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Computational thinking development through physical computing activities in STEAM education

The importance of computational thinking (CT) development has increased during the last decade. There is a need to understand what to teach from computational thinking perspectives, as well as what types of activities and learning content topics to use in the classroom. Current students' generation is looking for engaging, motivating learning activities with immediate results and feedback. The paper presents the design process of the strategy for CT abilities development. The proposed strategy has been implemented in practice to identify its suitability for successful CT development within Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) education. The strategy is accompanied by teaching materials for computational making activities with Arduino. The proposed strategy contributes to Engineering education as an essential part of STEAM and usually not included in the basic and secondary school curriculum as a separate subject. Pre‐ and postsurvey were conducted with basic school students to identify the effect of the strategy implementation on the development of CT abilities. The findings of this study showed a statistically significant increase in CT literacy in 14 abilities from seven dimensions: computing artifact, decomposition, abstraction, algorithm, communication and collaboration, computing and society, and evaluation. The implications of this study include the practical usage of the strategy in plan class activities for STEAM subjects in basic school to develop particular CT abilities.