Concepts in K-9 Computer Science Education

Abstract

This exploratory study focuses on concepts and their assessment in K-9 computer science (CS) education. We analyzed concepts in local curriculum documents and guidelines, as well as interviewed K-9 teachers in two countries about their teaching and assessment practices. Moreover, we investigated the 'task based assessment' approach of the international Bebras contest by classifying the conceptual content and question structure of Bebras tasks spanning five years. Our results show a variety in breadth and focus in curriculum documents, with the notion of algorithm as a significant common concept. Teachers' practice appears to vary, depending on their respective backgrounds. Informal assessment practices are predominant, especially in the case of younger students. In the Bebras tasks, algorithms and data representation were found to be the main concept categories. The question structure follows specific patterns, but the relative frequencies of the patterns employed in the tasks vary over the years. Our analysis methods appear to be interesting in themselves, and the results of our study give rise to suggestions for follow-up research.

It’s Computational Thinking! Bebras Tasks in the Curriculum

“…Interaction (Human-Computer Interaction, HCI), systems and society Analyses of the Bebras tasks used in the 2014 contest were conducted according to the cognitive skills' domains (Bloom taxonomy): this showed that the most tasks demonstrated higher-order thinking skills in the Bloom's taxonomy: Understanding, Applying, Analysing and Evaluating (Dagiene & Stupuriene, 2014). In another analysis examining the topics of all Bebras tasks used between 2010 and 2014, the most commonly occurring computational thinking topics were algorithms (66%) and data representation (38%), followed by abstraction (16%) (Barendsen et al, 2015).…”

“…The topic of networks is very broad; it can be found in various forms in many countries' informatics curricular (Barendsen et al, 2015). At school level, this topic could cover topologies, communication, networking protocols, security and the way that the internet is structured.…”

An Investigation of Italian Primary School Teachers’ View on Coding and Programming

“…They also observe that on one hand the term "coding" has a broader meaning in CS (e.g. in cryptography or in information theory), and on the other hand it is often used to indicate the stage of software development when programs are actually written [10,1,2]. In other words, "coding" is considered as a narrower concept excluding important phases like analysis, design, testing, debugging [3].…”

How Hard Will this Task Be? Developments in Analyzing and Predicting Question Difficulty in the Bebras Challenge

“…Bebras is about concept in computer science and computational thinking. Barendsen et al (2015) show that it is possible to identify concepts on programming in various questions in the Bebras task pool. Izu, Mirolo, Settle, Mannilla, and Stupuriene (2017) describe how the goals of computational thinking are reflected in Bebras tasks.…”