A call to the computer science education community to make our values match our actions related to broadening participation through epistemological inclusion.
A call to the computer science education community to make our values match our actions related to broadening participation through epistemological inclusion.
Context. With the introduction of Computer Science (CS) into curricula worldwide, teachers’ adoption of CS pedagogical content is essential to ensure the long-term success of reform initiatives. Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programs play a key role in this process. Unfortunately, adoption is seldom evaluated in CS-CPDs or CPDs in general. The result is a dearth of studies (i) modelling teachers’ adoption of CS pedagogical content or (ii) investigating factors influencing the uptake of this new discipline. Both aspects are crucial to design and characterize successful CPD programs.
Objectives. We thus propose the Teachers’ Adoption of CS (TACS) model to investigate factors influencing the adoption of CS pedagogical content by teachers who are following a mandatory CS-CPD program. More specifically, the model proposes that contextual factors (e.g., age, gender, and general teaching experience), prior factors (e.g., experience, and CS perception), and acceptance factors (e.g., interest, and self-efficacy) may impact teachers’ adoption of CS pedagogical content.
Methods. The study included 180 grades 5 and 6 teachers (students aged 9–11) that were following a mandatory CS-CPD program. The CS-CPD program involved participation in three-day-long sessions distributed over the 2019–2020 academic year. In between sessions, with the support of instructional coaches in the schools, teachers were encouraged, but not required, to adopt the CS pedagogical content. Therefore, during the CPD, and employing surveys based on the TACS model, we evaluated teachers’ adoption of the proposed content and investigated how the different factors influenced it.
Results. At the PD-level, the results indicate that self-efficacy and interest queried during the CS-CPD are indicative of CS pedagogical content adoption. To shed more light on the relationship between these metrics, a more in-depth analysis was conducted with n = 92 teachers whose responses could be matched between sessions. While interest relates to how teachers adopt CS pedagogical content overall, both interest and self-efficacy are necessary to ensure the likelihood of a specific activity being adopted. Finally, individual teacher characteristics appear to impact adoption, with teachers with low experience with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) requiring onboarding, while middle-aged teachers require convincing to adopt CS pedagogical content.
Conclusion. Three takeaways emerge from the study. First, the analyses confirm the foundation of the TACS model. Second, the findings establish the key role that interest plays in said model. Finally, the results support the relationship between the contextual, prior and acceptance factors on the adoption of primary school CS pedagogical content.
To provide practice and assessment of computational thinking, we need specific problems students can solve. There are many such problems, but they are hard to find. Learning environments and assessments often use only specific types of problems and thus do not cover computational thinking in its whole scope. We provide an extensive catalog of well-structured computational thinking problem sets together with a systematic encoding of their features. Based on this encoding, we propose a four-level taxonomy that provides an organization of a wide variety of problems. The catalog, taxonomy, and problem features are useful for content authors, designers of learning environments, and researchers studying computational thinking.
Several authors of articles in the special issue came together for an asynchronous discussion of the articles, surfacing several tensions and opportunities for future work. This summary of the discussion offers a glimpse into these insights.
Motivation. As K-12 computing education becomes more established throughout the world, there is an increasing focus on accessibility for all, whether in a particular country or setting or in areas of the world that may not yet have computing established. This is primarily articulated as an equity issue. The recently developed capacity for, access to, participation in, and experience of computer science education (CAPE) Framework is one way of demonstrating stages and dependencies and understanding relative equity, taking into consideration the disparities between sub-populations. While there is existing research that covers the state of computing education and equity issues, it is mostly in high-income countries; there is minimal research in the context of low-middle-income countries like the sub-Saharan African countries.
Objectives. The objective of the article is therefore to report on a pilot study investigating the capacity (one of the equity issues), for delivering computing education in four sub-Saharan African countries: Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, countries that are in different geographic regions as well as in different income brackets (low-middle income).
Method. In addition to reviewing the capacity issues of curriculum and policy around computing education in each country, we surveyed 58 teachers about the infrastructure, resources, professional development, and curriculum for computing in their country. We used a localized version of the MEasuring TeacheR Enacted Computing Curriculum (METRECC) instrument for this purpose.
Results. We analyzed the results through the lens of the CAPE framework at the capacity level. We identified similarities and differences in the data from teachers who completed the original METRECC survey, all of whom were from high-income countries and African teachers. The data revealed statistically significant differences between the two datasets in relation to access to resources and professional development opportunities in computer studies/computer science, with the African teachers experiencing more barriers. Results further showed that African teachers focus less on teaching algorithms and programming than teachers from high-income countries. In addition, we found differences between African countries in the study, reflecting their relative access to IT infrastructure and resources.
Discussion. The findings suggest that African countries are still struggling with the lowest level of the CAPE pyramid, Capacity for as compared to high-income countries. This level is concerned with the availability of resources that support the enactment of a computing curriculum of high quality. The CAPE framework helps map the progression from Capacity for to Experience of computer science education as a route to equity, but to support development in low and middle-income countries, it may be helpful to h
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