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Informatics Concepts and Computational Thinking in K-12 Education: A

Lithuanian Perspective

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DOI: 10.2197/ipsjjip.24.732

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Journal of Information Processing Vol.24 No.4 732–739 (July 2016)
[DOI: 10.2197/ipsjjip.24.732]

Invited Paper

Informatics Concepts and Computational Thinking in

K-12 Education: A Lithuanian Perspective

Valentina Dagiene1,a) Gabriele Stupuriene1,b)

Received: January 3, 2016, Accepted: March 4, 2016

Abstract: Informatics or Computer Science is important subject in nowadays school education. Informatics can be
presented as a discipline for understanding technology in a deeper way – the understanding behind computer programs.
Bringing Informatics to schools means preparing young people to be creators of information technology – not only to
be users of technological devices. To achieve that, we need to introduce Informatics concepts to primary, basic (K-9)
and secondary education (K-12). From the other side, we need to help people to solve problems by using technology
and developing computational thinking in various areas. The paper presents a short overview of Informatics education
at schools of Lithuania with focus on future modern Informatics and Information Technology curriculum for K-12 ed-
ucation. The importance of informal education of Informatics concepts and computational thinking through contests is
discussed as well. Few examples of short tasks for understanding Informatics concepts and developing computational
thinking skills are presented.

Keywords: informatics concepts, informatics curriculum, computational thinking, contest, Bebras challenge

a block of compulsory education and a set of optional modules.

1. Introduction Learners may choose to study according to general or expanded
The Lithuanian educational system was gradually established curricula. For their final two school years at secondary institu-
and improved until it included every type and level of school that tions, young adults may continue with general education or move
the country needed: pre-school education, and primary, basic, on to vocational schools.
secondary, youth and vocational schools (Fig. 1). Education is For indicating all school grades from pre-primary and the 1st
free of charge and compulsory from the age of 6 to 16 years. through the 12th grade we will use the short form term K-12 (used
The pre-school age is from three to six. The children of these in education and educational technology in the United States,
ages are taught in the kindergartens. In Lithuania, the kinder- Canada, and other countries). Research methods, used in this
gartens were supported by government, interested organizations, contribution, include analysis of informatics concepts, based on
and by individual teachers. Since autumn 2016 all children at age literature review and generalization of more than three-decade ex-
6 are required to attend pre-primary classes (at school or kinder- perience in Informatics education, survey of opinions of Infor-
garten). The primary school consists of four years. During the
first four years, all the schools teach the same type of general
education, which everyone has to complete. About half of the
primary school teachers are enthusiasts at using information tech-
nology (PCs and mobile devices) in their lessons.
From approximately ages 11 to 16, students pursue their 6
years of education at basic school towards their certificate of
lower secondary education. However the curriculum continues
to be mainly academic still. Youth schools are meant for 12–16
year old adolescents that have not managed to adapt to study-
ing at schools of general education, lack motivation or have no
other choice because of the social situation that they face. Youth
schools provide basic education and pre-vocational training.
There are a few different types of secondary schools: gym-
nasiums, pre-gymnasiums, full or short secondary, vocational
and other schools. Secondary education curriculum consists of

1
Vilnius University Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Lithuania
a)
valentina.dagiene@mii.vu.lt
b)
gabriele.stupuriene@mii.vu.lt Fig. 1 Education system in Lithuania.


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matics teachers, and interpretation of their responses. tion technology for collaborative learning to represent these con-
cepts for students and ensure productive and sustainable learning?
2. Informatics Education in K-12 Schools Since 2005, the main attention in Lithuanian schools was paid
Computer Science (CS) education in high or upper secondary to satisfy users’ needs and to develop computer literacy. The In-
schools is entering the fifth decade of its existence in the world. formatics/IT curricula in lower and upper secondary schools in
Israel is one of the first countries which started to offer CS courses Lithuania, the evaluation schemes and even the denominations
in high schools in the middle of the 1970s. Many European coun- have been changed; nevertheless it has remained a separate sub-
tries jumped onto this process a decade later – Lithuania is among ject (information technologies or IT at the moment).
them. To be prepared for the jobs of the 21st century, students Besides, one of the most important components of IT is to
must not only be digitally literate but also understand key con- make students of comprehensive schools ICT-literate. Today, IT
cepts of CS. Students need to understand that CS combines both courses are compulsory for the 5–10th grades for approximately
theoretical principles and application skills. They need to be ca- 1 hour per week, respectively 35 hours per year (Fig. 2). There
pable of algorithmic thinking and of solving problems in other are some optional modules as well (e.g., programming). During
subject areas and in other areas of their lives. the lessons, an integrative nature of the course is being stressed;
In Lithuania, CS is named by Informatics (informatika). At students are prompted to see parallels with other subjects, to em-
the early beginning, teaching Informatics started with teaching ploy modern methods, to differentiate contents, etc. Students of
programming. Programming is good way for problem solving upper secondary schools (11th and 12th grades) can choose ad-
transfer. Also, programming is a the best way to build a language vanced optional modules and have to learn the content defined in
for instructing (communicating with) a machine. the course curriculum.
Informatics is developing its own fundamental concepts of Teaching fundamentals of Informatics as a mandatory part has
communication, knowledge, data, interaction and information, become quite poor. Students get familiar with the basic knowl-
and relating them to such phenomena as computation, language, edge on Informatics in grades 5 and 6, when they have a Logo
and implementation. Informatics studies the representation, pro- or Scratch course and in grades 9 and 10 with focus on under-
cessing, and communication of information in natural and engi-
neered systems. It has computational, cognitive and social as-
pects.
Informatics as a separate subject in comprehensive schools was
taught in the majority of East European countries, where funda-
mental and academic trends of teaching are more prevalent up till
now. Lithuania falls also under this category. Here, Informatics
was introduced in 1986 in all types of upper secondary schools
(11th and 12th grades). As a compulsory or partly compulsory
subject it has been implemented in Belarus, Bulgaria, Czech Re-
public, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and other countries
([1], [2], [3]). The course was changed permanently. Teach-
ing about computers and training of programming skills were
changed by practical use of information and communication tech-
nologies (ICT) for everyday activities.
Many countries started the 21st century with rising attention to
the ICT implementation in education ([4], [5], [6]). Those coun-
tries which have Informatics as a separate subject usually treat
ICT as a part of it; however, most of the time in the teaching pro-
cess is assigned to the technology itself, and less for supporting
the process of learning. Emphasizing the new course of “applied”
Informatics, most of the countries, including Lithuania, have re-
named it into information technologies (IT). Until now, there is
no common international agreement on framework for Informat-
ics and ICT in general education, although there are several dis-
cussions on this issue ([7], [8], [9], [10], [11]).
A common opinion is that fundamentals of algorithms and pro-
gramming are the key concepts at school Informatics education.
Especially learning programming and coding is becoming more
and more popular among pupils with focus on web design and
creating applications (apps) for mobile devices ([12], [13]). Then,
what concepts should we include in Informatics education apart Fig. 2 Scope of IT/Informatics curriculum in grades 5–12 of schools in
from algorithms and programming? How could we use informa- Lithuania (grey colored boxes represent Informatics related topics).


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standing simple algorithms and computer programs. The teaching Table 1 Teachers’ results of ranking satisfaction with the current
IT/Informatics curriculum.
process in Lithuania depends very closely on the knowledge and
Perception Frequency %
activeness of the teachers themselves. The optional modules on
Very satisfied 4 1.2
programming and related topics are available at upper secondary Satisfied 71 21.1
schools and in some schools also in lower grades. Unsure 3 0.9
Dissatisfied 222 65.9
The Joint Informatics Europe – ACM Europe Report, released
Very dissatisfied 37 11
in April 2013 [14], is what spurred action in the Europe Union
concerning Informatics education. It was developed by a group Table 2 Teachers’ suggestions for improving IT/Informatics curricula.
of experts from academia and industry representing the two prin- Perception %
cipal scientific societies in the field, Informatics Europe and the IT (Informatics) subject must be compulsory since 36
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The report cov- grade 3 of primary school (now it is compulsory from
grade 5).
ered a broad range of experiences and good practices in various
Emphasize teaching security of internet, save pass- 8
countries. words, ethics, etc.
The report defined a blueprint for European digital literacy and Include robotics elements and mobile technologies. 22
Informatics curricula, and it explained why they are critical to Need more teaching hours. 1 per week is not enough. 23
In grades 7–8 there 1 hour per week is designed for in-
countries’ economy. Based on the reports’ recommendations, the tegration with other subjects (but in reality it doesn’t
Informatics curricula can be developed taking into account con- work).
straints of individual countries, such as a lack of computers, in- Making presentation should be shifted from grade 7 to 11
grade 5, because various subject teachers request it in
ternet connections, or qualified teachers.
early years.
France and Finland are examples of countries, where Infor- More programming in grades 7–8. 25
matics was not taught as an independent subject matter, but in- IT/Informatics content in grades 9–10 is too condense, 37
troduced as a tool for other subject matters [15]. However in many students don’t remember fundamentals because
of Informatics course break in grade 8.
2012, France introduced an Informatics course in upper sec- More programming and algorithmic thinking topics are 18
ondary school in the Science field of study (for 12th grade) and needed.
it focuses on Informatics fundamentals. Finland, Italy and more IT/Informatics matura exam focuses on programming 40
(50% of the content). It is difficult for students who
countries have been developing an Informatics curricula for K-12
don’t learn Informatics continually from early years.
education. Textbooks and tutorials for students are too old (10 13
years and older).
3. Teacher Survey on IT/Informatics Curricu-
lum Table 3 Teachers’ opinion about optional modules.

Teachers are one of the most important keyplayers in the ed- Opinion Frequency
No need to have three modules because in any school 10
ucation system, and they implement and deliver the curricula at
there are not full groups of pupils who want to learn
school so their opinion on the Informatics curriculum is very im- these modules so in final there are only one module.
portant for future improvements. Teachers also need to know how Programming module should be compulsory not op- 24
to recognize and solve problems that may arise within the class- tional as it is now.
Matura exam must be based not only on programming 18
room when they deliver the curriculum. A qualitative approach module but on all three modules.
was used in this study in order to gather data in response to the re-
search questions, and the information itself was secured through a at early stages and continuously. Teachers noticed that many IT
questionnaire that contained 9 multiple-choice and 3 open-ended related topics should be taught at younger age so that students
questions. Four questions suggest the elaboration of the answer can use these skills for their better learning of other subjects. The
part. The questionnaire was distributed in June 2015. Survey three optional modules (Programming, Desktop publishing, and
designers attained content validity by developing questions that Data base developing and management) for upper secondary level
ask about the components of IT/Informatics curricula and their were discussed in detail (Table 3).
implementation. The main purpose of this survey was to collect Teachers expressed their attitude concerning Informatics as a
teachers’ opinions concerning the current IT/Informatics curric- fundamental subject compulsory for students of all age: 161
ula (developed in 2005). teachers strongly agreed with that.
We got answers from 337 IT/Informatics teachers (about 35 Almost all IT/Informatics teachers agreed that basic knowl-
percent of all IT/Informatics teachers). 90% of the teachers have edge of Informatics should be delivered for every student at K-12
more than 6 years practice in teaching this discipline, while about because societies need more technology creators, not only users.
3 percent of the teachers have less than 3 years practice. Physics for example explains the laws of reality, and Informatics
Table 1 indicates that the great majority of IT/Informatics explains the laws of virtual reality. We need to think algorithmi-
teachers are not satisfied with the IT/Informatics curriculum in cally when the analyze the data from the daily life, we need to
its current state (released in 2005). think computationally when we solve problems.
The teachers were asked to state how IT/Informatics curricu-
lum should be improved or changed (Table 2). 4. A Revival of Informatics Curriculum
As we see, many teachers emphasized teaching programming Many countries, at least in Europe, are working on developing


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new Informatics (CS, Computing, IT, etc.) curricula ([16], [17], digital devices, and computer networks; performing calcula-
[18], [19], [20]). The White Paper by the CSTA [21] lists a num- tions and executing programs;
ber of challenges and requirements that must be met if we want ( 3 ) Algorithms and programming. Programing and problem
to succeed in improving Informatics education. solving by using computers and other digital devices – de-
In view of the recent developments in many countries, for ex- signing and programming algorithms; organizing, searching
ample in the USA and in the UK, it appears that computer science and sharing information; utilizing computer applications;
education in primary or secondary schools (K-12) has reached a ( 4 ) Virtual communication. Developing social competences –
significant turning point, shifting its focus from ICT-oriented to communication and cooperation, in particular in virtual en-
rigorous computer science concepts [22]. A new Informatics/IT vironments; project based learning; taking various roles in
curricula for Lithuanian schools have been designed to meet the group projects.
following challenges: ( 5 ) Security, ethics, low principles. Observing law and security
• Students should acquire a broad overview of the field of In- principles and regulations – respecting privacy of personal
formatics (Computer Science); information, intellectual property, data security, netiquette,
• Instruction should focus on problem solving; and social norms; positive and negative impact of technol-
• Developing algorithmic and computational thinking should ogy on culture, social life and security.
be one of the most important goals; The biggest part of the curriculum consists of detailed attain-
• Informatics should be taught independently of specific appli- ment guidelines. The guidelines define the content adequately to
cation software, programming languages, and environments; the school level (grouped by two grades, e.g., 5th and 6th, 7th
• Informatics/IT should be taught using real-world problem and 8th). Thus learning objectives are defined that identify the
situations; specific Informatics concepts and skills students should learn and
• Informatics education should provide a solid background for achieve in a spiral fashion through the several levels of their edu-
the professional use of computers in other disciplines. cation.
The new Informatics curriculum benefits very much from our
5. From Algorithms to Computational Think-
experience in teaching Informatics in schools for more than 30
years. In particular, it takes the hours assigned to the present IT ing
curriculum and renews or makes new components of the curricu- Half a century ago, Informatics curriculum mainly focused on
lum. Informatics is going to unify the names of all stand-alone IT algorithms and programming (or coding). The role of program-
subjects and include components of digital literacy, information ming is two folded. From one hand, A. Perlis wrote in 1962 that
processing, security, etc. as well. everyone should learn to program and Mark Prensky declared
Informatics is a compulsory subject in basic school (1 hour a a few years ago that “The True 21st Century Literacy Is Pro-
week for 5th and 6th grade; 1 hour a week for 7th and 8th grade gramming” ([23]). From the other hand, we should avoid ‘the
plus 1 hour of integrated IT course; 1 hour a week for 9th and equation’: computer science = programming which is accused
10th grade). Informatics is an optional subject in upper secondary of killing interest in computer science among school students in
schools (3 hours a week for 11th and 12th grade) and students 1990. Not all students will become professional programmers but
may take the final examination (matura) in Informatics. writing their own programs, individually or in a group, they prac-
We have been very lucky that the present IT/Informatics cur- tice creative and computational thinking, and gain skills of the
riculum already includes Informatics subject on each education digital era useful for professional and personal life. They should
level and we have only had to modify and extend components also get some experience in programming of various digital in-
and modules of the existing IT/Informatics curriculum. The same struments, such as toys, robots, and vending machines.
applies to the hours of instruction. Needless to say that otherwise Traditionally, a programming language is a language of com-
it would be very difficult or impossible to convince the educa- puter science in a sense that it is a tool for expressing algo-
tion authorities that the national curriculum needs such changes rithms and to communicate them to computers and also to other
in the area which is unfortunately not of the highest priority on programmers. However, we should remember that “Informatics
the official agenda. We would like to say that several coun- should be taught independently of specific application software
tries (e.g., Poland, Latvia, Netherlands) working independently and programming languages and environments.” We have ex-
renewed their Informatics curriculum nearly in the same way and tended the meaning of the terms ‘program’ and ‘programming’ to
stacked to a very similar framework of Informatics curriculum. see them in a wider context of using computers to solve problems
The renewed Informatics curriculum consists of several parts. which are not necessarily algorithmic in nature and introducing
One part is the same for all levels of K-12 education. It includes all students to computational thinking. There are plenty of oppor-
unified aims which define five knowledge areas in the form of tunities to communicate with a computer by means of programs
general requirements. which are created by other programs, instead of writing the users’
( 1 ) Information. Understanding and analysis of problems – log- own programs.
ical and abstract thinking; algorithmic thinking, algorithms Problem solving and computational thinking are important
and representation of information; abilities that school students should acquire in their daily activi-
( 2 ) Digital technologies. Using computers, digital devices, and ties by using different means and techniques. J. Wing has made a
computer networks – principles of functioning of computers, wide-used definition [24]: Computational thinking involves solv-


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ing problems, designing systems, and understanding human be- ing activities and to use computational thinking and modern tech-
havior, by drawing on the concepts fundamental to computer sci- nologies more intensively and creatively [28].
ence. Later (in 2011) the topics were revised and computational The challenge-contest focuses on five age groups (some coun-
thinking was defined as the thought process involved in formulat- tries have three or four groups) with different task collections for
ing problems and their solutions [25]. each group. The youngest participants are primary school stu-
In a broader sense, computational thinking includes many com- dents (8–9 years old) and the oldest participants are senior high
ponents of problem solving: Formulation and restatement of school students (17–19 years old). It is an Informatics problem-
tasks; Data analysis; Decomposition; Modeling and simulation; solving contest with tasks that require problem-solving and al-
Recognition of pattern solution components; Automation of deci- gorithmic thinking which constitute a part of the computational
sions; Efficient use of resources; and Abstraction of decision pro- thinking development.
cess. Computational thinking skills are supported and enhanced The tasks are short, answerable in a few minutes through a
by a number of dispositions or attitudes that are essential dimen- computerized interface, and requiring deep-thinking skills in the
sions of Informatics and digital literacy [26]. Informatics field. The tasks should be answered without prior
The main difference between using information technologies knowledge in informatics, and they are clearly related to funda-
and thinking computationally is in going beyond using informa- mental Informatics concepts. To solve those tasks, school stu-
tion technologies tools and information towards creating tools dents are required to think in and about information, discrete
and information. It reminds of our distinction between Informat- structures, computation, data processing, data visualization, and
ics (as creation of programs, computers, theories, etc.) and Infor- they should use algorithmic as well as programming concepts. A
mation technologies (as applying informatics tools). The creation Bebras task can both demonstrate an aspect of Informatics and
of tools (e.g., programs) and new information requires thinking test the participant’s ability of understanding Informatics funda-
processes about how to use abstraction and manipulate data and mentals [26].
many other computer science and computing concepts, ideas, and Informatics concepts learning cycle (the spiral cycle) begins
mental tools of computational thinking. with a certain Informatics concept, which is the key idea what we
want to teach the pupils (Fig. 3). By adding a funny and interest-
6. Bebras Challenge —— A Way to Introduce
ing story, we create a task. By using gamification (application of
Informatics Concepts and Computational game principles in non-game contexts), and by adding interactive
Thinking components (dragging, dropping, etc.) we create a task for the
Computational thinking is tightly connected to learning Infor- Bebras challenge. The next step is to solve the task (this is the
matics concepts. For example, describing an object in an algo- pupils’ task), by understanding the task rather than just guessing.
rithmic way, using a formal language to do this, managing infor- Teachers can help pupils to understand the tasks after the solving
mation flows and using machines characterize the computational time by explaining why it is Informatics and why it is important.
thinking [15]. The 12th world wide Bebras week took place in 40 countries
Informatics concepts play a central role for understanding in November 9–13, 2015. In Lithuania, 24,709 students from
fundamentals of computers, information technologies, software,
hardware and other devices. However, in practice, very often the
training of skills in application software is given much more room
at schools than to discover and to go deeper into concepts of In-
formatics.
A “concept” can be understood as extensive information on a
particular object, existing in human mind. The content of a con-
cept can vary a lot as it depends on personal experience. Con-
cepts of Informatics are tightly related with our intensions: what
we would like to teach at school. In formal sciences “concept”
is defined as an abstract idea which generalizes separate objects,
and defines attributes and relations between objects. A concept
can be defined as a set of objects having common attributes.
It is important to bring Informatics concepts to pupils in a very
attractive way. One of the possibilies could be to use the Bebras
challenge during the Informatics lesson in informal way [27].
A challenge-contest on Informatics fundamentals, Bebras, for
all school pupils was established in 2004 and organized in Lithua-
nia. The main goals of the Bebras challenge are to promote
pupils’ interest in Informatics from the very beginning of school
and lead them to develop computational thinking abilities. Ac-
tually, the idea was to involve pupils into Informatics task solv- Fig. 3 From Informatics concepts to students understanding of it (from
teacher’s point of view).


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Fig. 4 Number of participants in Bebras (2015).

Fig. 6 Result of pupil’s performance of task “Ancestor”.

Fig. 5 Ancestor – One of the Bebras tasks.

Fig. 7 Crane operating – A Bebras interactive task.
531 schools participated (Fig. 4). During the Bebras week, af-
ter solving the tasks, the students were asked to select the most “class”. But what if the computer has to deal with a beaver face
interesting tasks. that has an attribute so far unknown? The computer might get in
The most interesting task for 3rd–8th grade students was “An- trouble.
cestor” (selected by 718 of 9,577 students participating in the This task was solved by the students of grades 3–8. Students
ranking process after the contest). For the 3rd–6th grades the spend 104 second on average to solve this task. In each group
most interesting task was “Crane operating” (744 of 6,070 stu- girls showed a little bit better results than boys. The percentage
dents participated in ranking process after contest). Both tasks of right answers is growing up with the age of the participants.
were suggested by Japan and was selected as good Bebras tasks The worst results are found in the Little Beaver group (grade 3–
to use. 4) (Fig. 6).
The Ancestor task deals with data structure concepts, in par- The another example of a Bebras task is related to the algo-
ticular with class which is a very important concept in object rithm concept (Fig. 7). A sequentially structured algorithm for
oriented programming (Fig. 5). In order to find the differences exchanging two objects is used in this task.
between the pictures, students have to find about the essential at- In a sequential algorithm two objects can only be changed if
tributes of the depicted faces first. The list of attributes and their one of the objects is placed on an extra place. If the exchange
possible values is: is done simultaneously, for example by two concurrent working
ears: small, large robots, the extra place is not required. Most of the computers still
mouth: plain, smile work with sequentially executed programs, so each exchange op-
nose: small, large eration in the memory of the computer needs an extra space to
number of teeth: 2, 3 deposit intermediately the value of one of the two values to be
whiskers: curly, straight exchanged.
For instance, students can describe the first face as a list of This task was solved by the students of grades 3–6. Students
attribute-value pairs: spend 128 second on average to solve this task. In each group,
(ears: small; mouth: plain; nose: large; number of teeth: 3; girls showed a little bit better results (Fig. 8).
whiskers: straight). Results of both examples have showed that not only boys but
Nowadays, computers are not bad at processing images, like also girls are interested in understanding Informatics. Children
finding differences between them. But it is much easier for com- are able to solve the tasks when they are presented in very attrac-
puters to work on structured data like lists of attribute-value pairs. tive way.
In Informatics, it is very usual to model things from the real world
7. Concluding Remarks
as “objects” that have attributes and values. Objects with the same
set of attributes (like all beaver faces) are then summarized into a Informatics education has emerged recently in many countries.


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c 2016 Information Processing Society of Japan 738
Journal of Information Processing Vol.24 No.4 732–739 (July 2016)

Valentina Dagiene is a professor at the

Vilnius University Institute of Mathe-
matics and Informatics and head of the
Department of Informatics Methodology.
She has published over 200 research pa-
pers and a lot of methodological works,
has written more than 60 textbooks in the
field of informatics and information tech-
nologies for secondary schools. She has been working in various
expert groups and work groups, organizing the Olympiads in In-
formatics among students.

Gabriele Stupuriene is a doctoral stu-

dent at the Vilnius University Institute
of Mathematics and Informatics at the
Department of Informatics Methodology.
Since 2010 she has been working on tasks
for Informatics and Computational Think-
ing Challenge Bebras tasks. She has de-
veloped and defended her Master thesis on
Conceptualisation of Informatics Fundamentals through Tasks in
2011.


c 2016 Information Processing Society of Japan 739

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