A review of Computer Science resources for learning and teaching with K-12 computing curricula: an Australian case study

Falkner, Katrina; Vivian, Rebecca

doi:10.1080/08993408.2016.1140410

Cited by 26 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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“…At the time of study, these teachers tend to be tool-centric in their approach to programming and primarily prefer to talk about different resources and tools and how these may be used. Teachers continuously rely on pre-made teaching materials to some extent in many subjects and the process of evaluating and adopting existing teaching materials for classroom use is an essential part of a teacher's curricular knowledge (Shulman 1986;Thornton 2001) and also part of the teacher's own learning process (Falkner and Vivian 2015). The new programming policy demands the same kind of teacher agency, but without proper professional development in place, this may not be a reasonable expectation.…”

Section: Extrinsic Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing programming in school mathematics and technology: teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic challenges

Vinnervik

2020

Int J Technol Des Educ

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The 2017 reform of the Swedish national curriculum requires that all compulsory school mathematics and technology teachers integrate programming into their teaching. The new programming policy poses a particular challenge since a majority of the affected teachers have little or no previous programming experience. This paper reports on a study of teachers preparing to implement the new policy. Insight into the preparation process was made possible through recorded group conversations and data were collected in March 2018, less than 4 months before the formal enactment of the new curriculum. The results, conceptualised by using a framework for intrinsic and extrinsic challenges, reveal several challenges that can potentially affect the uptake of the programming policy and the quality of implementation such as uncertainty about the subject content, unequal professional development opportunities, lack of teaching materials and recurring problems with school IT infrastructure. This study seeks to provide knowledge about teachers' concerns and expressed needs while negotiating programming as new curriculum content and thus aims to contribute to the understanding of teachers' strategies to approach the 2017 Swedish educational reform that introduces programming. Such knowledge is valuable for the possibilities to better understand under what circumstances programming is included in school mathematics and technology. The results illustrate the complexity of curriculum reform implementation and may be of value for decision makers at all levels of school policy and also for providers of both in-service and preservice teacher training.

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Section: Extrinsic Challengesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementing programming in school mathematics and technology: teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic challenges

Vinnervik

2020

Int J Technol Des Educ

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“…These graduate teachers are entering the profession at the same time as Digital Technologies is being consolidated into the Australian curriculum (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (2014). Previous concerns have been raised about the knowledge, skills and capacity of the existing teacher workforce in this domain (Falkner & Vivian, 2015); therefore, exploration of fully online ITE graduates' knowledge, skills and contributions to teaching in this area are all valuable considerations for future research. Additionally, further research may demonstrate whether these teachers contribute to the digital equity of those students who may have been previously excluded and how their preparation for teaching has the potential to reduce the digital divide for future learners.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These outcomes are inherently good for graduates of fully online ITE courses as they are seen to improve their personal lives while also enhancing career opportunities (Restal & Laferrière, 2015). Additionally, enhanced knowledge, skills and capacity to teach and learn with and through new technologies are fundamental to strengthening the Australian teaching workforce in this domain (Falkner & Vivian, 2015), and this has significant implications for future teacher practice.…”

Section: The Significance Of Demographics Within Online Itementioning

confidence: 99%

An evidence-based case for quality online initial teacher education

Pelliccione

Morey

Walker

et al. 2019

AJET

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The rapid expansion of fully online delivery of initial teacher education (ITE) seen in the past decade has generated some concerns about impact on teacher quality. This is set within broader, sustained concerns about ITE generally. Much of the criticism of online ITE has been made without sufficient evidence to support the claims, largely due to the still-nascent evidence base. The data presented here contributes to that evidence base by providing demographic and academic achievement insights for cohorts of graduate teachers (N = 2008) across the years 2012 to 2018 who have engaged in fully online ITE at an Australian university. The literature has recognised the traditional barriers to accessing higher education for many of these students, including women, the mature-aged, and those with family and work responsibilities. Performance data for online ITE students within their programs demonstrates that they are breaking through these barriers associated with the digital divide. Analysis of who these people are, where they come from, and how they are performing provides valuable insights into online ITE, at a time when the value of broadening access to education and digital equity are being widely acknowledged.

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“…Why decomposition might have lower pupil autonomy at the design level is interesting, whether this is because design is lacking as a clear and identified step may be a contributing factor. A recent review of resources for teaching computing, concluded that there was a lack of resources with design (Falkner & Vivian, 2015) and a study matching learning goals against research cited design as the most unmatched goal . We did not specifically ask coders to reflect on this, however one coder noted that 'Design element was STRONG' (coder 2) in activity 16 but non-existent in the puzzlebased activities which have a predetermined problem and solution algorithm.…”

Section: Dec -Decompositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating the Constructionist Learning Theory with Computational Thinking Classroom Activities

Csizmadia¹,

Standl²,

Waite³

2019

Informatics in Education

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In computer science education at school, computational thinking has been an emerging topic over the last decade. Even though, computational thinking is interpreted and integrated in classrooms in different ways, an identification process about what computational thinking is about has been in progress among computer science schoolteachers and computer science education researchers since Wing's initial paper on the characteristics of computational thinking. On the other hand, the constructionist learning theory by Papert, based on constructivism and Piaget, has a long tradition in computer science education for describing the students' learning process by hands-on activities. Our contribution, in this paper, is to present a new mapping tool which can be used to review classroom activities in terms of both computational thinking and constructionist learning. For the tool, we have reused existing definitions of computer science concepts and computational thinking concepts and combined these with our new constructionism matrix. The matrix's most notable feature is its scale of learners' autonomy. This scale represents the degree of choices learners have at each stage of development of their artefact. To develop the scale definitions, we trialed the mapping tool, coding twenty-one popular international computing activities for pupils aged 5 to 11 (K-5). From our trial, we have shown that we can use the mapping tool, with a moderate to high degree of reliability across coders, to analyse classroom activities with regard to computational thinking and constructionism, however, further validation is needed to establish its usefulness. Despite a small number of activities (n = 21) being analysed with our mapping tool, our preliminary results showed several interesting findings. Firstly, that learner autonomy was low for defining the problem and developing their own design. Secondly that the activity type (such as lesson plan rather than online activity) or artefact created (such as physical artefact rather than onscreen activity or unplugged activity), rather than the computational thinking or computer science concept being taught was related to learner autonomy. This provides some tentative evidence, which may seem obvious, that the learning context rather than the learning content is related to degree of constructionism of an activity and that computational thinking per se may not be related to constructionism. However, further work is needed on a larger number of activities to verify and validate this suggestion.

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A review of Computer Science resources for learning and teaching with K-12 computing curricula: an Australian case study

Cited by 26 publications

References 19 publications

Implementing programming in school mathematics and technology: teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic challenges

Implementing programming in school mathematics and technology: teachers’ intrinsic and extrinsic challenges

An evidence-based case for quality online initial teacher education

Integrating the Constructionist Learning Theory with Computational Thinking Classroom Activities

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