CIC: Semester 1: Reading week
It's time for some more educational theory. Get yourself a cup of hot chocolate, and settle down for a good long read...
Weekly Tasks
The focus for this week will be on reading articles and chapters about education theory and principles of inclusion in computer science education. Later in the semester, you will get some practice in applying the theories you have read about when evaluating materials created by other people. Of course, you should also use the principles you read about this week to help you design effective materials for your portfolio.
It may be a good idea not to binge-read all the articles in a row but instead, spread them out over the week to give yourself time to think about them.
You can find all of the articles in the Library Resource list contained within Learn. I have also included links to them below. Remember that you don’t have to buy access to any of the articles. They are available if you are signed in to your university account.
- Read chapter 4 of “Understanding teaching and learning in primary education”. This will give you a basic grounding in the main theories of learning which influence education today. As you read, think about your own educational experiences. Which theories do you think you own school teachers used?
- Look at Resnick’s article about the creative thinking spiral, focussing on the diagram on the first page. .Note that Resnick is a big fan of discovery learning and even constructionism (the idea that you learn by building stuff for which his MIT colleague Seymour Papert is famous).
- Not everyone believes in constructivism/discovery learning as strongly as the MIT team. Mayer, for example, wrote that “constructivism = hands-on activity is a formula for educational disaster” on p17 of the next article you should read.
- Mayer may have convinced you that guided discovery learning is more useful than pure discovery learning. (If he hasn’t, feel free to post a message on the discussion board to tell us why). The next article describes a particular form of guided discovery learning which has been used successfully in computer science education.
- In order to learn new concepts, learners must remember new facts and concepts. Your next chapter is a summary of what research tells us about effective strategies for remembering new material. This might turn your own exam revision habits upside down! But it might also be useful for the assignment if you want to design a well-structured resource to help students grasp some CS material.
Inclusion is a very important aspect of computer science education: we need diversity in our future talent pool. Read the National Centre for Women in Information Technology’s engagement practices framework. As you design your own materials for your portfolio, please include these engagement principles.