We have a website at the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre that is kept more frequently up-to-date. For blog posts by Sue Sentance, you can now go to https://computingeducationresearch.org/
Category: teachers
RIP Python School
We're all involved in so many projects and love to share our latest new thing, through blogs and social media. New beginnings and amazing solutions. However, this post is about the end of a thing. It is perhaps rather indulgent of me to share the story of Python School at such length but closing it… Continue reading RIP Python School
Computer Science Education in schools in Africa
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
WiPSCE 2019 – a ceilidh and more!
I've just attended WIPSCE 2019 at the University of Glasgow, UK, hosted by Quintin Cutts and Peter Donaldson and team at the Centre for Computing Science Education. I really enjoyed the conference, as I do all WIPSCE conferences! In fact it was my 8th, as I have been every year since 2012, the first year… Continue reading WiPSCE 2019 – a ceilidh and more!
Situated Learning and Computing At School – new paper
I have recently published, with Simon Humphreys, a new paper on situated learning and teacher professional development in computing education, using Computing At School (CAS) as an example. This paper looks at situated learning and what it really means, and what Lave and Wenger (1991) meant by a community of practice. The term "community of… Continue reading Situated Learning and Computing At School – new paper
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”
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
Data science survey
Link to survey I am conducting a survey to canvas the opinions of Computing teachers on whether/how aspects of data science might be relevant to the school curriculum. This survey is primarily for secondary teachers but open to all. The purpose is to feed into a cross-European discussion on data science in the curriculum. It… Continue reading Data science survey
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
Sue Sentance 