In recent years, several countries have undergone major curriculum revisions, which has resulted in the inclusion of interdisciplinary competence areas such as digital competence, computational thinking, critical thinking, problem solving and collaborative learning into the compulsory K-12 curricula (Erstad & Siddiq, 2023). Such overarching competence areas are oftentimes labelled 21st century skills (Voogt & Roblin, 2012). Although the intentions in the curriculum are positive, there is currently little research-based knowledge about how such competences can be taught and assessed, and teachers report lack of access to professional development and teaching materials (Erstad & Siddiq, 2022; Kravik et al., 2022). To meet some of these challenges, the TEACH21st-project (Teaching and transfer effects of 21st century skills – collaborative problem solving in digital environments) was initiated in 2019 with the aim to develop teaching materials and practices that are knowledge- (theory-driven) and research-based. More specifically, applying a teacher design team approach (Becuwe et al., 2016) teachers, teacher educators, student teachers and researchers worked together to develop a teaching resource aimed at developing lower secondary students’ computational thinking and collaborative problem-solving competences. This program has been developed, piloted and revised through several iterations. The final teaching program includes materials (games, charts, tasks etc.) for the teachers and students, and practices (e.g., use of analogue and computer programming in combination to teach computational thinking, how to teach collaborative learning and use it as a pedagogical approach). The program consists of four modules that are built on the principles of: relevance (target learning goals in the curriculum); inclusion (all students should be able to participate independent of their previous knowledge, and provide adaptive teaching); engagement and activity (include engaging and fun tasks, involving physical activity and hands-on assignments); collaborative learning (students need to learn to collaborate and the tasks require positive dependence); and progression (the tasks move towards more advanced levels). Finally, this program has been conducted in 32 classes by their teachers (N=16) after attending a one-day professional development workshop. In this study, we will examine how the 9th grade students (N = 460) experience learning within this teaching program. The data consist of the students' reflection notes conducted after each of the four modules and observations (N = 24 classes). The data has been analyzed through a combination of thematic analysis (Braun & Clark, 2021) and network analysis (Epskamp et al., 2018). Results and implications will be discussed.

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