Abstract:

The paper deals with the new concept of teaching Informatics in primary schools in the Czech Republic. The main objective is to investigate whether there is any correlation between the length of teaching practice and teachers´ subject knowledge, didactic skills, and their evaluation of school equipment within the new concept. Data were collected by the questionnaire in autumn 2022. In total, 87 teachers provided answers to 15 items. The questionnaire was distributed in one of 14 regions of the Czech Republic in all schools where pre-service teachers – students of the Faculty of Education and Faculty of Science have their teaching practice in the subject of Information and communication technologies/Informatics. Both city and rural schools were included in the sample. Twelve hypotheses were tested; they considered the relationship between the length of teaching practice against the subject knowledge or didactic skills or school equipment in four educational areas:
(1) data, information and modeling,
(2) algorithms and programming,
(3) information systems,
(4) digital technologies.
Collected data were processed by Statistica software. The results discovered a negative relationship between the length of teaching practice and school equipment in algorithms and programming. In other words, the shorter the teaching practice the teachers have, the better the equipment for teaching algorithms and programming in their school is, they think. This result (among others) can arise from a lack of subject knowledge of those teachers who have longer teaching practice but do not have the latest university qualification in Informatics.

Keywords:

Informatics, teaching practice, subject knowledge, digital skill, data, information and modeling, algorithms, programming, information systems.