Exploring Design Principles for Unplugged Pedagogy of Teaching Computational Thinking and Programming

Abstract

From 2017, Singapore’s Ministry of Education has implemented a new GCE ‘O’ Level Computing curriculum. The new curriculum is a distinct shift from teaching students the use of software technology to the development of Computational Thinking (CT) skills and programming competencies. The development of related pedagogy remains a challenge for local computing teachers. Unplugged pedagogy has been a possible approach to address the challenge for computational thinking to be taught to students before programming is involved. This paper reports on a study for CT-related unplugged activities conducted on secondary computing students, and how they have helped computing teachers in their teaching. Thus, we conjecture some design principles for unplugged lessons to be enacted in an authentic school context.