Construction of the 3L5G Task-Driven Instructional Model: Fostering Computational Thinking of Junior High School Students in an Application Software Course

The focus of this research is to develop and verify the 3-level-5-guidance (3L5G) Task-driven Instructional Model aimed at fostering Computational Thinking (CT) of junior high school students in an application software course. As one of the most popular pedagogies in Informational Technology (IT) instruction, the task-driven learning approach is receiving increasing attention as it facilitates the development of CT among junior high school students. Instructional problems existed in task-driven learning applications as well as the status quo of the development of CT in IT courses were reviewed through document analysis. After the development of the framework of CT in application software learning, an empirical investigation was conducted to develop and refine the 3L5G Task-Driven Instructional Model from the perspective of task levels and cognitive guidance guiding. This investigation was conducted over two iterations of an action research effort with 8th-grade students of a public junior high school in Guangzhou. The model was verified through a practical study with students (N = 301) from two junior high schools in Guangzhou, China.