The Relationship between Middle School Students' Computational Thinking Skills and 21st-Century Skills
Chapter from the book: Baltacı, Ö. (ed.) 2023. Educational Sciences Research- III.

Sefa Alper Kanatlı
Ministry of National Education
Halit Karalar
Muğla Sıtkı Koçman University

Synopsis

To prepare today's students confidently for the future, it is necessary to equip them with different skills. Among these skills, 21st-century skills and computational thinking skills are crucial. While there are views suggesting that computational thinking skills contribute to the development of 21st-century skills, the relationship between these two skill sets remains uncertain. This study aims to examine the relationship between middle school students' computational thinking skills and 21st-century skills. In other words, it investigates whether there is a relationship between students' computational thinking skills and 21st-century skills and whether computational thinking skills serve as a meaningful predictor of 21st-century skills. Conducted with the participation of 328 eighth-grade students using a correlational survey design, this research employed the "Computational Thinking Scale" and the "21st-Century Skills Scale" to collect data, which were then analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation coefficient analysis, and multiple linear regression analysis. The research findings indicate that students have a high perception of both computational thinking and 21st-century skills. Moreover, a positive and significant relationship was found between computational thinking skills and 21st-century skills. The study also reveals that the abstraction, decomposition, algorithmic thinking, evaluation, and generalization skills that constitute computational thinking significantly predict 21st-century skills, explaining 72% of the variance in 21st-century skills. When examining the standardized regression coefficients, it can be concluded that evaluation, algorithmic thinking, generalization, decomposition, and abstraction skills are significant predictors of 21st-century skills in order of importance.

How to cite this book

Kanatlı, S. A. & Karalar, H. (2023). The Relationship between Middle School Students' Computational Thinking Skills and 21st-Century Skills. In: Baltacı, Ö. (ed.), Educational Sciences Research- III. Özgür Publications. DOI: https://doi.org/10.58830/ozgur.pub123.c588

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Published

June 25, 2023

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