Page 59 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Twenty Years of Computer Science in Dutch Secondary Education
2.3.3 The New Computer Science Curriculum
2.3.3.4 Design Principles
The new curriculum is based on a number of design principles intended
to make it modern and robust, and to cater to the needs of all those involved 2 in its use. To ensure the relevance of the new curriculum in the long term, the
curriculum committee decided to follow the so-called concept-context approach
— a pedagogical principle that was already applied to several science subjects,
for example chemistry (Bennett & Holman, 2002). The fundamental concepts
— that were described concretely — were separated from the contexts described
generically. In order to deal with the diversity of students, stemming from their
varying interest in CS, the educational track they follow (science or humanities),
and the fact that division into HAVO and VWO type of school is not always
reflected in students’ achievements for CS, it was decided to divide the curriculum
into a core curriculum that is mandatory for all students taking the CS course
and a number of elective themes. Furthermore, as many see CS as a constructive
discipline where one engages in creation of artifacts, ‘design and development’ is
positioned as a central skill in the new curriculum. Finally, in order to balance
guidance and freedom experienced by the CS teachers, the committee drafted comprehensive learning objectives: 30 of these are in the core curriculum and
the other 34 in the elective themes, thus allowing the schools to shape their CS
educations according to their preferences (Barendsen et al., 2016; Barendsen &
Tolboom, 2016).
2.3.3.5 Learning Objectives
The learning objectives of the new curriculum are organized in six compulsory domains forming the core curriculum and twelve elective themes from which a HAVO student needs to choose two and a VWO student four. The domains forming the core curriculum are: (A) Skills, (B) Foundations, (C) Information, (D) Programming, (E) Architecture, and (F) Interaction. The elective themes are: (G) Algorithms, computability and logic, (H) Databases, (I) Cognitive computing, (J) Programming paradigms, (K) Computer architecture, (L) Networks, (M) Physical computing, (N) Security, (O) Usability, (P) User Experience, (Q) Social and individual impact of CS, and (R) Computational Science (Barendsen & Tolboom, 2016). The full text of the curriculum is listed in appendix B.
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