On the Direction of the Application of the Concepts of Computational Thinking for Elementary Education

The notion of computational thinking is currently gaining much attention from a variety of disciplines. Accordingly, computer education community needs to address this issue for formal education. In the paper, the translation issue on the terminology - `computational thinking` - is discussed. As a brief introduction to computational thinking the characteristics and necessities as well as its importance are presented. The types of learning computational thinking are presented, which are learning with computing tools on one hand and without them on the other hand. Furthermore, learning objectives of computational thinking as well as the contents are also investigated for the application of computational thinking in elementary education. A survey was conducted for thirty three elementary school teachers on behalf of investigating directions of teaching computational thinking in elementary education. It shows that almost all respondents agree to teaching computational thinking in formal education and it also shows other interesting results as stated in the paper.