohost.com.proxy.queensu.ca/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzI0ODYwNDhfX0FO0?sid=ea2bbb5a-13c2-4e13-b3ab-6cba29294ab4@sessionmgr4006&vid=0&format=EK&rid=1