Computational Thinking Education in K-12 by Siu-Cheung Kong;Harold Abelson;

Author:Siu-Cheung Kong;Harold Abelson;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Computational Thinking Education; K-12 Education; Artificial Intelligence; Physical Computing
Publisher: MIT Press

COMPUTATIONAL EMPOWERMENT IN THE CURRICULUM

As noted earlier, we believe that CT and computational empowerment may complement each other to form the basis of an integrated approach to educating coming generations for a digitalized society. The two examples provided earlier demonstrate teaching activities that incorporate technical and reflective elements. To demonstrate how such an integration of CT and computational empowerment may be realized at the curricular level, we turn to the development of the new “Technology Comprehension” curriculum in Denmark.

An approach to embrace digital empowerment was present already in the Danish upper secondary Informatics curriculum developed in 2009 and 2010 and made permanent in 2016. One of six key competence areas was use and impact of digital artifacts on human activity. The purpose of this competence area was that students should understand that digital artifacts and their design have a profound impact on people, organizations, and social systems. Design of a system is not just design of the digital artifact and its interface, it is also design of the use and workflow that unfolds around the artifact. The purpose is that the students understand the interplay between the design of a digital artifact and the behavioral patterns that intentionally or unintentionally unfolds (Caspersen and Nowack 2013).

The curriculum for technology comprehension for primary and lower secondary education was developed by mandate of the Danish Ministry of Education in 2018 and is currently running on trial in forty-six schools for three years in Danish primary and lower secondary education. A committee of twenty-five appointed experts within education and research took part in the development of the curriculum. Based on previous research and impact of projects in both computational empowerment and CT (Caspersen et al. 2019; Smith and Iversen 2018), the authors of this chapter were invited to be centrally involved in the process: two of the authors acted as co-chairs for the working group, while a third author was involved in developing the content of the curriculum. In the choice of chairs, the Minister of Education signaled the importance of integrating humanistic and computer science approaches to computing education. Also, it was specified that the curriculum should embrace both technical as well as critical and design-oriented content.

The technology comprehension curriculum is based on four competence areas depicted in figure 6.4 (Danish Ministry of Education, n.d.).

6.4    The four competence areas in the technology comprehension curriculum.

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