A Core Informatics Curriculum for Italian Compulsory Education

Abstract

In order to bring informatics, its ideas and ways of thinking of major educational value to all primary and secondary school students, the Italian Inter-universities Consortium for Informatics (CINI), in collaboration with the academic associations who gather together researchers in informatics (GRIN) and computer engineering (GII), has recently proposed a core informatics curriculum for all the levels of compulsory school. This paper summarizes the proposed curriculum, highlights the key underlying motivations, and outlines a possible strategy to ensure that its implementation in schools can be effective.

Visual and unplugged coding with smart toys

“…In order to classify the educational activities proposed in Section 4 we used the Proposal for a national Informatics in the Italian school [7] which aim is to contribute to the development of Informatics education in the primary and secondary school in Italy. That proposal is the outcome of a long process, promoted by the Italian Informatics community, but that has also benefited from 3 www.bebras.org important contributions of pedagogists and experienced school teachers who took part in the discussion.…”

“…Educational goals and objectives. This activity contributes to achieving the following goals and objectives, defined by Proposal for a national Informatics in the Italian school [7]: Skills development milestones at the end of primary school: i) understand that an algorithm describes a procedure that lends itself to being automated in a precise and unambiguous way; ii) understands how an algorithm can be expressed through a written program using a programming language; iii) read and write simple programs; iv) explain using logical reasoning why a program achieves its goals.…”

“…Activities classification. This activity contributes to achieving the following goals and objectives, defined by the Proposal for a national Informatics in the Italian school [7]:…”

“…There is a general agreement on the fact that computer science should be part of general education from the earliest stages in order to develop computational and critical thinking skills. As outlined in the Proposal for a national Informatics curriculum in the Italian school [7] "In the first stage (primary school) students should be encouraged to ask questions as well as to discover in their everyday life and to explore some basic ideas of Informatics. They can be engaged either in "unplugged" activities, i.e.…”

Getting Inspired by Bebras Tasks. How Italian Teachers Elaborate on Computing Topics

“…In Italy computer science is not covered by curricular activities except for vocational schools (Bellettini et al, 2014). A recent proposal by the Italian academic informatics community is meant to contribute to the development of informatics education in the primary and secondary school (Forlizzi et al, 2018). Even though terms like coding or computational thinking are now commonly (mis-)used by Italian school policy makers, teachers have a very limited knowledge also of these terms, as testified by the study presented in (Corradini et al, 2017) and conducted among primary teachers.…”