ScratchEd: Working with Teachers to Develop Design-based Approaches to the Cultivation of Computational Thinking

Scratch项目由麻省理工学院的教师和教育发展中心的专业人员领导，正在设计、开发和研究一种创新的教师专业发展模式，这些教师使用Scratch计算机编程环境来帮助学生学习计算思维。该项目的基本假设是，参与scratch专业发展社区的研讨会和在线活动，将提高教师对计算思维的知识，他们基于设计的教学实践，以及学生对关键计算思维概念和思维习惯的学习。通过研究四个具体问题来评估scratch项目的有效性：(1)教师参与各种scratch PD课程的程度是什么？教师对这些经历的看法是什么？(2)参与Scratch PD活动的教师是否会改变他们在课堂教学中使用Scratch来创造基于设计的学习机会？(3)参与scratch PD活动的教师的学生是否表现出对计算思维概念和过程的理解？(4)当为评估而开发的研究工具提供给Scratch社区的教师用于自我评估时，教师如何使用这些工具？因为计算思维和基于设计的指导都是复杂的活动，所以项目研究结合了调查、访谈和人工制品分析方法来回答这些问题。scratch的专业发展和研究工作将为帮助教师创造富有成效的学习环境以发展计算思维的挑战提供重要的见解。这些努力还将产生一套评估工具，这些工具可以整合到scratch资源中，并供其他人用于研究计算思维和基于设计的教学的发展。

The ScratchEd project, led by faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and professionals at the Education Development Center, is designing, developing, and studying an innovative model for professional development (PD) of teachers who use the Scratch computer programming environment to help their students learn computational thinking. The fundamental hypothesis of the project is that engagement in workshops and on-line activities of the ScratchEd professional development community will enhance teacher knowledge about computational thinking, their practice of design-based instruction, and their students' learning of key computational thinking concepts and habits of mind.The effectiveness of the ScratchEd project is being evaluated by research addressing four specific questions: (1) What are the levels of teacher participation in the various ScratchEd PD offerings and what do teachers think of these experiences? (2) Do teachers who participate in ScratchEd PD activities change their use of Scratch in classroom instruction to create design-based learning opportunities? (3) Do the students of teachers who participate in the ScratchEd PD activities show evidence of developing an understanding of computational thinking concepts and processes? (4) When the research instruments developed for the evaluation are made available for teachers in the Scratch community to use for self-evaluation, how do teachers make use of them? Because both computational thinking and design-based instruction are complex activities, the project research is using a combination of survey, interview, and artifact analysis methods to answer the questions.The ScratchEd professional development and research work will provide important insight into the challenge of helping teachers create productive learning environments for development of computational thinking. Those efforts will also yield a set of evaluation tools that can be integrated into the ScratchEd resources and used by others to study development of computational thinking and design-based instruction.