Where Are CoolThink Students Making the Greatest Learning Gains? Linking CoolThink@JC Implementation With Student Outcomes

Abstract

CoolThink@JC is a 3-year course sequence designed to introduce computational thinking to students in the upper primary grades and to support the development of their digital creativity, problem-solving, and other 21st century skills. This topical report describes the relationship between CoolThink implementation factors and student learning, drawing on data collected for SRI’s study of CoolThink implementation in the first and second year and for the Education University of Hong Kong’s study of student outcomes. The analyses include up to 5,862 4^th– and 5^th-grade students across 85 schools, and build multilevel models using classroom implementation, parent engagement, and school characteristic measures to predict student learning gains in computational thinking. Our analysis reveals clusters of correlations between implementation factors and student outcomes, providing support to hypotheses about which implementation factors are key to successful CoolThink adoption. While the analysis has several significant limitations, the findings offer promising evidence that strong CoolThink implementation is associated with greater student learning gains.