A Case Study on Programming in Finnish General Upper Secondary Education

A curriculum for an introductory module on programming for Finnish upper secondary school was developed in collaboration with tertiary education. The module was refined over three school years and the attitudes and progress of the students were evaluated through pre-course and post-course questionnaires. Interviews with the responsible teachers were also used for the evaluation. The early results indicate that such a module can be successfully implemented with limited resources and also point to the large informal influence of the national standardized matriculation exam on student interest for and school implementation of such a module.