Five Affordances of Computational Thinking to support Elementary Mathematics Education

摘要

With the increased focus on computational thinking (CT) in education, it is important to investigate the affordances that CT may offer to support teaching and learning. This paper outlines five affordances of CT that may support elementary mathematics education, whose conceptualization was refined in a year-long study involving eight Grades 3-4 teachers and their students. In this research project, teachers collaborated with the author to design integrated math/CT activities for curriculum topics they would soon teach and to implement the activities in their classrooms. The five affordances (agency, access, abstraction, automation and audience) are discussed with references to classroom activities, student work artefacts, and student and teacher comments.