Page 45 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Twenty Years of Computer Science in Dutch Secondary Education
Course ECTS
Orientation on CS 3,5
Computer Architecture and Operating Systems 0,7
Visual Programming with Java 5,7
Information Systems: Modeling and Specifying 5
Databases 0,7 2 Telematics 3,5
Software Engineering 5 Human-Machine Interaction 1,4 Programming Paradigms and Methods of Information System Development 1,4 Didactics of CS 5,7 CS Projects 2,8 Practical Teaching Assignment 10
Table 1: CODI program
For a description of this curriculum from the perspective of the practice of teaching, see Dirks and Tolboom (2000). In 2005, CODI was dismantled leaving a void since no other way was set up to train and license CS teachers. As of 2006, five universities in the Netherlands offer secondary school CS teacher education as a Master’s degree program.
2.2.2 The First Decade of Teaching Computer Science
With all these various objectives, points of view, considerations, recommendations, as well as the curriculum itself in mind, one question arises: how does this all work in practice?
CS education has been monitored from the very outset in 1998, and there have been five detailed reports describing the resulting state of affairs (Hartsuijker et al., 2003; Hartsuijker, Kuipers, et al., 2001; Hartsuijker, M.A.G, et al., 2001; Hartsuijker & Westland, 2004; Schmidt, 2007). Other than these reports, there has been no significant scientific research into any of the aspects of CS education in secondary education in the Netherlands.
In the Netherlands, not all schools offer the CS course. During the period 2002-2006, out of about 474 independent schools, the percentage of schools that do offer CS has remained fairly constant at around sixty percent. There are indications that since 2007, this percentage has been rising (Schmidt, 2007). During the CODI era, 369 candidate CS teachers began their studies, and 336 (91%) graduated (Zwaneveld et al., 2007).
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