Changing Computer Programming Education; The Dinosaur that Survived in School

An explorative study about educational issues based on teachers’ beliefs and curriculum development in secondary school

Lennart Rolandsson Education and Communication in Engineering Science

Royal Institute of Technology, KTH Stockholm, Sweden

According to teachers, the computer programming education dependence on students’ logical and analytical abilities (even before the course starts). A majority of teachers also perceive their pedagogy as non-sufficient for students’ learning. The paper unravels two types of instruction at upper secondary school; one which emphasizes individual work with programming languages assisted by a teacher, and one which emphasizes students’ experiences of learning concepts. Two types of instruction that corresponds to the existence of two groups of teachers during the 1980s; the defenders who perceived learning as based on repeating sequences in a behavioristic manner, and partisans who perceived learning as based on discovery and self-teaching. The paper suggests that instructional design has remained the same, since the beginning of the 1970s, which could be the rationales for the difficulties in learning and teaching computer programming.

Keywords—education, teachers, beliefs, curriculum, upper secondary school.

I. INTRODUCTION For educational purposes specific programming languages

(e.g. Pascal, Basic, Logo, Python and Racket) and environments (e.g. BBC Micro, Alice, Kodu, BlueJ, Arduino and Raspberry Pi) are successively released and suggested as useful for teaching and learning of computer science. However, programming skills remain difficult, in a school context, to teach and learn. The paper discuss a possible rational for that difficulty, found in teachers’ instruction and beliefs. The approach is motivated by research [1][2] which explicitly state that educational reforms hardly becomes successful if teachers’ beliefs are not taken into account.

A. Instruction does not change while computer technology and currciulum change In Sweden a new curriculum is released almost every tenth

year which makes content in curriculum old at the end of such a decade. Any revisions of curriculum documents (regardless of frequency) imply that teachers therefore become constrained by technology and the considerations at the time when prevalent curriculum was established.

A report [3] published two years ago by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), “Running On Empty”, pictures a crisis in computer science for the K-12 education. According to Wilson there seems to be a “move away from physical hardware and computer programming towards the application of computers in real-world situations and the use of generic software packages to solve problems” [4, p.190]. The movement is not new, as it happened in Sweden before during the 1980s (See section IV in this paper, under the historical part). A rational for such a move, away from computer science to computer applications, could be found in a non-appropriate in-service or pre-service training for teachers [3][5][6].

The changing educational framework (curriculum revisions and political agendas for literacy) together with the rapid development of technology makes teaching programming a challenging task [7]. Teachers are expected to acquire knowledge in new languages/environments and transform knowledge to offer content with appropriate instruction. However, there are research from the 1980s [8], 1990s [9] and 2000s [10][11] which indicates all together that new educational environments, new educational programming languages and the introduction of new curriculum have had minor or none influence on instruction offered in programming education.

II. PURPOSE AND RESEARCH QUESTION Over the last 40 years, the content of computer

programming has transformed into school. During these years instruction has hardly changed, while computer technology and curriculum have changed. It is therefore important to question whether computer programming courses is teachable for all students without a proper implementation which involves teachers re-thinking.

It is assumed that teachers in computer programming do not reflect upon students’ experiences while using tools, programming languages and development environments in class. Technicalities and syntax therefore come to the fore in education [12][8][7], which according to Cuban [13][14] and Pedersen [15] raises important questions about the implicit technological determinism within computer science education.

2013 Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering

978-0-7695-4960-6/13 $26.00 © 2013 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/LaTiCE.2013.47

220

2013 Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering

978-0-7695-4960-6/13 $26.00 © 2013 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/LaTiCE.2013.47

220

The paper explores teachers’ instruction and beliefs from teachers’ perspective, with the question: How do computer programming teachers perceive possibilities and problems in education?

III. METHODOLOGY The paper combines two perspectives; a historical and

today’s teacher perspective. The methodologies in these two perspectives differ accordingly while the historical perspective is the outcome of interviews and documents preserved in national archives, and today’s teacher perspective is the outcome of four seminars and questionnaires/narratives offered in association to these seminars. The characteristics of computer programming education in Sweden are focused but since the situation in Sweden is not unique, the outcome is believed to be of interest in an international context. The paper is based on the work done in a licentiate thesis [16] which describes the work in details. What follows is a short resume of that work.

A. Historical documents and interviews with key persons A specific concern has been dedicated to understand on

what arena/level and by whom Swedish informatics curriculum was processed for the first time in school. Historical documents from archives that depict the curriculum development process were scanned and compiled to digital volumes to study the interaction between and within different groups at National Board of Education (NBE) and upper secondary schools.

Actors involved in the curriculum development process were identified and interviewed if still alive; more than ten interviews were conducted and notes were taken. Resources (proposals, government bills, decrees, submissions, reports and written communications) from the governmental library, Riksdagen Library in-house and on-line, have been studied to understand in what way Ministry of Education (ME) was engaged in the development process or if the lived curriculum was mainly discovered from teachers’ experience in class.

B. Questionnaires and Seminars for today’s teachers Questionnaires were considered a proper choice of

instrument to picture the mind-set of different beliefs in today’s teachers’ cohort. The design of three questionnaires became a result of the major questionnaire as the seminars became important for a better understanding of teachers’ practice and computer programming education in upper secondary school.

The major questionnaire (one of four) with open-ended questions was sent to 250 teachers nationwide, to picture the mindset of 1) what it is like to teach in programming, 2) understand teachers’ interest to participate in in-service training seminars and/or 3) collaborate in networks. It was designed to unravel the teachers’ perception in relation to four domains; programming/programming languages, education, learning and establishment of networks. The major questionnaire became crucial while the following three questionnaires and associate seminars draw from its outcome, to unravel specific themes in the consecutive three seminars.

IV. RESULTS

A. History of curriculum development Experimental work with curriculum was initiated in

Sweden in mid-1970s. A contemporary post gymnasium programme in automatic data processing (ADP) was used as a blueprint in the early stages of curriculum development process for upper secondary school.

The new subject matter had to embrace system development, while it was believed to offer a societal experience of computer programming. From this original setting enthusiastic teachers, in particular teachers within Natural Sciences and Mathematics, taught the subject. There existed an incitement of major significance where knowledge in computer programming and algorithm construction, was believed to offer personal development of logical and analytical abilities for problem solving.

However practice in school context revealed computer programming as problematic while, students experienced it hard to learn, and teachers experienced it time consuming to teach. During the 1980s software evolved to such an extent that self-developed software and computer programming was questioned among teachers themselves and gradually replaced in curriculum with specific languages (PROLOG), expert systems (EXCEL) and computer application which enhance problem solving and logical thinking.

Later in the 1990s computer programming was offered under its own label. Interest from industry brought forward the new curriculum in programming and was offered for students in vocational programmes at upper secondary school. Later in the 2000s the computer programming curriculum was offered as electable for all students.

B. Can all students learn programming? The major questionnaire was answered by 103 upper

secondary teachers, whereof a majority had academicals degree. One of the questions in the questionnaire “Do you think that all students can learn programming?” revealed that teachers in general depend on students’ logical and analytical abilities for successful learning. The following quotes mirrors two strands , as yes- and no teachers.

The yes- teachers wrote

“Yes, anybody can learn whatever they like. It is just a matter of time”

“Yes, but there could be a need to work differently as a teacher with different methods to make the students understand programming. That does not necessarily need to be with the help of an editor.”

The no-teachers wrote

”Anybody can learn the basics of programming. Though all students don’t have the interest or motivation … to delve into [programming]. In my experience, programming is not meant for everybody. The reason could be the lack of an analytical

221221

vein, and the fact that the threshold before programming gets interesting is quite high (as in mathematics and physics).

“No, everybody does not have the ability to think logically or the diligence and the interest that is needed to learn programming.”

“Anybody can learn to some extent, but without patience, an analytical ability and an ability to work systematically it seems hard to become a good programmer.”

Based on these quotes and others, a dichotomy was constructed with teachers who think that any student can learn programming and who claim the opposite. Further inductive analysis [17] of the responses in these two strands, revealed that students’ learning is understood as conditional, based on four themes where teaching and learning of programming is a question of:

• students’ individual time with code,

• teachers’ pedagogy,

• students’ abilities and

• students’ interest and motivation.

The first theme considers students’ individual learning as dependent on time invested in reading and writing code. The second theme concerns teachers’ perception of the importance of their instruction or improved pedagogy. The third theme, student’s abilities, is perhaps the most compelling theme, while it suggests the importance of specific prerequisites among students for teaching and learning programming. The paper will focus on two out of four themes; teachers’ beliefs in pedagogy and students’ abilities.

C. Teachers’ pedagogy Teachers’ pedagogy for enhanced learning was brought

forward during all four seminars with intentions for teachers to express their pedagogical ambitions. The outcome of that work and associate questionnaires/narratives unfolds that teachers perceive their pedagogy offers minimal impact on students’ learning. The phenomenon is underlined by Pears et al. [18] and Nuthall [19] where teachers perceive their teaching of minor importance for students’ learning processes.

D. Students’ abilities The analysis exposed high teacher expectations of

students’ logical and analytical abilities before and after the course. The result is astonishing while the historical perspective in this paper has found these abilities as the original incitement to offer programming in upper secondary school. These expectations would probably lead to exclusion.

E. Two groups of teachers The questionnaires and narratives from the final seminar

brought forward the existence of two groups of teachers; a major group of scaffolding tutoring teachers and a minor group of teachers engaged in instructional design for experience of

learning (not necessarily with syntax). Boulton-Lewis et al. [20] suggests a similar distinction to these two instructional strands, with teaching for development of skills/understanding and teaching for facilitation of understanding.

V. DISCUSSION The political intentions to offer computer programming in

Swedish upper secondary school has changed from vocational purposes to a subject matter in a three-step process: 1) supply industry, with programming professionals during the 1960s, 2) to offer a pragmatic alignment for natural science students during the 1980s, and 3) today’s electable courses for any student with interest to learn. However, instruction and teachers’ beliefs remain the same. During a time-span of almost 40 years, the instructional pattern seems to survive over the years [21][9][10][11], which could be a consequence of the implicit determinism in computer science education [13][14][15] and non-sufficient in-service or pre-service training in content as well as pedagogical content knowledge.

During analysis it was noticed that teachers’ used the words logic and analytic interchangeably. Teachers’ intention and use of these words therefore needs further investigation. A forthcoming research will investigate how laboratory work relates to teachers’ intention and epistemology.

The discovery of two existent teacher groups, unraveled in the paper, could be identified as the incarnation of the defenders and partisans from the 1980s; the defenders of programmed teaching and the partisans of learning through discovery and self-teaching [22 in 23]. In the spirit of behaviorism the defenders perceived programmed teaching as an effective learning tool through repeated sequences [24]. In the spirit of constructionism the partisans advocated learning through discovery as a way of supporting children’s own knowledge building [25]. The paper unfolds the existence of these two groups among today’s teachers.

VI. CONCLUSIONS The paper suggests based on former work [12] that

teachers’ beliefs in relation to students’ learning is problematic. Two beliefs have been found as specific for education in computer programming at upper secondary school.

• Teachers commonly perceive education as dependent on students’ logical and analytical abilities.

• Teachers perceive their pedagogy as non-sufficient for students’ learning.

If almost 40 years has entailed minimal change in instructional design, it could accordingly be the rationales for the difficulties implicit in learning and teaching computer programing. Further investigation is needed though to unravel if the phenomenon is specific for computer programming teachers.

REFERENCES [1] K. Trigwell, M. Prosser and P. Taylor. Qualitative differences in

approaches to teaching first year university science. Higher Education, vol. 27, 1994.

222222

[2] J. H. van Driel and N. Verloop. The relationships between teachers’ general beliefs about teaching and learning and ther domain specific curricular beliefs. Learning and Instruction, vol 17, pp. 156-171, 2007.

[3] Wilson, Cameron, Leigh Ann Sudol, Chris Stephenson, and Mark Stehlik, Running on Empty: The failure to teach K-12 Computer Science in the digital age,”Technical report, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), 2010.

[4] John, Woollard, The Implications of the Pedagogic Metaphor for Teacher Education in Computing, Technology, Pedagogy and Education, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 189–204, 2005

[5] Seehorn, D. et al. 2011. CSTA K–12 Computer Science Standards Revised 2011. Computer Science Teachers Association Association for Computing Machinery.

[6] Steve Furbe. Shut down or restart-the way forward for computing in UK schools, The Royal Society, 2012. Retrieved 2013-02-03 from royal.society.org/education/policy

[7] Bruria Haberman, Teaching computing in secondary schools in a dynamic world: Challenges and directions, Vol. LNCS: 4226 of Informatics Education - The Bridge between Using and Understanding Computers International Conference on Informatics in Secondary Schools – Evolution and Perspectives, ISSEP2006, pp. 94–103: Springer, 2006 .

[8] K. D. Sloane and C. Linn, Instructional Conditions in Pascal Programming Classes, pp. 207–235, Teaching and learning computer programming: multiple research perspectives: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 1988.

[9] Marcia C. Linn and Michael J. Clancy, The case for case studies of programming problems,” Communications of the ACM, Vol. 35, No. 3, pp. 121–132, 1992.

[10] J. Ana Donaldson and Nancy Nelson Knupfer, Education, Learning, and Technology, Designing instruction for technology-enhanced learning, Hershey,PA: Idea Group Pub, 2001.

[11] D. Gries, What Have We Not Learned about Teaching Programming? Computer, Vol. 39, No. 10, pp. 81–82, 2006.

[12] W. J. Pelgrum, Obstacles to the integration of ICT in education: results from a worldwide educational assessment, Computers & Education, vol. 37, pp.163–178, 2001.

[13] Larry Cuban,Teachers and machines : the classroom use of technology since 1920, New York: Teachers college Press, 1986.

[14] Larry Cuban, Oversold and underused : computers in the classroom, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001.

[15] Jens Pedersen, Technological determinism and the school,” Journal of Educational Enquiry, Vol. 2, No. 1, p. 61, 2001.

[16] L. Rolandsson. Changing computer programming education; the dinosaur that survived in school. Licentiate thesis, Stockholm: KTH. 2012.

[17] Miles, M. B., & Huberman, A. M. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook. Beverly Hills, California: Sage Publications.

[18] Arnold, Pears, Anders Berglund, Anna Eckerdal, P. East, P. Kinnunen, Lauri Malmi, and et al., What’s the problem? Teachers’ experience of student learning successes and failures.,” in Raymond Lister and Simon eds. Seventh Baltic Sea Conference on Computing Education Research (Koli Calling 2007), Vol. 88 of CRPIT, pp. 207–211, 2007.

[19] Graham Nuthall, Relating classroom teaching to student learning: A critical analysis of why reseacrh has failed to bridge the theory-practice gap,” Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 74, No. 3, pp. 273–306, 2004.

[20] G. M. Boulton-Lewis, D. J. H. Smith, A. R. McCrindle, P. C. Burnett, and K. J. Campbell, Secondary teachers’ conceptions of teaching and learning, Learning and Instruction, Vol. 11, p. 35–51, 2001,

[21] [21x]A. McGettrick, , R. Boyle, R. Ibbett, J. Lloyd, G. Lovegrove, and K. Mander,Grand Challenges in Computing: Education–A Summary,” The Computer Journal, Vol. 48, pp. 42–48, 2005.

[22] C. Solomon, Computer Environments for Children: A Reflection on Theories of Learning and Education: MIT Press, 1986.

[23] Patrick Mendelsohn, T. R. G. Green, and Paul Brna, Programming Languages in Education: The Search for an Easy Start, Psychology of programming, London: Academic press, 1990.

[24] P. Suppes, Current trends in computer-assisted instruction, Advances in Computers, vol 18, New York: Academic Press, 1979.

[25] Seymour Papert, New Cultures from New Technologies, BYTE, Vol.September, pp. 230–240, journal: Byte, 1980.

223223