Abstract:

An increasing number of European countries are recognizing the importance of introducing coding (or computer programming) into the education of primary and secondary students. More than 15 Europeannations had active digital competence initiatives in place as of 2014 with coding literacy making up one of the primary goals [1]. Sweden joined these countries in 2017 with its decision to introduce a national digitalization strategy for the Swedish school system which included, among other changes, the rewriting of the mathematics and technical science curricula of primary and secondary schools to include coding [2]. Presently, Swedish primary and secondary teacher education does not mandate courses in programming or digital competencies as part of a teaching degree [3], and few resources have been provided for current teachers to meet the new curriculum standards.

This paper discusses the experiences and challenges in teaching an (at present) on-going distance learning course in coding for secondary school teachers in Sweden. The learning objectives of the course include providing a certain level of coding skill as well as helping to form a didactic competency in planning and executing lesson plans which incorporate coding.

The findings are based upon a number of short on-line surveys conducted at different stages of the course, informal observation at the physical meetings of the course (there are four such meetings) and a small number of short interviews conducted in the latter part of the course.

The course and study are on-going, but some preliminary challenges include when to introduce a discussion of didactics into the course (i.e. from a practical standpoint, examples of how coding can be taught to students) and which programming language constructs to emphasize or de-emphasize in relation to their relative utility in lesson plan construction. Of additional interest is the problem of how to best organize the course to accommodate the teachers' working schedule.

References:
[1] K. E. Anja Balanskat, “Computing our future. computer programming and coding. priorities, school curricula and initiatives across
europe,” 2015. http://fcl.eun.org/documents/10180/14689/Computing+our+future%20final.pdf/746e36b1-e1a6-4bf1-8105-ea27c0d2bbe0
[2] Government of Sweden (Executive Cabinet) 2017-10-19,
https://www.regeringen.se/4a9d9a/contentassets/00b3d9118b0144f6bb95302f3e08d11c/nationell-digitaliseringsstrategi-for-skolvasendet.pdf
[3] Fredrik Heintz, Linda Mannila, Tommy Färnqvist, A review of models for introducing computational thinking, computer science and computing in K-12 education, 2016 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE) 12-15 Oct. 2016

Keywords:

Secondary school, education, coding, didactics.