Laboratorio per apprendere le competenze del 21° secolo: percorsi didattici con scratch per i futuri insegnanti della scuola primaria.

Computational thinking (CT) is a key skill of the 21st century for everyone as it fosters the acquisition of new ways of thinking, communicating and expressing ideas, as well as new ways to take part in the social life of a community. Several countries launched specific policies for the introduction of computational thinking and programming in different educational contexts. Consequently, coding courses for in-service teachers were conceived, according to our knowledge, marginal attention has been devoted to the acquisition of coding skills in pre-service teachers. In this paper, we report the results of a coding laboratory that involved 141 future teachers. By providing precise guidelines and a specific didactic methodology, novice programmers, working in groups, developed 40 educational projects using Scratch software. Results showed that most of the participants achieved a medium-high level of skills, applying appropriate both planning and coding techniques for the exploitation of educational contents.