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
Category: teaching
Computing in the Curriculum: Identifying and responding to the challenges
In October 2017, I was awarded the BERA Public Engagement and Impact Award for work in computing education. To respond to the award, I wrote this short article, which was published in BERA's termly magazine, Research Intelligence, Spring 2018. Every time we turn on the TV or radio we hear of a new innovation in… Continue reading Computing in the Curriculum: Identifying and responding to the challenges
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”
New book on computer science education!
Computer Science Education: Perspectives on Learning and Teaching at School is a new book edited by Sue Sentance, together with Carsten Schulte, University of Padeborn and Erk Barendsen, Radboud University, Nijmegen. Bringing together international experts in the field of computer science education in school this book will be useful both for students studying to become computing… Continue reading New book on computer science education!
‘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
Bebras Cards
The Bebras Computing Challenge introduces computational thinking to students. It is organised in 50 countries and designed to get students all over the world excited about computing. It runs online every November, is free to enter and you can enter as many students in your school as you like. See http://bebras.uk for more information. This… Continue reading Bebras Cards
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
