From Potential to Practice: Training as a Promoter of Self-Efficacy in Computational Thinking for Pre-service Primary School Teachers

Background/purpose. Computational Thinking is a fundamental problem-solving skill. As its importance has been recognized by the scientific community, it has been incorporated into the curricula of several countries to foster its development from the earliest years of schooling. Therefore, it is essential to design training programs that equip teachers to integrate this skill into their practice. Since self-efficacy influences learning, these programs should include strategies to enhance participants' perception of self-efficacy. Thus, the aim of this study is to evaluate pre-service primary school teachers’ perceptions of self-efficacy in Computational Thinking within the context of a training program implementation. Materials/methods. A mixed-methods approach was followed to analyze the impact of the training program, implemented over nine months, on the perception of self-efficacy in Computational Thinking among 38 pre-service primary school teachers enrolled at a higher education institution in mainland Portugal. Quantitative data were collected using the Computational Thinking Self-Efficacy Scale at Pre- and Post-Intervention phases. Qualitative data were gathered throughout the intervention, including task resolutions, lesson plans, critical reflections, photography, videos, and transcriptions of audio records. Results. The results revealed statistically significant differences in all four analyzed dimensions of self-efficacy (Abstraction, Reasoning, Decomposition, and Generalization) between the Pre-Intervention and Post-Intervention phases. Conclusion. This study presents an approach that improves pre-service primary school teachers’ self-efficacy in Computational Thinking through the implementation of a training program within Initial Teacher Training.