Opinions of CS Teachers in Secondary School Education about CS in Primary School Education

Abstract

As computer science (CS) occupies a central part of today's everyday life, we see efforts to establish CS as part of our early education system. In order to investigate the current status of and understandings of the integration of CS topics in primary school education from a professional perspective, we conducted a survey among 116 CS teachers in secondary school education and asked them what they thought about CS in primary school education. The findings show that the opinions among teachers differ significantly. Regardless of future political decisions with regard to this matter, children in primary school are confronted with and have questions about the digital environment they live in, which they confront their teachers with. Therefore, the most prominent topics for primary school Algorithmics, Data Integrity and Data Security, Representation of Information and Object Orientation should be introduced in primary school teacher trainings to ensure that CS education can be introduced to primary school teaching in a qualified and structured way.