The Computing at Schools (CAS) conference 2024 was held in London on Saturday 13th July and was attended by CCSE members Katharine Childs, Nicola Looker and Jack Parkinson. They had these thoughts to share.

Katharine

A common theme across the conference was teachers discussing ways to make computing more equitable and accessible for all. In particular, there were several discussions in workshops about how to increase the proportion of girls taking GCSE Computer Science. Rachel Arthur presented findings from her Masters research which showed that stereotypes in computing are still deeply embedded. The results from the SCARI computing research in England provided concrete recommendation for curriculum reform. And in the closing keynote, Miles Berry suggested that increasing creativity in the computing curriculum could inspire pupils from traditionally underrepresented groups to become more engaged in computing. Although gender imbalance in computing remains an issue, there was an abundance of ideas from teachers who are committed to making a difference.

Jack

Something I saw repeatedly throughout the conference – and came through very strongly in the sessions I went to – was how willing some members of the teacher community are to step outside of the established way of doing things to try and improve their teaching. William Lau is exploring variation theory in computer science education. It is well established in maths, but hasn’t been used to great effect in computing yet, and he believes that if we can figure out the right things to change when we give students a sequence of examples, Neil Rickus is just starting research on how to use commercial video games – developed primarily for entertainment – to teach computer science to school pupils. Both of these represent just two exciting areas where teachers are engaging in out-of-the-box, seriously reasoned research to try and improve our understanding and practice of computer science teaching.  

Nicola

The highlight of the CAS event for me was hearing from computing teachers who participated in the second round of the Teaching Inquiry in Computing Education (TICE) project. The project aimed to help teachers explore real classroom issues. Support was provided through webinars focused on research topics and pairing teachers with academic mentors. Katharine, Maria Kallia, and I were among the academic mentors.

There were a wide range of projects which encompassed both primary and secondary education. For example:

  • Rachel Coultart explored how LitterBox can help students understand code, fix bugs, and stay motivated while using Scratch. The tool encouraged capable students to improve their projects, sparked meaningful conversations between students and teachers, and improved Rachel’s debugging skills.
  • Peter Dring studied how feedback affects students’ engagement and progress in Key Stage 4 lessons and asked whether AI could replace a good programming teacher. Findings showed a gap between how much feedback students thought they received and how much teachers thought they gave. Students valued motivational feedback, and Peter’s report highlights that there’s still no substitute for a real teacher who encourages students to believe in themselves and succeed!
  • Justin Heath adapted Schulte’s Block Model for primary education, where block-based programming languages are predominantly used, and created the FLARE framework.
  • Jo Hodge explored how PRIMM activities (Predict, Run, Investigate, Modify, and Make) could support primary programming lessons. Jo’s findings suggested that PRIMM supported her colleagues’ lesson delivery and adaptive teaching.

The passion and dedication of the teachers at the session was clearly evident. More information about these and other projects can be found in the following Teacher Research Projects booklet: Teacher Research Projects 2024.

First published: 29 July 2024

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