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A Decade of CS Education in New Zealand’s High Schools: Where Are We At?

Published: 19 October 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Although a rigorous computing curriculum equipped with computer science and computer programming achievement standards was introduced in high schools in New Zealand 10 years ago, fewer than 10% of students take these standards. That raises the questions of why the uptake is low, and what were the trends in recent years. Past studies of New Zealand’s computer science and programming standards have tended to concentrate on the nature of the standards, teachers’ reactions to standards, teaching materials and assessment methods. In this research, we analyse the introduction of the computing curriculum over the last decade in terms of student uptake in general, the uptake for different groups of students, students’ progression through these standards and number of schools offering these standards. After analysing the official, nationwide data we can provide the following major findings. First, student participation in all three levels of computer science and programming standards is very low throughout the period. Second, fewer than 50% of high schools offer any of these standards. Finally, large equity gaps remain in enrollment to high school computer science education by socio-economic status, ethnicity and gender.

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Cited By

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  • (2024)Advancing Equity and Access: Addressing the Side Effects of Broadening Participation in Computer Science K–12 EducationReview of Research in Education10.3102/0091732X24128647548:1(121-153)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Automated Assessment: Does It Align With Teachers' Views?Proceedings of the 19th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3677619.3678113(1-10)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
  • (2024)A framework identifying challenges & solutions for high school computingEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-023-12329-929:12(15621-15654)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
  • Show More Cited By

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        cover image ACM Other conferences
        WiPSCE '21: Proceedings of the 16th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education
        October 2021
        119 pages
        ISBN:9781450385718
        DOI:10.1145/3481312
        Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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        New York, NY, United States

        Publication History

        Published: 19 October 2021

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        Author Tags

        1. Equity Gaps
        2. Ethnicity
        3. Female Uptake
        4. High School Education
        5. Low Uptake
        6. New Zealand
        7. School Decile

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        Overall Acceptance Rate 104 of 279 submissions, 37%

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        View all
        • (2024)Advancing Equity and Access: Addressing the Side Effects of Broadening Participation in Computer Science K–12 EducationReview of Research in Education10.3102/0091732X24128647548:1(121-153)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2024
        • (2024)Automated Assessment: Does It Align With Teachers' Views?Proceedings of the 19th WiPSCE Conference on Primary and Secondary Computing Education Research10.1145/3677619.3678113(1-10)Online publication date: 16-Sep-2024
        • (2024)A framework identifying challenges & solutions for high school computingEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-023-12329-929:12(15621-15654)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2024
        • (2023)Towards Automated Assessment of High School Programming2023 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE)10.1109/FIE58773.2023.10343243(1-9)Online publication date: 18-Oct-2023
        • (2023)Computing Education Research in AustralasiaPast, Present and Future of Computing Education Research10.1007/978-3-031-25336-2_17(373-394)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2023

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