An Experimental Study On Cultivating Junior School Students' Computational Thinking By Using Project Teaching Method

At present,computational thinking has been incorporated into the core literacy of information technology disciplines in China(2017 edition),as the third scientific thinking mode(the other two are theoretical thinking based on Mathematics and experimental thinking based on physics),constantly changing our way of thinking,and increasingly becoming the methodology of understanding and transforming the world.In the teaching suggestions,it is emphasized to integrate projects into classroom teaching and reconstruct the teaching form.It shows that project teaching method is feasible to train middle school students' computational thinking,but it lacks case study and effect verification.Therefore,we need to further verify,which is also the focus of this paper.This paper mainly explores the following issues:1.How does project-based teaching approach affect students' computational thinking? 2.How does project-based teaching affect students' problem-solving ability? 3.How does the project teaching method affect the students' algorithmic thinking? 4.How does project-based teaching approach affect students' performance in their works? 5.There are gender differences in the influence of project teaching method on students' computational thinking.In order to solve the above problems,this paper mainly carry out research from the following three aspects.Firstly,the questionnaire of Computational Thinking and cognitive ability was compiled.According to the computational thinking scale for middle school students developed by Korkmaz et al,it is revised based on the teaching content and the actual situation of students,including five dimensions of creativity,criticism,collaborative learning,problem solving and algorithmic thinking.The factors,reliability and validity of the scale were analyzed.According to "Introduction to Standardized Psychological Development Test for Children and Adolescents in China",a cognitive ability questionnaire was developed,and the discrimination,difficulty and reliability and validity were analyzed.All the questionnaires can truly reflect the computational thinking and cognitive ability of middle school students.Then,project design.According to Bloom's cognitive goal classification,162 junior high school students' cognitive status of computational thinking was investigated,combining six dimensions of project selection,problem design,resource provision,thinking cultivation,project practice and evaluation.Computational Thinking Expression of teaching content was extracted and project-based design was carried out.Finally,experimental verification.Two classes(93 students)in the first grade of CJSY experimental middle school were selected to carry out one semester and two rounds of project teaching.Quantitative analysis was carried out through work evaluation and scale measurement.Works were evaluated by expert consultation method and AHP analytic hierarchy process,including self-evaluation,mutual evaluation and teacher evaluation.The purpose was to measure the impact of project teaching method on junior high school students' computational thinking.The experimental results show that: 1.Project-based teaching method is conducive to the improvement of students' work performance and quality.2.The overall level of students' computational thinking has been improved,in which problem solving is the most significant,while algorithmic thinking is relatively weak.3.The experimental class is superior to the control class in critical,problem-solving and algorithmic thinking.4.There are significant gender differences in students' critical and algorithmic thinking;there are no significant differences in creativity,collaborative learning and problem solving dimensions.