Page 40 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Chapter 2
the tenth grade; that said, schools are free to decide in what grade(s) it should be
taught6.
2.2.1.3 The Computer Science Curriculum
All these considerations resulted in a curriculum that drew its inspiration from the 1994 UNESCO/IFIP curriculum (Weert & Tinsley, 1994); it was recommended that this curriculum cover four themes:
• Theme A: CS in perspective: CS should be examined from several vantage points (science and technology, society as a whole, education and career perspectives, and, finally, from a personal perspective); the result should then provide a student with a general overview. This theme was not intended to be taught on its own, but as an integral part of other themes.
• Theme B: Terminology and skills: in order to be able to develop CS skills, a student needs to acquire adequate knowledge and skills pertaining to hardware, software, organization, as well as to data and information and communication.
• Theme C: Systems and their structures concerns general information issues, various types of data processing systems, and the situations where these are normally used. It covers system theory, computer systems, real-life applications, information systems and new developments.
• Theme D: Usage in a context takes a look at practice. The study of system development and project management, including their social aspects, deals with the relationships between an “information issue” on the one hand, and the development and implementation of IT applications at all kinds of institutions, enterprises and application areas, on the other. This theme is all about letting the students themselves work with CS and IT, and encouraging the intertwining of their CS knowledge and skills with those skills acquired in other subjects in their curriculum (Hacquebard et al., 1995).
6 The secondary school where the first author taught computer science at the time, interpreted this as follows: in senior secondary education there were two weekly 45-minute lessons in the tenth and eleventh grades; in pre-university education two weekly 45-minute lessons in the eleventh grade and three in the twelfth grade
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