Representations of Computational Thinking in Policy Documents in an Educational Context: The Cases of Denmark, Finland, and Norway

Nordic countries have recently introduced computational thinking (CT) into school curricula. In this paper, we address the question: “Which key understandings of computational thinking are presented in Danish, Finnish, and Norwegian policy documents for primary and lower secondary education?” This study analyzes and compares the policy documents by using a combination of social network analysis (SNA) to obtain an overview of the whole dataset, and qualitative analysis to elaborate on some specific elements in the policy documents. Importantly, we find that: (1) all three policy documents focus on interpreting CT as both a problem-solving process and related to programming processes, and (2) how CT is written up in the policy documents reflects the line of thought concerning the extent to which CT is an integrated part of the course subjects in education.