The Impact of Physical Computing and Computational Pedagogy on Girl’s Self – Efficacy and Computational Thinking Practice

Research studies provide some evidence that computing and education robotics have a positive impact on female students' engagement in Computational Thinking (CT) practices and their self-efficacy for CT. Other issues raised by research concern the decontextualization of computing education from the actual lives of students which causes problems for students under represented in the fields of computing and engineering, such as female students. To tackle this problem, paper aimed to develop (STEM-Computational Thinking (CT)-Computing) scenarios related to students' actual lives and their local communities in order to help female students to develop STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) competences, when core disciplinary ideas and cross-cutting concepts are infused in the scenarios. All scenarios were implemented using the didactic model of inquiry teaching and learning and the engineering design thinking instruction strategy using physical computing activities. A validated questionnaire for self-efficacy and CT practices was applied before and after the intervention to female prospective engineering school teachers studying at Higher Education Institutes in Greece. Results show a strong evidence for the effectiveness (enhancement of CT efficacy of female students) by using the STEM content epistemology through activities implemented with physical computing platforms.