Burgeoning academic research has been devoted to the study of computational thinking (CT). Yet, it has not been widely practiced and applied in K-12 education. In the meantime, scholars and educators anticipate project-based learning (PBL) to help integrate CT into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) classrooms because PBL is one of the most adaptive pedagogies to integrate multidisciplinary skills. For this reason, we systematically combed through the basics of project-based STEM classrooms at the K-12 level that incorporate CT. We found that a high-quality and interdisciplinary CT curriculum is very demanding for teachers’ versatile expertise (input side), yet such curriculums are not always in high demand by K-12 schools, which often anticipate narrowly defined teaching/learning objectives (output side). This ultimately creates a perceived “educational deficit” that may explain the absence of CT at the K-12 educational level.

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