REPORT OF A WORKSHOP ON THE SCOPE AND NATURE OF COMPUTATIONAL THINKING
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES
THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, D.C.
www.nap.edu
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
Support for this project was provided by the National Science Foundation under sponsor award number CNS-0831827. Any opinions expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the agencies and organizations that provided support for the project.
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COMMITTEE FOR THE WORKSHOPS ON COMPUTATIONAL THINKING
MARCIA C. LINN,
University of California, Berkeley,
Chair
ALFRED V. AHO (NAE),
Columbia University
M. BRIAN BLAKE,
University of Notre Dame
ROBERT CONSTABLE,
Cornell University
YASMIN B. KAFAI,
University of Pennsylvania
JANET L. KOLODNER,
Georgia Institute of Technology
LAWRENCE SNYDER,
University of Washington, Seattle
URI WILENSKY,
Northwestern University
Staff
HERBERT S. LIN, Study Director and Chief Scientist, CSTB
ENITA A. WILLIAMS, Associate Program Officer
SHENAE BRADLEY, Senior Program Assistant
COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS BOARD
ROBERT F. SPROULL,
Sun Microsystems, Inc.,
Chair
PRITHVIRAJ BANERJEE,
Hewlett Packard Company
WILLIAM J. DALLY,
NVIDIA Corporation and Stanford University
DEBORAH ESTRIN,
University of California
KEVIN KAHN,
Intel Corporation, Hillsboro
JAMES KAJIYA,
Microsoft Corporation
JOHN E. KELLY III,
IBM
JON M. KLEINBERG,
Cornell University
WILLIAM H. PRESS,
University of Texas
PRABHAKAR RAGHAVAN,
Yahoo! Research
DAVID E. SHAW,
D.E. Shaw Research
ALFRED Z. SPECTOR,
Google, Inc.
PETER SZOLOVITS,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PETER J. WEINBERGER,
Google, Inc.
JON EISENBERG, Director
RENEE HAWKINS, Financial and Administrative Manager
HERBERT S. LIN, Chief Scientist,
CSTB
LYNETTE I. MILLETT, Senior Program Officer
NANCY GILLIS, Program Officer
ENITA A. WILLIAMS, Associate Program Officer
VIRGINIA BACON TALATI, Program Associate
SHENAE BRADLEY, Senior Program Assistant
ERIC WHITAKER, Senior Program Assistant
For more information on CSTB, see its website at http://www.cstb.org, write to CSTB, National Research Council, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20001, call (202) 334-2605, or e-mail the CSTB at cstb@nas.edu.
Preface
As the use of computational devices has become widespread, there is a need to understand the scope and impact of what is sometimes called the Information Revolution or the Age of Digital Information. This is particularly apparent in education at all levels. Various efforts have been made to introduce K-12 students to the most basic and essential computational concepts, and college curricula have tried to provide students a basis for lifelong learning of increasingly new and advanced computational concepts and technologies. At both ends of this spectrum, however, most efforts have not focused on fundamental concepts.
One common approach to incorporating computation into the K-12 curriculum is to emphasize computer literacy, which generally involves using tools to create newsletters, documents, Web pages, multimedia presentations, or budgets. A second common approach is to emphasize computer programming by teaching students to program in particular programming languages such as Java or C++. A third common approach focuses on programming applications such as games, robots, and simulations.
But in the view of many computer scientists, these three major approaches—although useful and arguably important—should not be confused with learning to think computationally. In this view, computational thinking is a fundamental analytical skill that everyone, not just computer scientists, can use to help solve problems, design systems, and understand human behavior. As such, they believe that computational thinking is comparable to the mathematical, linguistic, and logical
reasoning that is taught to all children. This view mirrors the growing recognition that computational thinking (and not just computation) has begun to influence and shape thinking in many disciplines—Earth sciences, biology, and statistics, for example. Moreover, computational thinking is likely to benefit not only other scientists but also everyone else—bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers, car mechanics, salespeople, health care professionals, artists, and so on.
To explore these notions in greater depth, the Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation asked the National Research Council (NRC) to conduct two workshops to explore the nature of computational thinking and its cognitive and educational implications. This report summarizes the first workshop, which focused on the scope and nature of computational thinking and on articulating what “computational thinking for everyone” might mean. A second workshop, to be held sometime later, will focus on the cognitive and educational dimensions of computational thinking.
Although this document was prepared by the Committee for the Workshops on Computational Thinking based on workshop presentations and discussions, it does not reflect consensus views of the committee. Under NRC guidelines for conducting workshops and developing report summaries, workshop activities do not seek consensus and workshop summaries (such as the present volume) cannot be said to represent “an NRC view” on the subject at hand. This workshop report reveals the plethora of perspectives on computational thinking, raises issues for the follow-on workshop concerned with pedagogy, and suggests the need for the field to build consensus on the scope, nature, and structure of computational thinking. The present report contains a digest of both presentations and discussion.
The workshop agenda and participants are described in Appendix A and Appendix B, respectively. Appendix C reprints the executive summary of the NRC’s Being Fluent with Information Technology report (National Academy Press, Washington D.C., 1999). Appendix D provides an extended bibliography of additional references not contained in footnotes.
Marcia C. Linn, Chair
Committee for the Workshops on Computational Thinking
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Edward A. Fox, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
Susanne Hambrusch, Purdue University
David E. Shaw, D.E. Shaw Research
Gerald Sussman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ursula Wolz, The College of New Jersey
Wm. A. Wulf, University of Virginia
The reviewers listed above provided many constructive comments and suggestions; they did not see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was coordinated by Harold Abelson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Appointed by the NRC, he was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this