Remaining trouble spots with computational thinking

Not applicable

The K-12 computer-science-for-all movement.

An opinion and critique piece in Communications of the ACM. Publisher access failed on every route, so it was read through the verbatim characterisation in Scherer et al. (2019) and secondary sources — a secondary read of a critique, which is the weakest position from which to record an argument, and the reason its grade is D.

Denning argues that computational thinking has three unresolved problems: it has no workable definition (promoters offered vague and confusing definitions when generalising beyond computer science), it cannot be assessed, and the transfer claim is unsupported. Scherer et al. summarise his position as the claim that far transfer does not exist and that no evidence existed for the transfer of programming, and respond that this cannot be substantiated — on the strength of a pooled estimate whose own decisive moderator puts far transfer at g = 0.15 against active controls. The definitional point survives independently: a 2024 meta-analysis still concedes there is no consensus definition of computational thinking.

Not applicable — a critique.

An opinion piece; nothing to replicate. Its definitional claim is conceded by later meta-analyses in the field.