Prospective Elementary Teachers’ Computational Thinking Skills: A Preliminary Study

Computational thinking refers to thinking and solving issues in the same way as computer scientists do. This study aims to evaluate the computational thinking skills of prospective elementary teachers. This study uses a quantitative descriptive research method. The research instrument uses a computational thinking skills test containing four indicators, namely decomposition, algorithm, pattern recognition, abstraction/generalization. The subjects of this study were 244 prospective elementary teachers from a Study Program of Elementary School Teacher Education at a public university in Pekanbaru, Riau, Indonesia. The results of this study indicate that the computational thinking skills of prospective elementary teachers are in the moderate category. Among the four indicators, prospective elementary teachers’ skills of decomposition and pattern recognition are higher than algorithm and abstraction/generalization.