First Steps towards K-12 Computer Science Education in Portugal -- Experience Report

TL;DR

The ENSICO association is working with 4500 students, 35 schools and 100 school teachers to form a comprehensive syllabus for teaching computing as a mandatory subject throughout the basic and secondary levels of the Portuguese educational system.

Abstract

Computer scientists Jeannette Wing and Simon Peyton Jones have catalyzed a pivotal discussion on the need to introduce computing in K-12 mandatory education. In Wing's own words, computing 'represents a universally applicable attitude and skill set everyone, not just computer scientists, would be eager to learn and use.'' The crux of this educational endeavor lies in its execution. This paper reports on the efforts of the ENSICO association to implement such aims in Portugal. Starting with pilot projects in a few schools in 2020, it is currently working with 4500 students, 35 schools and 100 school teachers. The main aim is to gain enough experience and knowledge to eventually define a comprehensive syllabus for teaching computing as a mandatory subject throughout the basic and secondary levels of the Portuguese educational system. A structured framework for integrating computational thinking into K-12 education is proposed, with a particular emphasis on mathematical modeling and the functional programming paradigm. This approach is chosen for its potential to promote analytical and problem-solving skills of computational thinking aligned with the core background on maths and science.

Figures (14)

• Figure 1: Introducing computing in K-12 education calls for a "New Trivium" Bu03 able to heal the "big divide" between science and the humanities, while linking computing to its very foundations on maths Kr07.
• Figure 2: The 'Leibniz' notebook, Ensico students' "first computer", promotes the CS-unplugged teaching method pioneered by Tim Bell DBLP:journals/cacm/Bell21.
• Figure 3: Ensico's knowledge "modulation wave": starting from subliminal messages hidden in little stories or tales (first years), knowledge becomes implicit in games or the physical manipulation of concrete objects (middle years) before becoming explicit in conceptsJac21 and, finally, programs in the "plugged" phase.
• Figure 4: Born tongeless, Lili needs to communicate using a binary, non-verbal language. Lili's adventures introduce children to the binary language and binary communication codes, initiating a path that will lead them to the Braille and Morse codes, to bitmaps (Fig. \ref{['fig:bmap']}), QR-codes (Fig. \ref{['fig:qr']}) and so on and so forth.
• Figure 5: Bitmaps are introduced in black-and-white grids easy to draw and manipulate on the square pages of the notebook offered to Ensico students (Fig. \ref{['fig:leibniz']}). At this early phase, manipulation is bound to bit-level operations (flip or keep the bit). When later on bitmaps become structured as lists, manipulation becomes list-structured Wi76, involving operations such as (in Haskell) map, reverse and son on. Thus the 'atomistic' start gives place to the structured view that eventually will lead to programming.