Higher order thinking through Calculus for Kids

The Calculus for Kids project has run over four years in five Australian states with 227 students in 18 schools. Participating students were 10-12 years old and studied integral calculus using computer algebra software (MAPLE). Their success in a post-test shows levels of achievement comparable to first year university engineering students. The project demonstrates how purposeful computer use can engender higher order thinking and provides exemplary evidence for systematic curriculum re-design in an era of ubiquitous information technology. The results in this report showed the learning outcomes were independent of student gender but responses to application questions were related to school rurality (based on ICSEA value). This makes the approach more attractive for general adoption and strengthens the argument for considering parallel developments in other topic areas.