Page 30 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education
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Chapter 1
school curriculum, the objectives of this course and the intended assessment. Furthermore, the in-service teacher training for the first ever CS teachers is described together with their experiences and practices in teaching this new subject. The first part of the chapter concludes with the discussion of the many challenges and concerns faced by computer science in secondary education in the Netherlands during its first decade. The second part of this chapter describes the second decade of the computer science course in secondary schools in the Netherlands. It describes the events and processes that led to the renewal of the curriculum for this course, the curriculum itself with the principles it is based on and its aims, the current process of the teaching material development, the related research, the teacher training, curriculum reform in primary and lower secondary education, and the current situation of computer science as an upper secondary school subject, together with the challenges it still faces. This chapter is based on the articles The First Decade of Informatics in Dutch High Schools (Grgurina & Tolboom, 2008) and The Second Decade of Informatics in Dutch Secondary Education (Grgurina, Tolboom, et al., 2018).
Chapter 3 zooms in on modeling and simulation. Under the name Computational Science, modeling and simulation is included as an elective theme in the new 2019 Dutch secondary school computer science curriculum. This chapter is primarily devoted to answering our first research question related to Magnusson’s component M1: What computational thinking activities constitute the problem-solving process associated with Computational Science? It presents our first study that focuses on establishing an operational description of the intended learning outcomes of Computational Science describing the activities a student engages in when exploring a phenomenon of their choice through modeling and simulation. Furthermore, it reports what data sources are found to be suitable to monitor students’ learning outcomes when engaging in modeling activities — Magnusson’s component M4 — thus setting the stage to answer our third research question: What are characteristics of a valid and reliable assessment instrument for Computational Science? Finally, this chapter explores what specific challenges do the students experience when engaging in modeling activities — Magnusson’s component M2 — thus touching upon our second research question: How can the students’ understanding of modeling activities be portrayed in terms of their requirements for learning and difficulties they encounter? This chapter is based on the paper Defining and Observing Modeling and Simulation in Informatics (Grgurina et al., 2016)































































































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