Context/background of project In The Netherlands, a three year practice oriented research project 'Computational thinking and mathematical thinking: digital literacy in mathematics curricula' has been awarded a grant. Two Dutch universities, SLO and five schools will be working closely together on addressing one of the most universal challenges for mathematics education nowadays: how to naturally integrate both computational as well as mathematical thinking into the curriculum? The basic idea behind the proposed project is: how can we internationally profit from and contribute to this Dutch project on computational and mathematical thinking? Objectives of your project As the challenge of integrating is universal and internationally acknowledged, we seek to find a fruitful collaboration in this project. There is a practical interest ("What are the design principle according to which we can develop a curriculum in which computational and mathematical thinking mutually enforce each other?") as well as a scientific interest ("How robust are these design principles against different international contexts?"). Our objective is to answer both the practical as well as the scientific question. There is also an implicit goal: starting the discussion on a European Common Core Standard for Mathematics. Number and profile of participants 1. Belgium; KU Leuven, https://www.kuleuven.be/english/ 2. Luxembourg: SCRIPT, Coordination Service for Educational and Technological Research and Innovation, https://www.script.lu/ 3. Slovenia: ZRSS, National Education Institute Slovenia, https://www.zrss.si/en/ 4. Ireland: NCCA. National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, https://www.ncca.ie/en 5. Hungary: ELTE, Eötvös Loránd University, https://www.elte.hu/en/ 6. Estonia: Innove, Estonian education competence center, https://www.innove.ee/ 7. Slovenia: University of Ljubljana, https://www.uni-lj.si/eng/about_university_of_ljubljana.aspx 8. Norway: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, https://www.ntnu.edu/ 9. The Netherlands: SLO, Netherlands Institute for Curriculum Development, https://slo.nl/international/ In principle, in each participating country, the project partner works in a duo, in which expertise both with respect to curriculum development, as well as to educational research is represented. The formal project partner will receive, when the project will be funded, the resources as appointed to according this proposal. Each partner will then take care of a fair division of these resources between curriculum development and educational research. Description of activities Basically, we will * review the yields of the Dutch CMT-project: design principles, evaluation methods and teaching and learning materials; * translate them into a preferred language for each project partner * deploy them as good as possible in the project partners' countries * evaluate the yields of the materials in each country * determine the robustness of the design principles over the international contexts * start of development European Common Core Standards for Mathematics Methodology to be used in carrying out the project Organizationally, we will deploy the above activities first in all of the countries of the project partners. The project leader will after each of this deployment rounds collect the data and make an international analysis of the data. These results are to be discussed in the first coming project meeting after this activity round. From practical point of view, each project partner will be responsible for national dissemination of the practical materials. From the scientific side, the project leader will be responsible for the international dissemination and the publication of the scientific results. With respect to the implicit project goal, we will sketch how a European Common Core Standard for Mathematics could look like. A short description of the results and impact envisaged The products to be developed and their impact 1. International review of the key elements of the CT-MT intervention; a transferable set of design principles with which a CT-MT mathematics curriculum can be developed. 2. International review and translation of concept learning activities; 3. International pilot of a concept set of empirically validated learning activities in a CT-MT intervention; 4. International pilot of a set of empirically validated learning activities for a CT-MT intervention; 5. International review of evaluative instruments; 6. Analysis of the empirical data and developing the final intervention; 7. A guide for CT-MT mathematics teachers; with this guide, mathematics teachers can design their own CT-MT education; 8. A sketch of a European Common Standards for Mathematics Framework; this will facilitate collaborative curriculum development in the future. The potential longer term benefits Upon the project's results, in the countries of the project partners, a sustainable mathematics curriculum can be built.
The objectives of the project were twofold: 1. Reviewing, validating, and evaluating the learning materials and evaluative instruments of the two interventions as designed and developed in the Netherlands as regards the relationship between mathematical and computational thinking. 2. Translating and adapting the materials as regards the needs of the educational practice in the partners' home countries, carrying out the interventions, and evaluating them. Besides these two objectives, we wanted to be flexible with respect to opportunities that met our way.
When thinking about the relationship between computational thinking (CT) and mathematical thinking (MT) in a national research project, it came to the mind of this Dutch research team to review redesign, and replicate the interventions designed and developed in the Netherlands. The thought behind this idea was that the curricular problem we encountered -the lack of CT in the curriculum, the interwovenness of CT and MT, and the curricular potential of this entanglement, was probably also felt in other European countries. We used the https://www.cidree.org/ network of collaborating European curriculum institutes to find partners for doing so. We needed to investigate how well our materials were internationally recognized and influential.