FOSTERING PROBLEM-SOLVING SKILLS THROUGH SUSTAINABLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND COMPUTATIONAL THINKING: THE DEMAND OF THE TIME AND A NEW CHALLENGE FOR TEACHERS

Preparing today’s pupils for a rapidly changing world with multiple challenges requires thoughtfulmethods. In this context, the intersection of entrepreneurship, sustainability, and digital technologies hasemerged as a critical factor for innovation and addressing global challenges. Thus, to empower pupils toidentify solutions in an increasingly complex world, we concentrate on strengthening both cross-cuttingproblem-solving skills and subject-specific knowledge. Considering the problem-solving skills, a combinationof design thinking, entrepreneurial thinking, and computational thinking is applied, which are both welldocumented in related research. In order to further enhance those approaches and visualize the thoughtprocesses, we use a problem-solving canvas that we defined and that was inspired by the busi- ness modelcanvas. Considering subject-specific knowledge, the project focuses on integrating sustainability,entrepreneurship, and informatics, which are described as key resources in the literature. Methodological,project-based hackathons are chosen, as project-based learning is described to correlate positively withmore sustainable and engaging learning. In summary, hackathons challenge pupils to critically analyzesustainability issues and develop a digital, entrepreneurial solution through the use of design, entrepreneurial,and computational thinking. The hackathon concludes with a pitch session where pupils present their approachand smartphone app to a jury. Key words: design thinking, computational thinking, problem solving, hackathons,