Beliefs and Expectations of Primary Student Teachers in Informatics

With the new ”Curriculum 21” in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, media education and informatics have become much more important for compulsory education. However, introducing a new subject is a challenging task. Most university students had no or only very limited opportunities to be exposed to topics of computer science (CS) topics during their school years. To learn more about students’ beliefs and experiences, a preliminary survey was conducted. Open questions were asked to first-year students (n=251) and students in their last semester who had not yet taken any informatics classes during their studies (n=212). However, the students in their last semester had already completed internships in which they could participate in or conduct “Media and Informatics (MI)” classes. This difference is reflected in the responses: The students of the first semester more often mentioned application skills, and a negative attitude towards CS became apparent. In contrast, the students of the last semester frequently named teaching methods and characteristics of informatics classes.