research-article

Experiences of prospective high school teachers using a programming teaching tool

Authors:

Louis Major,

Theocharis Kyriacou,

Pearl BreretonAuthors Info & Claims

Koli Calling '11: Proceedings of the 11th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

Pages 126 - 131

https://doi.org/10.1145/2094131.2094161

Published: 17 November 2011 Publication History

Get Access

Abstract

During their time at school few high school students are exposed to basic computing concepts as Computer Science (CS) is not considered to be an important part of the curriculum. As a result many high school students do not encounter programming during their studies. In the UK, despite newly qualified CS and ICT (Information and Communication Technology) teachers having specific subject knowledge, in recent years schools have steadily 'watered down' the content of CS courses and have aligned the subject with disciplines such as Business Studies. This has distanced Computing from the other sciences whilst adding to students' confusion about what the subject actually entails. This paper presents the results of a study which involved 23 trainee CS/ICT teachers. The study took the form of a day-long workshop session and had the objectives of determining what perceptions and opinions the trainee teachers held in regards to programming as well as to discover the effectiveness and potential of a programming teaching tool based on the concept of a robot simulator. Analysis of data collected during the session shows how, despite the majority of trainees having some programming experience, a number of trainees had difficulty completing basic programming challenges. This displays how some CS/ICT teachers may lack fundamental programming knowledge. Moreover, whilst most of the trainees felt programming should be taught to high school students studying a CS or ICT course, fewer than half of the trainees said they had the confidence to teach the subject. An evaluation of the effectiveness of the robot simulator as a teaching tool is also presented as is a discussion on the implications which these findings may have.

References

[1]

Drummond, Sarah Anne. 2009. Investigating the Impact of Entry Qualifications on Student Performance in Computing Programmes at Undergraduate Level. Doctoral Thesis, Durham University. Available: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/154/ (Accessed 21/04/2011).

Google Scholar

[2]

Carter, L. 2006. Why Students with an Apparent Aptitude for Computer Science Don't Choose to Major in Computer Science. In 37th SIGCSE (Houston, Texas, USA, March 01--05, 2006). SIGCSE '06. ACM.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[3]

Govender, I. and Grayson D. J. 2007. Pre-service and in-service teachers' experiences of learning to program in an object-oriented language. Comput. Educ. 51, 2 (September 2008), 874--885.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[4]

Council of Professors and Heads of Computing. 2006. Investigation into the decline in BSc Computing/IT Applications to British Universities. CPHC. Available: http://www.cphc.ac.uk/publications (Accessed 15/04/2011).

Google Scholar

[5]

Clear, T. and Bidois, G. 2005. Fluency in Information Technology -- FITNZ: An ICT Curriculum Meta-Framework for New Zealand High Schools. Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology. 3, 3 (December 2005). ISSN 1176-4120.

Google Scholar

[6]

The Training and Development Agency for Schools. 2011. Available: http://www.tda.gov.uk/get-into-teaching/teacher-training-options/pgce (Accessed 19/04/2011).

Google Scholar

[7]

Cutts, Q. I., Brown, M. I., Kemp, L. and Matheson, C. 2007. Enthusing and Informing Potential Computer Science Students and their Teachers. In 12th SIGCSE (Dundee, Scotland, UK, June 25--27, 2007). ITiCSE '07. ACM.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[8]

Robins, A., Rountree, J. and Rountree, N. 2003. Learning and Teaching Programming: A Review and Discussion. Comp. Sci. Education. 13, 2, 137--172. Swets & Zeitlinger.

Crossref

Google Scholar

[9]

Ladd, B. and Harcourt, E. 2005. Student competitions and bots in an introductory programming course. J. Comput. Small Coll. 20, 5 (May 2005), 274--284.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[10]

Major, L., Kyriacou, T. and Brereton, O. P. Systematic Literature Review: Teaching Novices Programming Using Robots. In 15th International Conference on Evaluation and Assessment in Software Engineering (Durham University, UK, April 11--12, 2011). EASE 2011. IET.

Google Scholar

[11]

Dagdilelis, V., Satratzemi, M and Evangelidis, G. 2004. Introducing Secondary Education Students to Algorithims and Programming. Education and Information Technologies. 9, 2, 159--173. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Digital Library

Google Scholar

[12]

Major, L., Kyriacou, T. and Brereton, P. Simulated Robotic Agents As Tools To Teach Introductory Programming. In INTED 2011 (Valencia, Spain, March 7--9, 2011). INTED 2011. pp. 3837--3846. ISBN 978-84-614-7423-3.

Google Scholar

Cited By

View all

Alasmari OSinger JAda M(2024)Analysis of Research into the Teaching and Learning of Programming: An Updated Review2024 9th International STEM Education Conference (iSTEM-Ed)10.1109/iSTEM-Ed62750.2024.10663138(1-6)Online publication date: 31-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/iSTEM-Ed62750.2024.10663138
Quintero NAhtinen A(2023)University Language Instructors Programming Robotic Learning Applications: Design and implementation of encouraging programming workshop experiencesProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction10.1145/3623809.3623870(171-179)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623809.3623870
Schina DEsteve-González VUsart M(2020)An overview of teacher training programs in educational robotics: characteristics, best practices and recommendationsEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-020-10377-zOnline publication date: 16-Nov-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10377-z
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Experiences of prospective high school teachers using a programming teaching tool

Recommendations

An Electrical Engineering Summer Academy for Middle School and High School Students

An Electrical Engineering Summer Academy for Pre-College Students was held at the University of Tulsa, Tulsa, OK, during the summers of 2007 and 2008. The Academy participants included students having just completed 7th to 11th grade and teachers from ...
Technology workshops by in-service teachers for pre-service teachers
SIGUCCS '01: Proceedings of the 29th annual ACM SIGUCCS conference on User services

This project was an initiative through university courses to have graduate in-service teachers, who have learned the use of technology for classroom instruction, offer workshops to undergraduate pre-service teachers. The goals of the project were two-...
High school computing clubs: a pilot study
ITICSE '06: Proceedings of the 11th annual SIGCSE conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education

While classes in IT skills are endemic, high school students in the UK rarely experience computer science. We present a pilot of a scheme that aims to go some way towards addressing this. Specifically, computing clubs were run on high school premises by ...

Comments

Please enable JavaScript to view thecomments powered by Disqus.

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

Koli Calling '11: Proceedings of the 11th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

November 2011

149 pages

ISBN:9781450310529

DOI:10.1145/2094131

Conference Chairs:
Ari Korhonen
Aalto University
,
Robert McCartney
University of Connecticut

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

In-Cooperation

SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 17 November 2011

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Request Permissions

Check for updates

Author Tags

Qualifiers

Research-article

Conference

Koli Calling '11

Sponsor:

Koli Calling '11: 11th Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research

November 17 - 20, 2011

Koli, Finland

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 80 of 182 submissions, 44%

Contributors

Other Metrics

View Article Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

6
Total Citations
View Citations
333
Total Downloads

Downloads (Last 12 months)9
Downloads (Last 6 weeks)1

Reflects downloads up to 19 Nov 2024

Other Metrics

View Author Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all

Alasmari OSinger JAda M(2024)Analysis of Research into the Teaching and Learning of Programming: An Updated Review2024 9th International STEM Education Conference (iSTEM-Ed)10.1109/iSTEM-Ed62750.2024.10663138(1-6)Online publication date: 31-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1109/iSTEM-Ed62750.2024.10663138
Quintero NAhtinen A(2023)University Language Instructors Programming Robotic Learning Applications: Design and implementation of encouraging programming workshop experiencesProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction10.1145/3623809.3623870(171-179)Online publication date: 4-Dec-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3623809.3623870
Schina DEsteve-González VUsart M(2020)An overview of teacher training programs in educational robotics: characteristics, best practices and recommendationsEducation and Information Technologies10.1007/s10639-020-10377-zOnline publication date: 16-Nov-2020
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10377-z
Barik AKhatua SNikam RPal SGohil P(2019)Scope of Implementing Humanoid Robots at Educational Institutes in India’s Perspective2019 5th International Conference On Computing, Communication, Control And Automation (ICCUBEA)10.1109/ICCUBEA47591.2019.9128886(1-6)Online publication date: Sep-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICCUBEA47591.2019.9128886
Major LKyriacou TBrereton P(2014)The effectiveness of simulated robots for supporting the learning of introductory programming: a multi-case case studyComputer Science Education10.1080/08993408.2014.96336224:2-3(193-228)Online publication date: 30-Sep-2014
https://doi.org/10.1080/08993408.2014.963362
Black JBrodie JCurzon PMyketiak CMcOwan PMeagher LCarter JUtting IClear A(2013)Making computing interesting to school studentsProceedings of the 18th ACM conference on Innovation and technology in computer science education10.1145/2462476.2466519(255-260)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2013
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2462476.2466519
Major LKyriacou TBrereton O(2012)Systematic literature review: teaching novices programming using robotsIET Software10.1049/iet-sen.2011.01256:6(502)Online publication date: 2012
https://doi.org/10.1049/iet-sen.2011.0125

View Options

Login options

Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

Cited By

Index Terms

Recommendations

An Electrical Engineering Summer Academy for Middle School and High School Students

Technology workshops by in-service teachers for pre-service teachers

High school computing clubs: a pilot study