Abstract:

The article describes the results from а conducted research study focused on the assessment of the level of teachers' computational thinking skills through task-based learning in Scratch. The task-based teaching approach focuses on setting a goal for learners and following the main steps to achieve it.

Introduction:
As teachers are confronted with rapidly changing requirements, they need an increasingly broader and complex set of competencies than before. In particular, the ubiquity of digital devices and the desire to encourage and support students to become digitally competent require teachers to develop their own digital skills. The European framework for digital competence of teachers is in line with the institutional and contextual requirements of the country concerned but can be adapted and updated.

Methodology of the study:
Research Design:
The study includes the following stages:
• Pre-task stage (an introduction to the topic and the task): providing learners with the basic concepts, practices, and perspectives for developing computational thinking and coding in Scratch.
• Task stage (learners perform the task proposed): system of tasks.
• Post-task stage (evaluate the students’ performance): assessment of the level of teachers' computational thinking skills.

Participants:
During the period September 2021 – March 2022 there was conducted training of teachers from different primary schools in Ruse and Silistra in the course "Computer Modelling - Modern Methodological Guidelines in Teaching at the Initial Stage", organized by the Centre for Continuing Education at the University of Ruse.

Criteria for assessing the level of teachers' computational thinking skills:
The following 7 criteria are used to determine the level of computational thinking (Moreno, 2015). When evaluating, a result from 1 to 3 is assigned to each of the parameters. Levels of proficiency: basic, intermediate, advanced are assigned depending on the overall result:

Results:
The following paragraphs analyse in detail the results obtained in the study. The following 7 criteria are used to determine the level of computational thinking (Moreno et al., 2015), based on which a system of tasks for their formation has been created.
To analyse the results, the central trend tool, or the so-called mean values (values) of the distribution is used, which provides information about the typical or average observation for usually a large number of observations. The arithmetic mean, which is also called the mean or simply the average, is calculated by dividing the sum of all observations by the number of observations.
- Criterion 1. Abstraction and breaking a problem into smaller parts
- Criterion 2. Parallelism
- Criterion 3. Logical thinking
- Criterion 4. Synchronization
- Criterion 5. Flow control
- Criterion 6. User interactivity
- Criterion 7. Data representation

Conclusions:
The article presented the results from а conducted research study focused on the assessment of the level of teachers' computational thinking skills through task-based learning in Scratch. This research is an effective way to identify and focus on various aspects that shape the learning process. At the end of the research process, the teacher analyses some important aspects of student assessment by different criteria. The respective statistical - quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected data was performed.

Keywords:

Scratch, computational thinking, assessment, programming concepts, task-based learning.