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On Computational Thinking JOURNAL OF SOFTWARE, VOL. 9, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2014 2507 Computational Features of the Thinking and the Thinking Attributes of Computing: on Computational Thinking Wenchong Shi, Maohua Liu College of Mathematics & Information Technology, Hebei Normal University of Science & Technology, Qinhuangdao, China E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Peter Hendler EECS, University of Ottawa, 800 King Edward, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada Email: [email protected] Abstract—The paper aims at revealing the essence and (CPATH) program in 2007 and the National Science connotation of Computational Thinking. It analyzed some of Foundation (NSF) launched the Cyber-Enabled the international academia’s research results of Discovery and Innovation (CDI) program in 2008. Computational Thinking. The author thinks Computational Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University have Thinking is discipline thinking or computing philosophy, implemented the reform of computer courses for this one and it is very critical to understand Computational after another. In China it also attracted many scholars’ Thinking to grasp the thinking’ s computational features and the computing’s thinking attributes. He presents the attention; the Coalition of 9 Universities (C9) put forward basic rules of screening the representative terms of the proposal developing CT in computer elementary Computational Thinking and lists some representative education of higher education institutions. terms based on the rules. He thinks Computational In 2011, The Information Strategy Researching Group Thinking is contained in the commonalities of those terms. of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) thought, the The typical thoughts of Computational Thinking are discipline computer science and technology had been structuralization, formalization, association-and-interaction, constructed as a very professional instrumental discipline. optimization and reuse-and-sharing. Training The narrow instrumentalism is very harmful for Computational Thinking must base on the representative popularizing IT; cultivating CT is the effective approach terms and the typical thoughts. There are three innovations in the paper: the five rules of screening the representative resisting the narrow instrumentalism, it is also the base terms, the five typical thoughts and the formalized for solving other IT puzzles. [2] description of Computational Thinking. In a word, CT is an important topic of the international academia. Research on CT is very meaningful presently. Index Terms—Computational Thinking, computational Grasping the essence of CT and enriching CT’s features, thinking attributes theoretical system are of great benefit to people to cultivate and apply CT. This paper first analyzes the essential connotation of CT, finds some representative I. INTRODUCTION terms with the features of computing science, reveals the In 2005, the report submitted for the president by the typical thoughts of CT and gives the formalized President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee description of CT. Computational Science: Ensuring America’s Competitiveness pointed out, although computing is a II. ESSENTIAL CONNOTATION OF COMPUTATIONAL discipline, it can promote other discipline’s development. THINKING The committee thought, in the 21st century, all the People paid attention to the relationship between frontier researches, the most important in science and the thinking and computing hundreds of years ago. In the most promising in economy, could be solved by early 18th century, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the advanced computing and computing science. [1] inventor of the multiplication machine and the founder of In 2006, a Chinese-American Jeannette M. Wing put the binary numeral system, put forward Symbol Thought, forward ‘Computational Thinking (CT)’ which caught the Calculus Ratiocinator and Symbolic Logic. They attention of the international academia. In America, explained that thinking’s essence is computing for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering first time; in 1950, Turing demonstrated the computing Division (CISE) launched the CISE Pathways to essence of mind in detail in the paper Computing Revitalized Undergraduate Education in Computing Machines and Intelligence. Since then, that mind’s © 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER doi:10.4304/jsw.9.10.2507-2513 2508 JOURNAL OF SOFTWARE, VOL. 9, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2014 essence is computing has become the basic hypothesis of Computational Thinking ability mainly includes artificial intelligence theory, and it is another statement of expressing the problems and solving them by some the sentence ‘thinking’s essence is computing’. Academia symbols, logical thinking and abstract thinking, formal also paid attention to the impact of the discipline to verification, modeling, realizing class computation and thinking and to worldview. At the end of the last century, model calculation, applying computer technologies and Howard Gardner, the developmental psychologist of other things. [12] America, pointed out, ‘Every subject is thinking and Similar to Chinese committee above-mentioned, in understanding the world in its own way’, 2011, the International Society for Technology in ‘Communicating with the symbolism and style of a Education (ISTE) and Computer Science Teachers discipline, is developing discipline thinking’ [3]. Association (CSTA) proposed the ‘operational definition’ In 1997, the Calculation and Philosophy Branch of of CT. Perhaps they thought CT defined by Wing is American Philosophical Society launched a national poll ‘discommodious to operate’, and interpreted it as a on ‘How computers are changing philosophy’; the result problem’s solving process with six steps [13]. indicated, ‘A new philosophical paradigm has emerged.’ Above all, CT is nothing but discipline thinking or a [4] Chinese scholars echoed the view actively and computing philosophy. Scholars all over the world have a thought ‘Computing has become a new worldview’ [5]. variety of expressions on CT. However, Wing’s In 2011, the Turing Award winner Richard Karp put Computational Thinking is more vivid, more popular and forward ‘Computational Lens’. He advocated taking more revealing. Einstein said, ‘The more widely a computing as a common way of thinking to solve the concept, the more frequently it enters people's horizon, problem of every discipline [6]. Actually, he advocates the more difficultly we understand the meaning of it’ [14]. computing philosophy. Explaining ‘what is computation’ or ‘what is thinking’ is The first modern computer scientist who had realized very difficult. Understanding CT is still harder. The the influence of computation on thinking was Edsger author thinks, since CT is abstracted from computing Wybe Dijkstra. In the early 80’s, this Turing Award science, it must possess the obvious computing science’s winner talked in an article on programming, ‘The tools characteristics, and since ‘computation’ has been we use have a profound (and devious!) influence on our sublimated as ‘thinking’ already, it must have thinking thinking habits, and on our thinking abilities.’ [7] attributes. So to master and research CT, it is necessary to In 1992, Chinese scholar Huang Chongfu first defined start with two aspects— the computational feature of the CT from perspective of artificial intelligence [8]; in 2002, thinking and the thinking attribute of computing, and it Dong Rongsheng et al. put forward Methodology for can not be restricted to a simple definition. Researching Computer Science & Technology [9]. This theory did not CT should aim at the idiomatic thinking methods of talk about its universal guiding significance to computing science; learn from CT’s positive and non-computer sciences, and could not be called beneficial factors, so as to serve for various social computing philosophy, it did not yet mention the word practices, which is the fundamental purpose of ‘let the ‘Computational Thinking’, but it has revealed the masses think like a computer scientist’ [15]. thinking attribute and the laws of computing. In March 2006, Professor Jeannette M. Wing published III REPRESENTATIVE TERMS OF COMPUTATIONAL Computational Thinking in Communications of the ACM. THINKING She thought, ‘Computational Thinking involves solving What could embody CT’s characteristics of computing problems, designing systems, and understanding human science? Wing mentioned ‘drawing on the concepts behavior, by drawing on the concepts fundamental to fundamental to computer science’ in the paper computer science. CT includes a range of mental tools Computational Thinking. CT is abstracted from that reflect the breadth of the field of computer science.’ computing science, and the basic concepts are the [10]; In 2010, she gave CT another explanation in an important part of computer science, so these concepts article written by the coauthors and her— ‘CT is the should be the best carriers of the characteristics of thought processes involved in formulating problems and computing science. As far as what ‘fundamental their solutions so that the solutions are represented in a concepts’ to ‘draw on’, Wing had not indicated them form that can be effectively carried out by an explicitly. In America, Alan Bundy has noted ‘the information-processing agent’[11]; which is completely infiltration of computational concepts into other different from her earlier statement. disciplines' theories’ [16]. Many social organizations In 2010, Steering Committee of Computer Science and have recognized ‘Most efforts have not focused
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