Unblocking the pipeline by providing a compelling computing experience in secondary schools: are the teachers ready?

Lang, C., Craig, A. and Casey, G.

The decline of student interest and participation in computing degrees at university is affecting the stability of computing as a stand-alone discipline in universities. Research indicates that the decline begins in secondary schools. This paper describes an outreach program that was funded by an Australian Council of Deans of ICT grant. The researchers, acknowledging the time-poor nature of teachers' work and that some of them are not trained in the computing discipline, developed curricula and provided resources and student helpers to enable secondary school teachers to deliver a student centred unit of work. This unit focused on a four week program with students developing applications for android phones. The program was delivered in three schools by four teachers and produced mixed evaluation results. In one school the number of students taking ICT the following year increased significantly, this was not reported in the other two schools. Our findings show that even when teachers are provided with resources and artefacts, not all are prepared to deliver a fully student-led classroom experience. We ask 'are the teachers ready?' to embrace transformational pedagogies using ICT in the classroom. In this case study we can say some are, but some are not. We also note that the technical issues within school networks hamper the ability of teachers to provide compelling computing experiences to students. Our recommendation for future implementations of the program is to provide teachers with more background on the benefits of a student-centred classroom approach before beginning this four-week unit of work.

Cite as: Lang, C., Craig, A. and Casey, G. (2014). Unblocking the pipeline by providing a compelling computing experience in secondary schools: are the teachers ready?. In Proc. Sixteenth Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE2014) Auckland, New Zealand. CRPIT, 148. Whalley, J. and D\'Souza, D. Eds., ACS. 149-158

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