In the context of modern information technology, computational thinking (CT) as a key competence is considered necessary to live an active life that is required to adapt to the discipline of teachers’ teaching and students' learning in the digital world in primary education. CT can be seen as a thinking process and skills that are essentially about using strategies and cognitive knowledge to solve problems and test solutions with supported attitudes. Some researchers have perceived and defined CT competence. Jocius et al. (2020) mentioned that the value of CT is a way to enhance and support more complex discipline-specific and interdisciplinary understandings, not just an isolated concept associated with computer science. Brennan & Resnick (2012) proposed the key dimensions of the CT framework: “computational concepts (the concepts designers engage with as they program, such as iteration, parallelism, etc.), computational practices (the practices designers develop as they engage with the concepts, such as debugging projects or remixing others’ work), and computational perspectives (the perspectives designers form about the world around them and about themselves)”. CT plays an important role in the teaching of the subject by teachers. Understanding teachers' CT competence and their ability to teach CT is particularly necessary for teachers to instruct effective subject education. There are researchers have begun to focus on teachers' cognitions of CT. Teachers' understanding of CT must build on the subject matter they teach (Yadav et al., 2014). In an experiment to assess the impact of CT modules on in-service teachers, a statewide survey of primary Maryland teachers is conducted to understand how to integrate CT into other content lessons. The survey asked teachers about their conceptualization of CT, the CT resources they rely on, CT integration and their comfort levels to provide effective CT instruction for their students (Garvin et al., 2019). However, most CT assessments are more reflective of Europe and North America and students’ CT (Cutumisu et al., 2019; Fang et al., 2021). Based on the findings of the existing CT assessment, the evaluation content includes CT knowledge and skills, but less attention is paid to CT attitudes. There are few CT assessment instruments in a non-programming environment, and there is a lack of CT assessment instruments combined with specific subject teaching knowledge. Therefore, more research attention needs to be directed to the rest of the world and teachers’ CT competence and their teaching competence assessment to fill the research gaps. Based on the above analysis, this research mainly solves the problem of in-service primary school teachers’ CT competence and CT teaching competence. Specifically, the following questions need to be solved: (1) What are the cognition aspects of CT competence and CT teaching competence considering primary teachers' characteristics in China? (2)  How to construct an assessment scale of CT competence and CT teaching competence for Chinese in-service primary school teachers? In this research, a scale has been developed for the purpose of determining the aspects of CT competence and CT teaching competence of the teachers. The assessment scale for CT competence is a six-point likert type scale and consists of 31 items that could be collected under five factors in this research. The theory in this research is mainly based on the new taxonomy of educational objectives to assess teachers’ CT competence in life application and professional application context. We hope to promote reflection on the education and teaching of CT by enriching the CT assessment scales in different contexts. Meanwhile, we hope to use this scale to further our understanding of the current situation and characteristics of in-service primary school teachers' CT competence in European and other educational contexts.

This study uses the quantitative methodology to achieve research goals. The digital questionnaire is developed with the six-point likert type scale. The sample group of this study was selected from Chinese in-service primary school teachers who have the knowledge, teaching experience and basic competencies required for the assessment of CT competence and CT teaching competence. The main subjects taught by the respondents are Chinese, English, mathematics, science, information technology, music, arts, morality and the rule of law, sports and health, which shows that the subjects covered are in line with the current trend of the types of subjects taught to primary school students in China. The scale development process has started firstly by literature review and the formation of the item pool. The item development draws on several CT assessment scales that have been developed by researchers (Fang et al., 2021; Korkmaz et al., 2017; Doleck et al., 2017). The item pool also referred to the specific requirements of the Compulsory Education Curriculum Programme (2022 version) for CT education in primary schools in China and was designed from analytical, practical, attitudinal and professional perspectives. The study has established a team of experts consisting of teachers and researchers from universities, primary schools and educational institutions who are engaged in research related to CT to evaluate the items. In order to ensure the coverage and representativeness of the sample, the sampling method of the study was based on quota and stratified sampling. The main research process took place in three phases over a period of three months. The first stage was a pilot test, in which 27 primary school teachers were randomly selected to interview their feelings and revise the questionnaire based on interview results. The second stage was a pre-survey with exploratory factor analysis with 215 questionnaires were collected from primary school teachers and 189 valid questionnaires were filled in. The third stage was a formal survey with confirmatory factor analysis. 493 primary school teachers were surveyed in China and 442 valid questionnaires were filled in. This paper uses SPSS, Amos and other software to analyze the data and modify the model.

As a result of the analysis, it has been concluded that the scale is a valid and reliable scale that could be used in the identification of CT competence aspects and CT teaching competence aspects of in-service primary school teachers. Since the reliable and valid assessment tool aiming at measuring CT competence from professional and teaching perspectives for in-service primary school teachers is seldom constructed in the literature, it could be thought that this measurement tool could make important contributions to the literature. The Cronbach ? for all five factors in this study are above 0.8 and the overall reliability is above 0.9, indicating good reliability of the scale. The factor loadings of items are higher than 0.7, indicating that the items corresponding to each latent variable are highly representative. The attained model reveals that the factors are confirmed by the data. When the values of the goodness of fit are examined, they have been found overall model fit is good (CMIN/DF=2.886, RMSEA=0.065, CFI=0.941, TLI=0.934). This study aims to promote the development of CT education by generating assessment scales to improve the awareness and competence of future teachers in CT education and to promote the deep integration of CT education with interdisciplinary teaching at European and international dimensions. This study considers the differences in policies, cultural backgrounds, and knowledge systems of the respondents. Moreover, it is also the application value of this study to formulate an assessment scale suitable for the respondents in combination with the national education policy, talent demand, and educational culture characteristics, and to improve the cultural applicability of the scale. However, this study is limited to investigating the CT competence of primary school teachers. Future research needs to focus on teachers' investigation in secondary schools or in higher levels.

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