The increased exposure to technology raises a need for understanding how the digital world works, just as we learn about the physical world. As a result, countries all over the world are renewing ...their school curricula in order to include digital competence, computer science or other similar content. In this paper, we provide insight into what teachers see as crucial aspects when implementing a new curricula introducing digital competence as a transversal element. We have analysed 86 Finnish teachers’ descriptions of digitally competent schools and digitally competent personnel, in order to identify a list of prerequisites that can be helpful to school leaders who are to drive the change at their local schools.
The aim of this article is to broadly elaborate on how programming can be understood as a new teaching scope in preschools, focusing specifically on debugging as one of the phases involved in ...learning to program. The research question How can debugging as part of teaching and learning programming be understood as multimodal learning? has guided the analysis and the presentation of the data. In this study, and its analysis process, we have combined a multimodal understanding of teaching and learning practices with understandings of programming and how it is practiced. Consequently, the multidisciplinary approach in this study, combining theories from social sciences with theories and concepts from computer science, is central throughout the article. This is therefore also a creative, explorative process as there are no clear norms to follow when conducting multidisciplinary analyses. The data consist of video recordings of teaching sessions with children and a teacher engaged in programming activities. The video material was recorded in a preschool setting during the school year 2017–2018 and consists of 25 sessions of programming activities with children, who were four or five years old. The results show how debugging in early childhood education is a multimodal activity socially established by use of speech, pointing and gaze. Our findings also indicate that artefacts are central to learning debugging, and a term ‘instructional artefacts’ is therefore added. Finally, the material shows how basic programming concepts and principles can be explored with young children.
Teachers around the world have started teaching programming at the K-9 level, some due to the formal introduction of programming in the national curriculum, others without such pressure and on their ...own initiative. In this study, we attempted to understand which skills - both CT-related and general - are developed among pupils in the process of working with programming in schools. To do so, we interviewed 19 Swedish teachers who had been teaching programming for a couple of years on their own initiative. The teachers were selected based on their experience in teaching programming. Our thematic analysis of these interviews shed light on what skills teachers perceive pupils develop when programming. This led us to identify three themes related to CT skills and five themes related to general skills. The CT skills identified corresponded well with and were thus thematically structured according to the dimensions of CT proposed in the framework of Brennan and Resnick, namely computational concepts, computational practices and computational perspectives. In addition to the CT skills, our thematic analysis also resulted in the identification of general skills related to digital competency and 21st century skills, namely cognitive skills and attitudes, language skills, collaborative skills and attitudes and creative problem-solving skills and attitudes.
For education to provide knowledge reflecting our current and future society, many countries are revising their curricula, including a vivid discussion on digital competence, programming and ...computational thinking. This article builds an understanding of the maker movement in relation to education in programming, by demonstrating challenges and possibilities in the interface between Makerspaces and teacher education. Three different Nordic initiatives are presented and their designs for learning are analysed. The article illustrates how Makerspaces and teacher education can be transformed by each other; how Makerspaces can be used in programming activities and what challenges and possibilities emerge in the meeting between the two. The results highlight a core aspect of the maker movement: authenticity. Designs for learning have different levels of authenticity, but in all cases authenticity has been a positive factor. These hands-on learning environments are designed to foster collaboration, share ideas and innovation with people from different backgrounds to transform and form multimodal representations together. In the interface between the formal and informal a potential for inclusion and creation of spaces that reach individuals from different backgrounds is found. Mobile learning is a phenomenon that the making movement together with teacher education can make use of, at for example practice schools, university campuses, mobile Makerspaces or "open-door"-approaches. In the digital environment learning is distributed, but collaboration between formal and informal education is so far complicated to establish, meaning that the academy needs to find more creative and flexible ways of making connections outside the academy.
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