The purpose of this study was to explore if, what kinds of, how much computational thinking (CT after this) practices could be included in STEAM programs, and what kinds of CT practices could be improved to make STEAM revitalized. The CT analyzing tool with operational definitions and its examples in science education was modified and employed for 5 science-focused and 5 engineering-focused STEAM programs. There was no discerning pattern of CT practices uses between science and engineering STEAM programs but CT practices were displayed depending on their topics. The patterns of CT practices uses from each STEAM program could be used to describe what CT practices were more explored, weakly exposed, or missing. On the basis of these prescription of CT practices from each STEAM program, the researchers could develop the weakly exposed or missing CT practices to be improved for the rich experience in CT practices during STEAM programs.

The purpose of this study was to explore the nine components of computational thinking (CT) practices and their operational definitions from the view of science education and to develop a CT practice framework that is going to be used as a planning and assessing tool for CT practice, as it is required for students to equip with in order to become creative problem solvers in 21st century. We employed this framework into the earlier developed STEAM programs to see how it was valid and reliable. We first reviewed theoretical articles about CT from computer science and technology education field. We then proposed 9 components of CT as defined in technology education but modified operational definitions in each component from the perspective of science education. This preliminary CTPF (computational thinking practice framework) from the viewpoint of science education consisting of 9 components including data collection, data analysis, data representation, decomposing, abstraction, algorithm and procedures, automation, simulation, and parallelization. We discussed each component with operational definition to check if those components were useful in and applicable for science programs. We employed this CTPF into two different topics of STEAM programs to see if those components were observable with operational definitions. The profile of CT components within the selected STEAM programs for this study showed one sequential spectrum covering from data collection to simulation as the grade level went higher. The first three data related CT components were dominating at elementary level, all components of CT except parallelization were found at middle school level, and finally more frequencies in every component of CT except parallelization were also found at high school level than middle school level. On the basis of the result of CT usage in STEAM programs, we included ‘generalization’ in CTPF of science education instead of ‘parallelization’ which was not found. The implication about teacher education was made based on the CTPF in terms of science education.