Computer Science (CS) Education research, specifically when focusing on secondary education, faces the difficulty of regionally differing political, legal, or curricular constraints. To date, many different studies exist that document the specific regional situations of teaching CS in secondary schools. This ITiCSE working group report documents the process of collecting, evaluating, and integrating research findings about CS in secondary schools from different countries. As an outcome, it presents a category system (Darmstadt Model), as a first step towards a framework that supports future research activities in this field and that supports the transfer of results between researchers and teachers in CS education (CSE) across regional or national boundaries. Exemplary application of the Darmstadt model shows in several important categories how different the situation of CSE in secondary education in various countries can be. The Darmstadt Model (DM) is now ready for discussion and suggestions for improvement by the CSE-community.

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In 2004 the German state of Bavaria introduced a new compulsory subject of computer science (CS) in its grammar schools ( Gymnasium ). The subject is based on a comprehensive teaching concept that was developed by the author and his colleagues during the years 1995--2000. It comprises mandatory courses in grades 6/7 for all students of grammar schools and in grade 9/10 for the students of the science and technology track of this school type. In grades 11 and 12 there are elective courses that qualify for an optional graduation exam in CS. The first students that have attended the course in total graduated in 2011. This article describes the whole project in the form of an extensive case study that is guided by the Darmstadt Model , which was developed as a category system for computer science education in secondary schools by a working group at ITiCSE 2011. This case study is the first (nearly) all-embracing discussion of the whole project that describes the long way from the original concept to the first graduates as well as the internal structure of the subject and the first results.

Due to the substantial differences of preconditions, circumstances and influence factors, it is often very difficult to compare or transfer research results in the field of Computer Science Education (CSE) in schools from one country to another. For this purpose we have started the development of a specific framework that, at the end, should reflect all factors that might be relevant for CSE. We collected five extensive case studies from five different countries and performed a qualitative text analysis on those, which was guided by the categories of the well-known Berlin Model as an initial theory. During the coding process we had to realize that this theory was not sufficient in many respects. At first, we noted that we had to deal with three different dimensions. Additionally, we found that we would need more categories, up to 70 at the end. The result of our coding process represents a first step towards the desired framework, that of course, has to be improved still a lot. This will be done by coding further case studies, extending, defining and explicating the categories.