Page 96 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

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Chapter 4
motivational and practical objective, and in the knowledge of assessment (M4), with preference for either product-based assessment or process-based assessment. However, our findings are not completely in line with those findings because in our case, for example, teachers 1 and 10, both leaning toward predominantly product-based assessment, require students to keep logbooks to document the modeling problems, difficulties and dead ends they encountered. On the other hand, teacher 6 would take customer’s feedback into account and teacher 7 would have his students present their work in the class, while they both lean toward predominantly process-based assessment. Unlike Rahimi et al., we were not able to typify teachers’ PCK through relating their knowledge of students’ understanding and instructional strategies on one hand, to their knowledge of goals and objectives and knowledge of assessment on the other.
Remarkably, despite the great variation of assessment criteria mentioned, there is hardly any evidence of quality indicators used to judge to what extent these criteria are met and to what extent the students are able to apply the elements of modeling to a satisfactory degree.
Limitations of the study. In this study, we charted PCK of a small group of CS teachers. However, because of the variations in their educational background, teacher qualification and teaching experience we expect that our findings are fairly typical for the population of Dutch CS teachers. This is to be confirmed in further research.
Implications for educational development. We believe that teachers would benefit not only from a course on modeling, but also from the availability of teaching materials. We are convinced that the quality of assessment — an issue attracting a lot of attention in modern CS education (Alturki, 2016) — would improve if teachers get assistance with designing assessment instruments that would take into account both product and process.
In the subsequent phases of this research project, we will use these findings when we focus on the development of teaching materials (the fourth study, see chapter 6) and assessment instrument (the third study, see chapter 5). In parallel, in-service teacher training based on these findings will be offered to interested teachers. Finally, all the participants in this study will be followed to chart the development of their PCK of Computational Science in the future — an endeavor that falls beyond the scope of this thesis.