Informatics/computer sciences as a school subject is reclaiming the infamous title of being the most hated from mathematics. Pólya claimed around 1957 that “…mathematics has the dubious honor of being the least popular subject in the curriculum… Future teachers pass through the elementary schools learning to detest mathematics… They return to the elementary school to teach a new generation to detest it.” Beyond being hated, informatics seems as secluded as mathematics, and the widely accepted and popular teaching-learning approaches commit all the errors which were outlined as early as 1993. A solution was also stated by claiming that programming is ubiquitous, and to reach all students it should be (1) expanded to end-user computing, (2) socially sanctioned intellectual advances for everyone, (3) embedded in a rich cognitive context, (4) easier to learn and do, (5) expressive and useful. These ideas are in complete accordance with educational theories and effective teaching-learning approaches that have been emerging in the meantime but left unattended, more precisely, ignored.
Instead of focusing on the technical details of graphical interfaces and the syntax of demanding programming languages, high mathability approaches, extended to all aspects of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) and the Meaning System Model (MSM) should be invented, presented, and tested for their effectiveness. The decontextualized teaching-learning approaches should be banished, and replaced with real-world problems, where algorithms, theoretical background, schema-construction, multisensory acquisition, and knowledge-transfer play crucial roles.
Original papers with scientific merit are welcome to challenge the widely accepted, applied, and tested tool-centred teaching-learning approaches in informatics / computer sciences. These surface approach methods have proved to be ineffective, boring, killing students' interest, hampering intellectual development, consequently, it is high time for change. This Research Topic also accepts papers which reveal the ineffectiveness of favoured end-user and programming approaches, and offer alternative, non-traditional programming solutions to reach students, as these methods and papers are out of scope at present.
Informatics/computer sciences as a school subject is reclaiming the infamous title of being the most hated from mathematics. Pólya claimed around 1957 that “…mathematics has the dubious honor of being the least popular subject in the curriculum… Future teachers pass through the elementary schools learning to detest mathematics… They return to the elementary school to teach a new generation to detest it.” Beyond being hated, informatics seems as secluded as mathematics, and the widely accepted and popular teaching-learning approaches commit all the errors which were outlined as early as 1993. A solution was also stated by claiming that programming is ubiquitous, and to reach all students it should be (1) expanded to end-user computing, (2) socially sanctioned intellectual advances for everyone, (3) embedded in a rich cognitive context, (4) easier to learn and do, (5) expressive and useful. These ideas are in complete accordance with educational theories and effective teaching-learning approaches that have been emerging in the meantime but left unattended, more precisely, ignored.
Instead of focusing on the technical details of graphical interfaces and the syntax of demanding programming languages, high mathability approaches, extended to all aspects of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) and the Meaning System Model (MSM) should be invented, presented, and tested for their effectiveness. The decontextualized teaching-learning approaches should be banished, and replaced with real-world problems, where algorithms, theoretical background, schema-construction, multisensory acquisition, and knowledge-transfer play crucial roles.
Original papers with scientific merit are welcome to challenge the widely accepted, applied, and tested tool-centred teaching-learning approaches in informatics / computer sciences. These surface approach methods have proved to be ineffective, boring, killing students' interest, hampering intellectual development, consequently, it is high time for change. This Research Topic also accepts papers which reveal the ineffectiveness of favoured end-user and programming approaches, and offer alternative, non-traditional programming solutions to reach students, as these methods and papers are out of scope at present.