DOI
https://doi.org/10.1080/10494820.2018.1534245

Summary
The article considers the impact of learning computer programming and computational thinking to students’ twenty first century skills, that is, problem solving, creativity, critical thinking skills across different ages. The relation of computer programming and other subjects is also discussed. Firstly, the authors provide the theoretical frameworks of computational thinking in combination with constructionism, creativity, critical thinking, problem solving. Secondly, they introduce a computer programming curriculum for primary school and the research environment. The curriculum was implemented in primary school in Hong Kong and 358 students participated in it. To answer the research questions, quantitative and qualitative analysis was performed. The data for the research was acquired using questionnaires and conducting interviews. The results demonstrate the students’ awareness of the existing relationships between computational thinking and twenty-first century skills. The authors provide future research perspectives and limitations of the current research, namely, undefined level of students’ interest in the subject and the lack of agreement on how to define computational thinking.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
In order to solve complex problems using computational resources, computer programming is considered as an essential competence in the 21st century. It also encourages the students to develop computational thinking which is defined as problem-solving and thinking processes to formulate and solve computational problems.
The research on teaching programing for primary school students through developing games was discussed in this article. During this activity, students had to create digital artefacts in the form of game-based project, to personalize the given program templates, to find and solve bugs, to present and discuss the results. The role of the teacher was less as an instructor and more as a guide.
The authors suggest that there is a link between the computational thinking, programming and 21st century skills (creative thinking, critical thinking and problem solving). They also consider this as a weak approval that these skills can be transferred or partially transferred to other domains or subjects to solve more complex problems.

Point of Strength
The strength of the article is the suggested idea how primary school students can develop 21st century skills such as critical thinking, problem solving, creativity while learning programming in game development.