Mathematics, Science and Computational Thinking (MASCOT)

Computational Thinking (CT) is considered a universal 21st century competence, aimed at fostering students? analytical and critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving and scientific literacy. These skills are crucial to learning and democratic participation in society. CT has recently acquired a more prominent status through inclusion in compulsory schooling in several countries including the Nordic countries. The Nordic countries introduced CT following different strategies/approaches. In Norway, CT was integrated through the curriculum reform in 2020. MASCOT (Mathematics, Science and Educational Thinking) focuses primarily on CT in Mathematics and Science. MASCOT is a collaborative interdisciplinary research project which brings together a consortium of experts from leading Nordic teacher education institutions in Norway, Finland and Denmark and involves 6 partner schools in Norway and Finland. MASCOT aims at developing knowledge about teaching, learning and assessment processes of Computational Thinking (CT) in Nordic teacher education and schools. MASCOT is organised as a research-practice partnership, focusing on long-term collaborations between teachers, students and researchers. MASCOT intervenes directly in teacher education programmes as well as schools across the participating Nordic institutions, emphasizing collaboration between the project partners to gain insight from each other. Through this collaboration MASCOT aims to link teaching, learning and assessing CT in teacher education and in school practices. The overall research approach in MASCOT is design-based research. One of the aims of MASCOT is to investigate the key elements and scope of definitions, understandings and presentations of CT in school, teacher education and policy documents. Researchers in WP1 started by mapping the different representations of CT in Danish, Finnish and Norwegian curricula and presented preliminary findings at the NERA (Nordic Educational Research Association) conference. MASCOT is currently conducting a systematic review of current literature on teaching, learning and assessing CT in Mathematics and Science. MASCOT has held a kick-off workshop with all members of the consortium. MASCOT has also held a workshop together with teachers, researchers and PhD students to develop new educational practices and plan school intervention studies together with teachers. The consortium has also held teacher education workshops to plan the CT related intervention in teacher education at INN, OsloMet and KP. Updated information about MASCOT?s activities can be found on https://uni.oslomet.no/mascot/ and ResearchGate

Mathematics, Science and Computational Thinking (MASCOT) is a collaborative interdisciplinary research project which brings together a unique consortium of dedicated experts from leading Nordic teacher education (TE) institutions in Norway, Finland and Denmark and involving 5 partner schools in Norway and Finland. Computational thinking (CT) is a universal 21st century competence, a generic skill fostering students’ analytical and critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving and scientific literacy practices. These skills are crucial to democratic participation. CT has recently been introduced in Nordic curricula. Research from countries that have already introduced it in curricula indicates that student teachers with no previous exposure to CT have only a superficial understanding of its core concepts even after its introduction. These findings suggest that many of the student teachers will not be capable of designing lessons that integrate CT in a meaningful way, which indicates a future challenge for schools. Current research-based approaches to CT fail to address the interplay between CT as a generic and subject specific skill, both in teaching, learning and assessment. Drawing on the different backgrounds from Nordic TE and schools, MASCOT addresses and examines these issues. As a design-based collaborative research project, MASCOT aims to develop significant knowledge about teaching, learning, and assessment processes of CT in TE and schools. MASCOT will use these theoretical insights to develop a foundation for the development of frameworks consolidating CT as a solid educational concept, across TE and school, making this knowledge relevant for the emerging practices.