Towards Incorporating Computational Thinking Skills Across the Curriculum

This research-to-practice full paper describes K-12 Diversity and Broadening Participation through the integration of Computational Thinking (CT) across the curriculum. CT is implicit within the current high school curriculum and used by teachers and students every day in their classrooms across multiple content areas. Most students are unaware they are using these skills and that these skills are the foundation of learning computer science. Over a series of workshops, high school teachers and students, and university faculty discussed the need to incorporate CT skills throughout the high school curriculum to improve those skills in students and to impart a better understanding of computer science. The result was a guide created to assist high school teachers to make CT concepts explicit in their classes. A main component of the guide includes specific examples of how to incorporate CT skills in various content areas. The guide was created on a foundation of cultural relevance and cogenerative dialogues. Here we describe salient points about the creation of the guide and insights gained during these workshops.