Back to school for computing? New lessons for computer science, lessons for a new computer science
Meurig Beynon, University of Warwick
Date and time: Thursday 2nd May 2013 at 16:00
Location: G29, Mech Eng
Host: Achim Jung
Recent developments associated with the 'computing at schools' agenda have highlighted problematic issues for computer science education. In tackling these issues, the main emphasis has been on developing better educational resources for imparting the core ideas of computer science as an established academic subject. New initiatives for schools take their inspiration from a mantra that reflects the way in which elite university computer science departments perceive and promote their discipline. Pupils are bored and disenchanted with the pragmatic introduction to computing as "information and communication technology (ICT)"; they should instead be introduced to the challenging fascinating hard science of computing. Pragmatic aspects of computing (business and engineering applications, serious games, social media etc) are valuable as the means by which to engage pupils' interest in real computer science with its focus on the theory of algorithms as the core ingredient in the broader framework of computational thinking. Students must be taught the clear distinction between fundamental abstract principles and the ephemeral ways in which these are embodied in new languages and technologies.
This talk advances a complementary proposal: that the problems of computer science education should be attributed at least as much to the immature status of computer science as an academic subject as to poor educational practice. Beyond question, the potential of the computational thinking paradigm is immense and far from fully explored. But whether it should be regarded as the single most significant conceptual framework for computing is quite another matter. The difficulty of reconciling theoretical and pragmatic approaches in areas such as software development, database technology and artificial intelligence belies this assumption. It also helps to explain why - for many would-be students - traditional computer science fails to connect with their experience of computing-in-the-wild: as Ben-Ari and his co-researchers have shown in empirical studies, though an imaginative initiative such as 'CS Unplugged' may help students to appreciate core computer science concepts, it does not typically inspire enthusiastic interest in computational thinking.
An appropriate science of computing is one in which the pragmatic use of computers - such as is represented in best practice in ICT - is neither deemed to be subsumed by computational thinking nor regarded as of subordinate, peripheral and/or ephemeral interest. Classifying a phenomenon as computational in character is a matter of construal, not a matter of fact. The activities that enable us to make such a classification are quite as integral to computing and as intellectually significant as computational thinking. What is more, the potential impact of computers and related technologies on practice in relation to construal - though of its essence pragmatic in nature - is as far-reaching as that of computational thinking. Giving an account of computing in which computational thinking and construal are intimately integrated can bring new life to our teaching of traditional computer science and lay the foundation for a new and broader science of computing.