Investigation of middle school students' computational thinking skills with mathematical problem solving

The aim of this study is to examine the computational thinking skills of secondary school students with the help of the problem-solving process. In order to achieve this aim, a measurement tool has been developed to examine computational thinking skills. Action research, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in the study. The participants of the research are 7th grade students studying at a public school in Istanbul. Easily accessible sampling method was used to determine the participants. During the research process, a four-week application was made and students were asked to solve one mathematical modeling problem each week throughout the application. At the end of the application, semi-structured interview questions were asked by interviewing the students. The data of the research were collected through mathematical modeling problems, semi-structured interview questions and observation notes. Content analysis method was used in the analysis of the data. As a result of the research, the problem-solving processes of the students were examined and the similarity with the dimensions of computational thinking skills was revealed. Taking advantage of this similarity, a measurement tool was prepared that enables the evaluation of computational thinking skills through the problem-solving process. Depending on the results of the study, suggestions were made to researchers interested in the evaluation of computational thinking.