Page 121 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Assessment of Modeling and Simulation
hands-on approach and leading to higher professional education and are often
described as thinking actors (Barendsen & Tolboom, 2016), which could explain
why there is no significant difference in their performance levels — compared
to those of the VWO students — when designing and implementing models.
The VWO students — often described as acting thinkers (Barendsen & Tolboom,
2016) — prepare for universities in an educational setting embracing a scientific
frame of mind and it is not surprising that they significantly outperform HAVO
students when validating their models and using them to conduct research — i.e.
perform experiments, analyze results and draw conclusion. Therefore, we want
to encourage teachers using this instrument to put more emphasis on the aspects
of the modeling process related to the specific needs of their students. Arguably,
for the HAVO students it might be more important to get a clear picture of the phenomenon being modelled and focus on the development — or possibly only enhancement — of a model, while for the VWO students, with the whole of their
education emphasizing the scientific attitude, it might be more important to view
a model as a vehicle to engage in scientific research and develop and use it as
such. In order to cater to their needs, we repeat our recommendation to further 5 sharpen the instruction about experimentation and data analysis (Grgurina et al.,
2016) and add a suggestion to actively coach students in the first phases of their modeling projects when stating the case and research question and performing the accompanying research.
In conclusion, our assessment instrument in the form of a practical assignment and accompanying rubrics based on the SOLO taxonomy proved to be reliable, as indicated by a high rate of inter-rater agreement. Its validity is corroborated by exposing the significant differences in the performance levels of the HAVO students compared to the VWO students: as expected, the performance levels of the VWO students were significantly higher for almost all the criteria.
The results of this study exposed the needs of specific groups of students to receive instruction prior to and during their work on the assignments, and they informed us about the shortcomings in the curriculum intervention. All of these findings will contribute to the further refinement of the instrument itself, to the development of the teaching materials — an effort that will be reported elsewhere — and to the development of the CS curriculum in secondary education in the Netherlands, CS teacher training and CS education in general.
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