Page 62 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education
P. 62

60
Chapter 2
education. He set up a nation-wide research group conducting research on various aspects of teaching and learning of CS in primary, secondary and tertiary education. The research topics in secondary education include programming, design-based CS education, assessment, context-based teaching and learning of fundamental concepts including algorithms, and finally, Computational Science — the research project described in this thesis. In all of the research projects mentioned here, specific attention is given to the teachers and their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK).
We consider this as a special and a beneficial situation when aiming at research- based CS curriculum development.
2.3.6 Computer Science Curriculum Reform in Primary and Lower Secondary Education
One of the recommendations of the 2013 report by The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2012) was to introduce digital literacy into the Dutch lower secondary education. The report led to the chain reaction described earlier in this chapter, thus mainly focused at what already existed in the curriculum: CS in upper secondary education. Nevertheless, both primary and secondary schools started experimenting with integrating digital literacy in their school-based curriculum. Very interesting initiatives emerged, deployed by creative and innovative teachers at primary and secondary schools. While experimenting, the question arose at schools, from teachers, students and parents: is what we are doing now aligned with the formal national curriculum? The answer to this question was: yes, but only because in this formal curriculum — outside upper secondary education — the relevant learning objectives are global and non-specific.
The somehow strange situation — where educators were asking for guidelines that did not exist — was resolved in March 2018, when the curriculum.nu project (mentioned in section 1.2) was started: design teams consisting of selected teachers and school administrators started to rethink the whole of the curriculum. One of the domains to be inspected is digital literacy. A national system for feedback was implemented in order to facilitate revision of and wide support for the vision. This project is planned to end in the fall of 2019 with an advice by the design team on how to revise the Dutch primary and secondary curriculum with respect to digital literacy. This may lead to the introduction of learning goals with respect to digital literacy in primary and lower secondary education.




























































































   60   61   62   63   64