Why do we even bother? What (exactly) is the point? In this age of AI why would anyone need to learn about Computing? What value does it add, what skills do students learn and what knowledge do students actually need to develop? Join us on Monday 7th April at 2pm BST (UTC+1) to discuss a paper co-authored by Sue Sentance and published at iticse.acm.org [1]. From the abstract:
K-12 computing education research is a rapidly growing field of research, both driven by and driving the implementation of computing as a school and extra-curricular subject globally. In the context of discipline-based education research, it is a new and emerging field, drawing on areas such as mathematics and science education research for inspiration and theoretical bases. The urgency around investigating effective teaching and learning in computing in school alongside broadening participation has led to much of the field being focused on empirical research. Less attention has been paid to the underlying philosophical assumptions informing the discipline, which might include a critical examination of the rationale for K-12 computing education, its goals and perspectives, and associated inherent values and beliefs. In this working group, we conducted an analysis of the implicit and hidden values, perspectives and goals underpinning computing education at school in order to shed light on the question of what we are talking about when we talk about K-12 computing education. To do this we used a multi-faceted approach to identify implicit rationales for K-12 computing education and examine what these might mean for the implemented curriculum. Methods used include both traditional and natural language processing techniques for examining relevant literature, alongside an examination of the theoretical literature relating to education theory. As a result we identified four traditions for K-12 computing education: algorithmic, design-making, scientific and societal. From this we have developed a framework for the exemplification of these traditions, alongside several potential use cases. We suggest that while this work may provoke some discussion and debate, it will help researchers and others to identify and express the rationales they draw on with respect to computing education.
We’ll be joined by one of the papers co-authors, Sue Sentance from the University of Cambridge. Sue is Director of the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre, recipient of the BCS Lovelace medal and an editor of the book Computer Science Education: Perspectives on Teaching and Learning in School published by Bloomsbury Academic. Sue will give us a lightning talk on the paper which is also summarised on the computing education research blog and in the slides from her talk.
All welcome, meeting URL is public at zoom.us/j/96465296256 (meeting ID 9646-5296-256) but the password is private and pinned in the slack channel which you can join by following the instructions at sigcse.cs.manchester.ac.uk/join-us
References
- Carsten Schulte, Sue Sentance, Sören Sparmann, Rukiye Altin, Mor Friebroon-Yesharim, Martina Landman, Michael T. Rücker, Spruha Satavlekar, Angela Siegel, Matti Tedre, Laura Tubino, Henriikka Vartiainen, J. Ángel Velázquez-Iturbide, Jane Waite and Zihan Wu (2024) What We Talk About When We Talk About K-12 Computing Education Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE 2024), Pages 226 – 257 DOI:10.1145/3689187.37096
