Educating Future Coders with a Holistic ICT Curriculum and New Learning Solutions

Pia Niemelä, Cristiano Di Flora, Martti Helevirta, Ville Isomöttönen

Technology-orientation and coding are gaining momentum in Finnish curriculum planning for primary and secondary school. However, according to the existing plans, the scope of ICT teaching is limited to practical topics, e.g., how to drill basic control structures (if-then-else, for, while) without focusing on the high level epistemological view of ICT. This paper proposes some key extensions to such plans, targeted to highlight rather the epistemological factors of teaching than talk about concrete means of strengthening the craftsmanship of coding. The proposed approach stems from the qualitative data collected by interviewing ICT professionals (N=7, 4 males, 3 females), who have gained experience of the industry needs while working as ICT professionals (avg=11.3 y, s=3.9 y). This work illustrates a holistic model of ICT teaching as well as suggests a set of new methods and tools.

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