What do the Teachers Think?

Conceptions and Misconceptions about Computational Thinking among Italian Primary School Teachers

“…Duncan and colleagues [9] report the post-lesson feedbacks from 13 primary school teachers (with no previous experience in teaching computer science) participating in an ongoing study on teaching CT in New Zealand. They report about teacher confidence, level of difficulty of the lessons, common themes emerged in the answers, and teachers' misconceptions.…”

The pedagogy of multiliteracies as a code breaker: A suggestion for a transversal approach to computing education in basic education

“…Indeed, teachers in Mee's (2020, p. 3) survey expressed concern that 'the current pressure to focus on programming and coding is already resulting in a decline of wider digital competencies' required in a digitalized society, and primary teachers in Larke's (2019) study used their professional judgement to modify or reject England's National Curriculum on computing standards by minimizing or ignoring subject content that they deemed redundant or less than critical to their students' success. Second, the notions above imply that even an active implementation of computing education does not necessarily equate to a pedagogy that supports children's agentic subjectivity in a computationally steeped society, and a review of existing research (eg, Duncan et al, 2017;Fagerlund et al, 2021;Geldreich et al, 2018;Mertala et al, 2020;Otterborn et al, 2020;Papadakis & Kalogiannakis, 2020;Sáez-López et al, 2016;Rich et al, 2019;Vega & Cañas, 2019) suggests that technical and functional aspects are dominant in computing education and that societal issues are touched upon in only a limited manner at best. To overcome these obstacles, this conceptual paper proposes a more comprehensive approach for computing education.…”

“…While computing has been (re)introduced into the basic education curricula in various countries (Bresnihan et al, 2015;McGarr & Johnston, 2020;Mertala et al, 2020;Sentance & Csizmadia, 2017;Williamson et al, 2019), its actual implementation appears to be inconsistent. There are schools in which computing education is commonplace (Duncan et al, 2017;Geldreich et al, 2018), while the implementation seems to be lagging behind in others (Larke, 2019;Tanhua-Piiroinen et al, 2020). As a result, significant public (eg, Dickens, 2016;McDonald, 2017) and scholarly (eg, Duncan et al, 2017;Mason & Rich, 2019;Rich et al, 2021;Sentance & Csizmadia, 2017) debate has focused on the question of how to ensure that all teachers are qualified and competent enough to teach computing.…”

“…There are schools in which computing education is commonplace (Duncan et al, 2017;Geldreich et al, 2018), while the implementation seems to be lagging behind in others (Larke, 2019;Tanhua-Piiroinen et al, 2020). As a result, significant public (eg, Dickens, 2016;McDonald, 2017) and scholarly (eg, Duncan et al, 2017;Mason & Rich, 2019;Rich et al, 2021;Sentance & Csizmadia, 2017) debate has focused on the question of how to ensure that all teachers are qualified and competent enough to teach computing.…”

“…The situation, we argue, is more complex. First, it is worth questioning whether the mismatch between curricular alignments and educational praxis is solely due to actual or perceived lack of competence, as teachers have successfully implemented computing education while possessing only rudimentary skills (Duncan et al, 2017). There is emerging evidence that some teachers-at least in the context of primary education-do not consider computing education relevant or meaningful in the first place and therefore intentionally neglect its provision (Larke, 2019).…”