Bring History of Computing into High School CS Curriculum: Teachers’ Perspectives

Yi Fen Chen Graduate Institute of Information and Computer Education

National Taiwan Normal University Taipei Municipal First Girls' Senior High School

Taipei, Taiwan anny@fg.tp.edu.tw

Cheng-Chih Wu Graduate Institute of Information and Computer Education

National Taiwan Normal University Taipei, Taiwan

chihwu@ntnu.edu.tw

Abstract—The purpose of this study is to investigate teachers' perceptions/concerns of teaching computer sciences through history of computing, specifically in teaching high school computer science. We hope the results of this study should provide valuable ideas for textbook authors and curriculum developers; it should offer suggestions for high school teachers in teaching computer science through history of computing as well.

Keywords- History of science; history of computing; high school computer science; computer science teachers

I. INTRODUCTION Research in science education has shown that teaching

history of science will increase students’ interests in learning science, enhance students’ understanding of science concepts, provide students with a coherent view of science development, and, ultimately, help students develop a real understanding of the nature of science [1]. As addressed in Denning’s “Computing as a Discipline” report and “Computing is a Natural Science” article, computer sciences owns the nature of science (along with mathematics and engineering), and is also considered as a field of nature science [2, 3]. It is postulated that the inclusion of history materials in computing curriculum might benefit the learning of computer sciences, as observed in the traditional science education fields.

In recently years, the computer science communities started to pay their attentions to the history of computing. Many computer science educators believed that knowledge of the history of computing could provide students with a broad perspective into the “real world” and strongly appealed to bring the history of computing into computer science curriculum [4, 5, 6, 7]. In the efforts of realizing an innovative curriculum idea, teachers always play the key role of its success or failure [8]. It is important to know various aspects of teachers’ concerns about the innovation so that related measures can be taken to assure its successful implementation. Previous studies in science education revealed that teachers might face serious challenges when teaching history of science [9]. They might be inhibited with their insufficient knowledge of science history, lack of available teaching materials or supporting resources, and without proper methodologies to deliver history materials.

The purpose of this study is to investigate teachers' perceptions/concerns of teaching computer sciences through history of computing, specifically in teaching high school computer science, which is now a required subject in Taiwan.

II. METHODS The research methods adopted in this study are an online

questionnaire survey to sampled high school computer teachers in Taiwan and a follow-up semi-structured interview with selected teachers. The planned questionnaire was designed with four dimensions to unveil teachers’ perceptions and concerns of teaching history of computing including: (I) objectives of teaching history of computing, (II) issues in teaching/learning history of computing, (III) methods of teaching history of computing, and (IV) materials/resources to support teaching history of computing. We also collected extensive demographic data of the surveyed teachers including gender, years of teaching, educational background, and teaching experience in history of computing to analyze factors that might affect teachers’ perceptions and concerns.

III. PRELIMINARY RESULTS As a pilot survey, we invited 20 high school teachers to

answer our draft questionnaire and 15 of them responded.

Our pilot survey results showed that most of the respondents considered advantageous to include the historical elements in teaching/learning computer science. They agreed that learning history of computing is beneficial in capturing students’ interests, helping students comprehend concepts and understanding the inter-relationships between science and human society, cultivating students with proper scientific attitudes and methods, and furthermore, providing students with a holistic view of the field of computer sciences. There were no significant differences found between genders, years of teaching, and backgrounds.

More than half of the respondents had experience in teaching history of computing in their class. Teacher lecturing is the most common method used in instruction, followed by student report, group discussion, watching videos, and reading activities. When asking what kinds of material need to be included in teaching history of

2013 Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering

978-0-7695-4960-6/13 $26.00 © 2013 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/LaTiCE.2013.16

233

2013 Learning and Teaching in Computing and Engineering

978-0-7695-4960-6/13 $26.00 © 2013 IEEE

DOI 10.1109/LaTiCE.2013.16

233

computing, most respondents believed that important theories, inventions, and contributions in the computer history should be covered, in addition, failure experiences in the past were indispensable.

Nonetheless, there were challenges affect teachers’ decisions in teaching history of computing, among them were teacher’s prior knowledge and previous pedagogical training in history of computing, supporting resources such as learning materials or instructional guides, and students’ perceptions on history materials. Only 10% of the respondents had learned history of computing related courses in their college education, most of them considered them lacking expertise on history of computing, and did not know how to properly cover the history materials in instruction. Some perceived that students did not like history of computing and they had never included any history elements in their class. To bring history of computing into high school computer science curriculum, most respondents urged for more supports such as supplementary materials of history of computing, textbooks with more history of computing contents, and professional training in teaching history of computing.

We hope the results of this study should provide valuable ideas for textbook authors and curriculum developers; it

should offer suggestions for high school teachers in teaching CS through history of computing as well.

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Philosophy of Science in the Practice of Physics Instruction," Science & Education, vol. 10, Jul. 2001, pp. 345-367.

[2] P. J. Denning, D. E. Comer, D. Gries, M. C. Mulder, A. Tucker, A. J. Turner, and P. R. Young, "Computing as a discipline," Communications of the ACM, vol. 32, Jan. 1989, pp. 9-23.

[3] P. J. Denning, “Computing is a natural science,” Communications of the ACM, vol. 50, no. 7, Jul. 2007, pp. 13-18.

[4] J. A. N. Lee, “"Those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it": or, Why I study the history of computing,” Annals of the History of Computing, IEEE, vol. 18, no. 2, 1996, pp. 54-62.

[5] J. A. Rupf, “Teaching the history of computing (painlessly),” Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges, vol. 20, no. 2, Dec. 2004, pp. 212-218.

[6] J. Gal-Ezer, and D. Harel, “What (else) should CS educators know?,” Communications of the ACM, vol. 41, no. 9, Sep. 1998, pp. 77-84.

[7] J. Impagliazzo and J. A. N. Lee, "Using History to Enhance Computing Courses," in ITICSE’04, Leeds, United Kingdom, June 28–30, 2004, pp. 238-238.

[8] M. R. Matthews, “A role for history and philosophy in science teaching,” Interchang, vol. 20, no. 2, 1989, pp. 3-5.

[9] R. M. Panasuk and L. B. Horton, "Integrating History of Mathematics into Curriculum: What are the Chances and Constraints?," International Electronic Journal of Mathematics Education, vol. 7, Feb. 2012, pp. 3-20.

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