Improving early childhood pre-service teachers’ computational thinking skills through the unplugged computational thinking integrated STEM approach

•Effects of computational thinking integrated STEM and STEM were compared.•Early childhood pre-service teachers’ computational thinking skills were examined.•Computational thinking integrated STEM improves computational thinking skills.•Computational thinking integrated STEM improves cooperativity, algorithmic thinking.•Unplugged activities are important in developing computational thinking skills. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effects of the unplugged computational thinking (CT) integrated STEM (UCT-STEM) approach and STEM approach on early childhood pre-service teachers’ CT skills (creativity, algorithmic thinking, critical thinking, problem solving, cooperativity, communication). The study was conducted with a total of 70 early childhood pre-service teachers. Quasi-experimental design was used; activities based on the UCT-STEM approach were administered to the experimental group and activities based on the STEM approach were administered to the control group. Post-test scores for CT skills showed a statistically significant difference in favour of the experimental group. It was concluded that the UCT-STEM approach was more effective in developing the pre-service teachers’ CT skills than the STEM approach. The current study presents an important finding to the literature in terms of the developed STEM and UCT-STEM contents and how these contents improve pre-service teachers’ CT skills. The STEM and UCT-STEM content provides significant information in terms of teacher practices. At the same time, this study offers important implications for program developers and policy-makers to integrate these innovative educational approaches into both early childhood education and teacher education programs.