Page 55 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Twenty Years of Computer Science in Dutch Secondary Education
Algorithms, Advanced Object-Oriented Programming, Networks, Databases and
Information Retrieval; Media, Games and User experience; Artificial Intelligence,
and finally, Internet of Things. The courses are taught biweekly during one
semester in the form of three-hour lectures on Fridays in Utrecht, in the center
of the Netherlands, thus allowing people from all over the country to participate. 2
The admission procedure is then as follows: a candidate interested in becoming an CS teacher approaches the university of their choice where their educational background and relevant professional experience are assessed. In case the candidate is not admissible yet, a tailored plan is put together consisting of appropriate inf4all courses (and possibly other courses taught at the university itself) to be taken.
2.3.2 Curriculum Reform and Curriculum
Here we describe the events leading to the CS curriculum reform and the new curriculum itself.
2.3.2.1 The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Report (KNAW report)
Ever since the late 2000’s, in the Netherlands, just like in the international field of experts (Gander et al., 2013), several stakeholders have been expressing concerns about outdated curriculum and position of CS as a school subject in general and advocated a curriculum revision. However, the government refused to draw consequences from periodic evaluations (Schmidt, 2007) and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science maintained that there was no apparent need for a curriculum reform since there were no complaints “from the field”. In 2012, triggered by serious concerns expressed by a number of influential CS education specialists, The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (in Dutch: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, KNAW) formed a committee to investigate the situation of CS in secondary education. This committee wrote a critical report containing five recommendations aimed at improving CS education in general, reaching far beyond the scope of the current CS course. The report recommends to “Completely overhaul the optional subject CS in the upper years of HAVO and VWO” and suggests to make it modular and flexible, relevant and attractive to all students. Furthermore, it recommends to “Introduce a new compulsory subject Information & communication in the lower years of HAVO and VWO” and goes on to make recommendations about
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