Informatics in schools is in a different situation in each country, whether barely present or fully integrated into a national curriculum. In this position paper we discuss the reasons ("why") behind teaching informatics to all students ("who"), the shape that this should take ("what"), and offer case studies of two countries that have implemented it in differing ways (and to differing extents): England and Denmark, including "how" they initiated this change. We find that although England has been successful at introducing informatics at all ages, it is very programming focused. Denmark offers a more rounded curriculum suitable for all students, but progress has been slow at implementing it nationwide. Important issues of equity remain unsolved and overlooked, especially around special educational needs and disabilities.

research-article Share on Informatics Education for School: A European Initiative Authors: Michael Caspersen It-vest networking universities and Aarhus University, Denmark It-vest networking universities and Aarhus University, DenmarkView Profile , Judith Gal-Ezer Open University of Israel, Israel Open University of Israel, IsraelView Profile , Andrew McGettrick Strathclyde University, Glasgow, UK Strathclyde University, Glasgow, UKView Profile , Enrico Nardelli Vergata University of Rome, Italy Vergata University of Rome, ItalyView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM InroadsVolume 14Issue 1March 2023pp 49–53https://doi.org/10.1145/3583088Published:21 February 2023Publication History 0citation79DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads79Last 12 Months79Last 6 weeks6 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Computing education is becoming increasingly important in high schools. Computational modelling is important in computing and many sciences, but there is a lack of research on how teachers should teach computational modelling in high schools. This study was a design-based research study with 86 teachers teaching 12 different subjects at 44 Danish high schools. The study aimed to develop a template to help design and classify didactical questions on computational modelling. Teachers participated in one of two courses on computational modelling. The intervention group (Prog+) included an introduction to agent-based modelling and programming in NetLogo. The comparison group (Prog-) included a general introduction to agent-based modelling. A template consisting of 16 modelling parameters was developed with teachers. Results showed that the template was helpful for teachers to design didactical questions and for the research team to classify the taxonomical levels of these questions. A total of 51 teaching activities were developed by teachers and didactical questions were derived. The strength of this design based research study was that it included a control group and inspired teachers to design and evaluate didactical questions in computational modelling in a wide range of high school subjects. Future studies are needed to evaluate the validity of the template.

The recent advent of highly accurate and scalable large language models (LLMs) has taken the world by storm. From art to essays to computer code, LLMs are producing novel content that until recently was thought only humans could produce. Recent work in computing education has sought to understand the capabilities of LLMs for solving tasks such as writing code, explaining code, creating novel coding assignments, interpreting programming error messages, and more. However, these technologies continue to evolve at an astonishing rate leaving educators little time to adapt. This working group seeks to document the state-of-the-art for code generation LLMs, detail current opportunities and challenges related to their use, and present actionable approaches to integrating them into computing curricula.

The contribution that informatics has made since the last century has fuelled innovative and signifi-cant technological advances and vice versa. It makes fundamental contributions to current economic, educational, industrial and social development. Informatics importantly has the capacity to support and augment human reasoning and potential. Education systems have a responsibility to recognise this and to ensure that young people are equipped to be able to drive forward, judge innovation and take part in the development of a just and fair society. To properly embrace this development by society in general, informatics has to be seen as an essential aspect of the education of all pupils. The present report, which outlines an informatics reference framework for all young people, bears that in mind. It is intended to offer high-level guidance that may be used by, and indeed stimulate, curriculum designers to review their focus and approach to the subject of informatics. Following the introductory sections, the heart of the reference framework is described in section 4. A set of aims and objectives for informatics educa-tion for all young people is provided in section 4.2 followed by a set of core concepts and an accompa-nying brief description of these in Table 1 of section 4.3; this conveys a robust structure and a general architecture, which captures an essential view of informatics as a discipline in general education. To complement the general architecture, a contem-porary and outward facing view of informatics is offered in section 4.4; this includes discussion of modern developments that relate to topics such as data science and artificial intelligence, as well as at-tention to related ethical concerns. Annex A.1 presents a brief description of infor-matics as a discipline. Annex A.2 presents a limited number of examples of how high-level learning out-comes could be described in a concrete curriculum at three levels that reflect indicators of outcomes after primary, lower secondary and upper secondary education.

This special issue of Acta Didactica Norden is about informatics as a common fundamental competence at all educational levels. The target group is schoolteachers, teachers at teacher education colleges and universities, informatics education researchers and everyone else with a special interest in informatics education in the entire educational system.

Integrationen af computationel tænkning (CT) i uddannelse bliver diskuteret på inter­nationalt nivå, og ’empowerment’ (på dansk: myndiggørelse) bliver ofte brugt som argument for hvorfor fremtidige generationer har brug for at kunne tænke compu­tationelt. I denne artikel rapporterer vi fra en litteraturundersøgelse om begrebet empowerment som det udfolder sig i forskningen omkring CT i uddannelse. Vi anvender et eksisterende kategoriseringsværktøj til at definere brugen af empowerment i relation til fem kategorier: ledelse, kritisk, demokratisk, funktionel og uddannelses­mæssig empowerment. Vores analyse påpeger flere begrænsninger i den nuværende forskningslitteratur. For det første bruges empowerment ofte i CT uddannelseslitteratur, men begrebet bliver sjældent defineret. Desuden fant analysen også at forståelsen af empowerment varierer betydeligt afhængig af hvilken geografisk region forskningen stammer fra. Dette kan betyde at empowerment som mål for CT i uddannelse kan være forskelligt fra region til region. Endelig fandt vores studie også at empowerment- kategorierne ’kritisk’ og ’ledelse’ er underrepræsenteret i den internationale CT uddannelses-litteratur, men er dog mere fremtrædende i forskning der stammer fra de nordiske lande. Vi afslutter denne undersøgelse med at foreslå en forskningsagenda der kan sikre en mere transparent forskningslitteratur i relation til empowerment og til CT i uddannelse for at støtte fremtidig forskning og igangværende politisk arbejde.

We propose computational empowerment as an approach and a Participatory Design response to challenges related to digitalization of society and the emerging need for digital literacy in K12 education. Our approach extends the current focus on computational thinking to include contextual, human-centred and societal challenges and impacts involved in students' creative and critical engagement with digital technology. Our research is based on the FabLab@School project, in which a PD approach to computational empowerment provided opportunities as well as further challenges for the complex agenda of digital technology in education. We argue that PD has the potential to drive a computational empowerment agenda in education by connecting political PD with contemporary visions for addressing a future digitalized labour market and society.

Computational thinking has become a core element in many countries' attempts to integrate computing into curricula at various levels of education. Computational modeling should be conceived of as part of computational thinking in K-12 education. Computational modeling has been shown to improve students’ content knowledge in existing subjects in K-12 education. However, there is a research knowledge gap in terms of how computational modeling and coding is improving students’ content knowledge of existing subjects in high school. the findings from an open-ended questionnaire with all participating students (n=210) and semi-structured interviews with all teachers (n=15). Thematic analysis was applied to categorize the qualitative data. The framework was successfully tested in high schools in Denmark and the paper concludes that students gained knowledge in CT and content knowledge in the existing subject through working with computer models of phenomena in different subjects. The study also showed that by letting students tinker with computer models they were able to integrate both coding, modeling and content knowledge.

Informatics in general, and the particular development of artificial intelligence, is changing human knowledge, perception, and reality, thus radically changing the course of human history. Informatics has made it possible to automate an extraordinary range of tasks by enabling machines to play an increasingly decisive role in drawing conclusions from data and then taking action. The growing transfer of judgment from human beings to machines denotes the revolutionary aspect of informatics.For societies to maintain or regain democratic control and supremacy over digital technology, it is imperative to include informatics in general education with a dual perspective on possibilities and implications of computing for individuals and society. The Danish informatics curriculum for general education acknowledges the dual and bipartite nature of informatics by complementing a constructive approach to computing with a critical analytic approach to digital artifacts.

research-article Share on Informatics as a fundamental discipline for the 21st century Authors: Michael E. Caspersen Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Aarhus University, Aarhus, DenmarkView Profile , Judith Gal-Ezer The Open University of Israel, Ra'anana, Israel The Open University of Israel, Ra'anana, IsraelView Profile , Andrew McGettrick Strathclyde University, Glasgow, Scotland Strathclyde University, Glasgow, ScotlandView Profile , Enrico Nardelli Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy Tor Vergata University of Rome, ItalyView Profile Authors Info & Claims Communications of the ACMVolume 62Issue 4April 2019 pp 58https://doi.org/10.1145/3310330Published:20 March 2019Publication History 9citation6,148DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations9Total Downloads6,148Last 12 Months459Last 6 weeks3 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

research-article Share on Failure rates in introductory programming: 12 years later Authors: Jens Bennedsen Aarhus University Aarhus UniversityView Profile , Michael E. Caspersen It-Vest - Networking Universities It-Vest - Networking UniversitiesView Profile Authors Info & Claims ACM InroadsVolume 10Issue 2June 2019 pp 30–36https://doi.org/10.1145/3324888Published:25 April 2019Publication History 71citation1,700DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations71Total Downloads1,700Last 12 Months359Last 6 weeks42 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

Computer science educators have generally gravitated toward teaching programming using easier languages of the day under the assumption that the students would be more receptive to them. But are the students' long-term interests really served by this approach? Doesn't using the so-called easier languages for teaching programming amount to teaching serious musical composition with a banjo? Even more fundamentally, what do we mean by teaching programming? It is important to explore these issues given the critical role played by software in all facets of human existence today.

Recent years have seen an increase in activities geared towards making Computer Science courses available to all K-12 students. However, due to administrative regulations, such activities and their implementation often need to be localized on a national or even local context; these constraints, often paired with subtle but important terminology differences, hinder those wanting to compare the status quo across the boundaries of administrative units and to draw on experiences made elsewhere.