Neuroeducation: Guidelines for Computational Thinking training.

Computational Thinking (CT) skills are a key competency for all citizens, but for Computer Programming students these abilities are crucial. Several studies claim that students have deficits in many of the CT skills and therefore it is important to develop and improve these skills. For that purpose, Teachers responsible for the children’s education have to plan as soon as possible effective ways for training CT skills. There are already many Learning Resources (LR) for this training, however, we believe that Neuroeducation can contribute to improving the impact of these LR in the teaching and learning process. Currently, Educational Neuroscience presents a solid set of scientific evidence on how the brain learns more effectively. This important knowledge about the brain’s learning process can be turned into principles applicable in Education. This paper starts emphasising those principles that can benefit the teaching and learning process. Based on this scientific evidence, we propose the adoption of a set of guidelines that can contribute to innovative CT training. Neuroeducation applies the latest theoretical advances in the human brain and psychology to pedagogy. The guidelines inspired by Neuroeducation that we propose here aim to provide instructions for the teacher to apply in their pedagogical practices and in LR, in order to promote more effective training. One concrete LR for primary school, created by our Master’s Students in Computing Education, will be used, as a case study, to illustrate our proposal.