Coding and computational thinking across the curriculum

A guide for primary and secondary teachers

The NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA) has developed the Coding and computational thinking across the curriculum guide for teachers, which aims to develop algorithmic and computational thinking skills to better enable students and teachers to reach a coding goal.

The guide highlights the areas where computational thinking can be applied within the existing NSW K–8 syllabuses. It contains activities and links to resources organised by stages of learning and learning areas.

The Digital Careers organisation says that students need experience and skills in computational thinking and computer programming (coding) to be successful in their future careers. The NSW syllabuses provide a range of opportunities to develop students’ understanding of computational thinking and coding.

View the Coding and computational thinking across the curriculum guide on the BOSTES K–6 Resources website.

‘Computational thinking is the thought processes involved in formulating a problem and expressing its solution(s) in such a way that a computer – human or machine – can effectively carry out.

Informally, computational thinking describes the mental activity in formulating a problem to admit a computational solution. The solution can be carried out by a human or machine. This latter point is important. First, humans compute. Second, people can learn computational thinking without a machine. Also, computational thinking is not just about problem solving, but also about problem formulation.’

From Jeanette M Wing’s Computational thinking benefits society article.