All K-12 Students need to learn computational thinking (CT) and analytical skills. This has been a common call for nearly twenty years across the United States and in countries or regions including the United Kingdom ( The Royal Society, 2012 ), Germany, Spain, Australia ( Bower et al., 2017 ), Denmark ( Tuhkala et al., 2019 ), Taiwan Region (China) ( Hou et al., 2020 ), and Malaysia ( Ung et al., 2022 ), to give just a few examples. Each nation describes this need based on 21^st century skills needed for success in virtually every discipline, though the definitions of computational thinking often vary.

Wing (2006 , 2008) described CT as the skill set one acquires when learning computer science and offered abstraction, decomposition, recursion and other examples of such skills. A report of the National Research Council built on Wing’s foundation, noting that “computational thinking might include reformulation of difficult problems by reduction and transformations; approximate solutions; parallel processing; checking and model checking as generalizations of dimensional analysis; error prevention, testing, recovery and correction; damage containment; simulation; heuristic reasoning, planning, learning, and scheduling in the presence of uncertainty; search strategies, analysis of the computational complexity of algorithms and processes; and balancing computational costs against other design criteria ( NRC, 2010 : p. 3)”. The International Society for Teaching Education (ISTE) and Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) soon followed with an operational definition of computational thinking developed with K‒12 teachers in mind (see also ( Barr et al., 2011 )). The ISTE/CSTA definition is quoted below and is largely how we define CT in this paper and in the curriculum and professional development described herein.

Our project (CTPD) was informed by these foundational works, but alternative definitions of CT abound, and the range of what CT encompasses or is encompassed is extremely broad—including computer science, computational literacy, computer technology, mathematical thinking, or programming. This seemingly ever-expanding list of aspects of computational thinking, combined with confusion over the distinctions between computer science, computational literacy ( di Sessa, 2018 ), using computer technology, and computational thinking continues to plague the field. Complicating things further is confusion about whether computational thinking ought to be taught across the curriculum and grade levels or whether it should be limited to specialized computer science or mathematics classes ( Tannert et al., 2021 ; Furt et al., 2023 ). By viewing CT as part of computer science we run the risk of understating its importance in other disciplines, especially science disciplines.

No matter the definition of CT, whether it includes programming or not, or at what grade level it is taught, the onus for bringing CT to students is on teachers. With computational thinking among the eight science and engineering practices included in the Next Generation Science Standards ( NGSS Lead States, 2013 ; NRC, 2011 , 2012 ) being adopted across the U.S.; this is especially true of science teachers in science classrooms. Despite the call for inclusion of CT in science classrooms, many teachers have little experience with or knowledge of CT content. Thus, with the calls for instruction in CT comes the need for professional development for teachers. In this paper, we describe the CTPD project that designed and tested a professional development (PD) course to enable high school teachers from a variety of science and mathematics disciplines to bring CT into their classrooms. By illustrating CT concepts within the context of problems such as DNA sequencing, medical tomography, and weather simulation, teachers across the country have learned computational thinking content and been empowered to adapt what they learned for their own classes, especially science classes. In section two of this paper, we describe the computational thinking curriculum and modules, and the design of the computational thinking professional development. Examples of teacher inventions of CT materials that they successfully added to their own science classes are given in the third section. Finally, there are some general conclusions and indications of how to get the materials described earlier.

The CTPD project began in late 2018 and consisted of three primary areas of activity: 1) Design and development of materials for a PD course in computational thinking; 2) Delivering materials to teachers around the country through in-person workshops followed by an on-line course; 3) Research testing the efficacy of the professional development delivered. The CTPD professional development course was delivered largely online, but online use was preceded by short in-person workshops for eight cohorts of 20 - 25 teachers in a local geographic area. The workshops were conceived of as a critical bridge for introducing teachers to CT, the online platform, and to each other. After the workshop, the professional development continued with 4- or 8-week online programs, creating a hybrid form of PD and a community of teachers learning CT. When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, the pre-course workshop was modified from being held in person to being held synchronously online.

Upon completing the program, participants were asked to submit examples of how they had used and/or adapted the materials for their own classroom use. For instance, several participants across different cohorts reported on designing activities that used spreadsheets. The examples provided were then posted on Canvas as a course called Implementation of CT in the Classroom for others to use in their classes. Three quarters of the examples were science examples and a few are highlighted in the next section.

This paper discusses empowering high school teachers through professional development opportunities around computational thinking where the goal of integrating computational thinking (CT) into existing practice shifts attention away from a particular instructional approach to providing teachers with the opportunity to fold adapted CT materials into their existing practice, thus teachers become agents. From the participants’ perspective, DIMACS CTPD achieved its primary goals of expanding teachers’ abilities to think computationally, especially in terms of decomposing and testing out various solutions; and they gained familiarity with a wide range of activities and units that they could adapt for use in their classrooms ( Wilson et al., 2023 ). A number of examples of science teachers, who have invented their own additions of CT to their courses are provided, including one from a third grade teacher.

Daniella Duran, a high school Chemistry teacher from Valencia, California, teaches an advanced class in nanotechnology and took the CTPD in the summer of 2020 when it was fully online. She has worked with UCLA to develop nanoscience curricula for other high school teachers and is no stranger to classroom innovation. She decided to employ her new CT skills to show her students how to develop their own nanotechnologies in small teams using CT to “model” frog’s saliva using Elmer’s glue, Borax, and the assistance of a spreadsheet ( DIMACS, 2020 ). Mixing Elmer’s glue and Borax with water produces a sticky and pliable substance akin to Silly Putty (or frog saliva). Durand’s students do a lab in which they mix these ingredients with water, in varying amounts, until they find a mixture that mimics the properties of frog’s saliva. For each mixture, students measure a number of properties, such as resistance and elasticity, and enter their data into a spreadsheet equipped to calculate Young’s modulus, which describes the elastic properties of a solid under tension. Among, other things, the lab experiment shows how data can be collected, analyzed, and manipulated to solve problems, and that how those processes can be aided by computational tools and automation.

Following the design of the game Clue, Brea James, a high school physics teacher in Boonsville, Missouri, who participated in the pilot professional development site in Nevada, Missouri, asked her students in her physics class to solve the mystery of who killed Miss Mercury in what Room with what instrument. The students had to uncover eight clues to find the answer to this question. Each clue was wrapped in a different cipher or secret code that first had to be broken. They learned how to solve the problem using CT strategies and what they had learned from the cryptography module. For example, one clue was wrapped in a Caesar cipher as UXOHU (ruler), another as a Polybius Square cipher as 14/42/22/42/ 15/15/33 (Dr. Green). Even one clue was written in Morse Code (Can you find the shift in the Caesar cipher and the matrix used in the Polybius cipher?). Teachers are often positioned as targets or agents of reform in professional development ( Sykes & Wilson, 2016 ). One high school allowed a teacher to take her students to an escape room nearby and apply their CT knowledge to escape in the fastest time. They earned third place for the fastest time.