Page 16 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

14
Chapter 1
To meet these needs, computer science is taught worldwide in K-12 education in many various forms in an increasing number of countries. In some cases, as an independent subject, either as a compulsory subject or as an elective, and in other cases integrated in other school subjects. Furthermore, as various as the motives are to teach it, so are the interpretations of what is understood under CS. In our view, CS — often referred to as informatics or computing science as well— is the discipline dealing with scientific and mathematical approach to information processing and computation, and design of computing machines. However, when it comes to teaching CS, as we will see from several examples below, the interpretations of what is understood to be CS vary greatly. CS is considered to be about the scientific discipline — in line with our definition, or about digital and computer literacy; or about computational thinking, information and communication technologies; or about a combination of these (Guerra et al., 2012).
Illustrative are the examples of countries with various forms of CS education.
Many East European countries introduced CS into secondary schools in the 1980’s. The aims of teaching CS and the curriculum evolved greatly since then. For example, in the current Lithuanian curriculum, CS is a compulsory subject in grades 5 - 10 and its focus lies on digital and computer literacy. Additionally, there are elective courses on algorithms and programming in the higher grades of secondary school (Dagienė & Stupuriene, 2016b).
In Croatia, a lot has changed since the 1980’s with first programing lessons in BASIC and Pascal on the four computers available in a progressive school specializing in math and computer science. In 2016, an expert group proposed a new comprehensive CS curriculum spanning all grades of primary and secondary education and covering four domains: information and digital technologies, computational thinking and programming, digital literacy and communication, and finally, e-society (Brodjanac et al., 2016).
In Denmark, CS was a secondary school subject since the late 1960’s. As in other countries, it evolved greatly since then, and in the current secondary school curriculum, first implemented in 2011, its content is described through seven knowledge areas: importance and impact, application architecture, digitization, programming and programmability, abstraction and modeling, interaction design, and finally, innovation (Caspersen & Nowack, 2013a). In 2016, CS entered all Danish secondary schools, as a compulsory subject in certain types of secondary schools and as elective in others. A year later, primary schools followed with CS