I'm delighted to share details of a new project I'm involved in. Colleagues from Botswana, Nigeria and Kenya are working together to investigate primay and secondary computing education provision in their countries, and potentially other countries across Africa. This month we launched a survey for teachers of computer studies in Africa to find out what… Continue reading Computer Science Education in schools in Africa
Category: pedagogy
New paper: PRIMM and sociocultural theory
Together with Jane Waite and Maria Kallia, I've recently published a new paper about PRIMM called Teaching computer programming with PRIMM: a sociocultural perspective There are 50 free eprints available. Download one here. If they run out, contact me! I've written about PRIMM elsewhere, and I also presented a shorter paper on it at SIGCSE… Continue reading New paper: PRIMM and sociocultural theory
GCSE computer science – can we look at “why” before we talk about “hard”
Today the latest TRACER report from Peter Kemp and colleagues was published. It's excellent that the team have done so much digging into the data to be able to contrast different groups and show us where students are likely to be taking GCSE computer science and A Level. Some good news: "Increasing numbers of schools… Continue reading GCSE computer science – can we look at “why” before we talk about “hard”
‘Coding’ in School? Research Needed to make Computing Accessible to All Children
This post has been reproduced from the Social Science Space Blog published in January 2018: https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2018/01/coding-school-research-needed-computing-accessible-children/ Coding. It's the new ‘must have’ skill - there are opportunities for us to learn this everywhere, with online courses, workshops, books and magazines abounding. In school, coding has also become a focus. When computing replaced ICT as part of… Continue reading ‘Coding’ in School? Research Needed to make Computing Accessible to All Children
IT and Computing education in Guyana
Guyana is a small country (size of UK) in the north of South America bordering Venezuela, Brazil and Suriname. However in many ways it associates itself with the Caribbean - for example, students take Caribbean GCSEs - called the CSEC. In terms of computing in school, students can take the CSEC in IT and this… Continue reading IT and Computing education in Guyana
A continuum of scaffolding: from copying code to tinkering
Jane Waite, of King's College London & Queen Mary University of London, is researching ways of teaching programming, with the ultimate goal of supporting primary teachers teaching programming. In this post Jane describes a continuum of programming that she uses in training with primary teachers (CAS London run a number of Diving Deep courses in… Continue reading A continuum of scaffolding: from copying code to tinkering
PRIMM: A structured approach to teaching programming
PRIMM is one approach that we hope can help teachers structure lessons in programming. It is based on research into the learning of programming but combines different areas. Our overall interpretation of the research is that teaching programming requires a blended approach using a range of strategies. PRIMM stands for the following: Predict Run Investigate… Continue reading PRIMM: A structured approach to teaching programming
How do you teach with the BBC micro:bit?
At King's College London we are pleased to host a visiting researcher, Filiz Kalelioğlu, from Turkey, who is researching pedagogy and the BBC microbit. Physical computing is fun and engaging, but does it really help students learn, what are the best teaching methods to use with small devices in the classroom, and how can we… Continue reading How do you teach with the BBC micro:bit?
Exploring pedagogies for teaching programming in school
Many teachers are able to recognise that students can find programming difficult and can identify the stages that novice school-aged programmers go through (cf Laura Sach's blog article). However it is not as easy to specify a particular teaching strategy that will support learners in gaining confidence and a deep understanding of programming concepts (moving… Continue reading Exploring pedagogies for teaching programming in school
Conferences relating to computer science education in school
WIPSCE (Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education) is a great conference for those interested in computer science education in school to attend as it combines a really friendly and welcoming international community of researchers with a desire to encourage rigorous theoretical and empirical research in computer science education. The first international WIPSCE conference was… Continue reading Conferences relating to computer science education in school
Sue Sentance 