Abstract
According to new curricula being introduced in Switzerland, primary teachers have to teach concepts related to computer science (CS), but most of them have never been through a CS course themselves. At our university of teacher education, we have introduced a new disciplinary CS course for pre-service teachers, aiming to provide them with basic CS foundations to better grasp, contextualize, and explain the CS topics they will bring to their classrooms. This “experience report” paper describes the structure and design choices of the new disciplinary course. We propose a thematic split of the relevant topics to discuss and highlight strategies to make the course relevant for our audience. The declared and effective learning outcomes are then analyzed, topic by topic, through crossing survey responses and exam data. We also use survey data from a year later, polling the same participants again for relevance of their learnings in the disciplinary course after being in classrooms and conducting activities in CS. Through this, success points and improvement areas of the new course as well as changes to be made for the next occurrences are identified.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Such a course is actually due to be introduced in 2022–2023.
- 2.
Students were also asked to answer an free-text question on how they would describe CS. Size constraints do not allow the inclusion of the analysis of those results here.
References
Astrachan, O., Briggs, A.: The CS principles project. ACM Inroads 3(2), 38–42 (2012)
Bell, T., Andreae, P., Robins, A.: A case study of the introduction of computer science in NZ schools. ACM Trans. Comput. Educ. (TOCE) 14(2), 1–31 (2014)
Bruner, J.S.: The Process of Education. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (2009)
Chevallard, Y.: On didactic transposition theory: some introductory notes. In: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Selected Domains of Research and Development in Mathematics Education. pp. 51–62. Comenius University Bratislava, Czechoslovakia (1989)
Computer science teachers association, code.org advocacy coalition: state of computer science education (2018). https://code.org/files/2018_state_of_cs.pdf
Darling-Hammond, L.: Teacher quality and student achievement. Educ. Policy Anal. Arch. 8, 1 (2000)
Dengel, A.: Opinions of CS teachers in secondary school education about CS in primary school education. In: Proceedings of the 12th Workshop on Primary and Secondary Computing Education, pp. 97–98 (2017)
El-Hamamsy, L., et al.: A computer science and robotics integration model for primary school: evaluation of a large-scale in-service K-4 teacher-training program. Educ. Inf. Technol. 26(3), 2445–2475 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10355-5
Fincher, S.A., Robins, A.V.: The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2019)
Funke, A., Geldreich, K., Hubwieser, P.: Primary school teachers’ opinions about early computer science education. In: Proceedings of the 16th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research, pp. 135–139 (2016)
Paoletti, F.: Épistémologie et technologie de l’informatique. Revue de l’Enseignement Public et Informatique 71, 175–182 (1993)
Parriaux, G., Pellet, J.-P.: Computer science in the eyes of its teachers in French-speaking Switzerland. In: Brodnik, A., Tort, F. (eds.) ISSEP 2016. LNCS, vol. 9973, pp. 179–190. Springer, Cham (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-46747-4_15
Prieto-Rodriguez, E., Berretta, R.: Digital technology teachers’ perceptions of computer science: it is not all about programming. In: 2014 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) Proceedings, pp. 1–5. IEEE (2014)
Repenning, A., Lamprou, A., Petralito, S., Basawapatna, A.: Making computer science education mandatory: exploring a demographic shift in Switzerland. In: Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, pp. 422–428 (2019)
Sentance, S., Csizmadia, A.: Computing in the curriculum: challenges and strategies from a teacher’s perspective. Educ. Inf. Technol. 22(2), 469–495 (2017)
Shin, S., Bae, Y.: Study on the implications about curriculum design through the analysis of software education policy in Estonia. J. Korean Assoc. Inf. Educ. 19(3), 361–372 (2015)
Vivian, R., Falkner, K.: A survey of Australian teachers’ self-efficacy and assessment approaches for the K-12 digital technologies curriculum. In: Proceedings of the 13th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education, pp. 1–10 (2018)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Pellet, JP., Parriaux, G., Chevalier, M. (2022). Design and Analysis of a Disciplinary Computer Science Course for Pre-service Primary Teachers. In: Bollin, A., Futschek, G. (eds) Informatics in Schools. A Step Beyond Digital Education. ISSEP 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13488. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15851-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15851-3_11
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-15850-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-15851-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)