A university-based model for supporting computer science curriculum reform

There is significant international focus on recent and prospective computer science curriculum reforms—in the UK, as well as elsewhere. A number of audits and studies of national-level curricula models in different countries have been conducted over the past decade (CAS 2011; Hazzan et al. 2008; Snyder 2012; Sturman and Sizmur 2011; Hubwieser 2013; CECE 2017), with numerous nations and states engaged in efforts to revamp their compulsory-level computer science curricula (Hubwieser et al. 2015; Webb et al. 2017). Relevant examples include the USA, both nationally (ACM, Code.org, CSTA, Cyber Innovation Center, & National Math and Science Initiative 2016) and at the state level (Ericson et al. 2016; Guzdial et al. 2014); France (Baron et al. 2014); Italy (Bellettini et al. 2014); India (Raman et al. 2015); Israel (Armonia and Gal-Ezer 2014; Gal-Ezer and Stephenson 2014); New Zealand (Bell 2014; Bell et al. 2014); Russia (Khenner and Semakin 2014); Sweden (Rolandsson and Skogh 2014); and Hong Kong (Kong 2017). Each country has its own issues to address—educational as well as socio-economic—and barriers to overcome in implementing a high-quality, valued and sustainable computer science curriculum, along with ensuring that there is the confidence and capability in the teaching profession to deliver it effectively (Passey 2017).

Whilst this surge of activity has largely only arisen in the new millennium—no doubt due to the increasing demand for programming skills for the burgeoning “digital economy” (Tuomi et al. 2017; Murphy et al. 2017)—recommendations for academic computer science curricula have a long pedigree (Atchison et al. 1968). Despite reports of success from various jurisdictions—with clear economic levers underpinning the establishment of computer science as a worthwhile and high-value subject being a frequently named goal—addressing curriculum change to incorporate computer science represents a significant challenge in terms of scaling grassroots initiatives (Repenning 2018). This is particularly relevant for pedagogic research, assessment and teacher training (Vahrenhold 2012; Sentance and Waite 2018), from early years of education (Bird et al. 2014; Beauchamp 2016; Manches and Plowman 2017) through to higher education (Davenport et al. 2016), as well as in the wider context of developing effective pedagogies for the digital age (Beethan and Sharpe 2013).

It is within this wider educational and socio-economic policy context that we consider the case of computer science curriculum reform in the UK, specifically through the critical lens of a national case study in Wales compared against the more established computing curriculum in England that commenced from September 2014 (Department for Education 2013). By so doing, we expose the various issues which impact on the effectiveness of different initiatives aimed at effective adaption of curriculum reform. Through this Welsh national case study, we highlight the dominance of curriculum reform approaches in England influencing interventions across other parts of the UK, with potentially negative consequences for supporting practitioners pre-curriculum reform, as well as in geographically isolated areas.

To frame this national case study, we present Technocamps,¹ a national university-based schools outreach programme based at Swansea University, which was founded in 2003 to address the issue of computer science education given the specific challenges posed in Wales. The wider portfolio of activities carried out by the Technocamps project is described and discussed in detail in Crick and Moller (2015), framed by the key educational challenges that exist in Wales, along with a preliminary evaluation of the Technocamps interventions.

In this paper, we consider the wider impact of the Technocamps project and its potential replicability as a case study of a national engagement model for other similarly sized countries, and regions of a comparable geo-political composition to Wales, that are on a similar computer science curriculum reform journey. Furthermore, we demonstrate the necessity of the school- and student-focused Technocamps model in building resilient and scalable practitioner-led support networks. We evidence this through the consideration of the measurable effects of the Technocamps approach on schools, teachers and pupils, contextualised by emerging educational (and socio-economic) policy change, particularly with respect to reform of computer science and repositioning of cross-curricular digital competencies in compulsory education in Wales.

The structure of the paper is as follows. In “A brief history of computer science education in the UK” section, we describe the evolving state of computer science education in the UK, from a high-point in the 1980 s, through a slow decline, into the recent drive for curriculum reform. In “Wales: a case study” section, we direct our attention to the state of Welsh education which, we evidence via international comparators, has in some ways suffered a steady 20-year decline since devolution compared to the rest of the UK. In particular, we outline the social, cultural and infrastructural challenges which have been the driver for significant national curriculum reform, particularly for science and technology. “Technocamps: a university-based engagement model” section presents the key results represented in this paper; we briefly describe the Technocamps model and provide empirical evidence attesting to the effectiveness of this model compared to the model of school outreach employed extensively and effectively in England. Finally, in “Conclusions and lessons learnt” section, to aid potential transferability of the Technocamps approach for nations and regions with similar challenges to Wales, we make a number of recommendations through “lessons learnt”.

In the 1980s, computer studies was a popular subject in schools across the UK. The availability of the popular BBC Micro—which was of little practical use unless you were able to programme it—saw a large proportion of school children learning the fundamentals of programming in a curriculum which included a variety of complementary topics such as hardware, software, Boolean logic and binary number representation.

By the 1990s, the emergence of pre-installed software—specifically office productivity software such as word processors and spreadsheet programmes—meant that computers were no longer predominantly machines that needed to be programmed in order to do anything useful or interesting. Less and less time was being spent in the computer studies classroom on thinking about and writing programmes, as basic digital literacies and IT user skills became regarded as the priority. However, as interest in viewing the computer as a creative tool waned in favour of using it for more mundane tasks, various problems were being created which were highlighted by two independent national enquiries in 1997 (Stevenson 1997; McKinsey & Company 1997). Both reports concluded that “Information Technology” in UK schools was in a primitive state and in need of attention and major investment. In line with the Stevenson Report (1997), computer studies evolved into a new subject whose name was coined in that same report: Information and Communications Technology (ICT). Over the decade starting in 1997, the UK Government invested over £3.5bn in ICT in schools through various funded interventions such as the National Grid for Learning and the New Opportunities Fund (Doughty 2006).

Whilst the percentage of ICT teachers with some form of ICT training has risen moderately from 33.0 to 39.9% over the same period, due to the drop in absolute numbers this merely means that the number of such teachers has remained constant. There remains an expanding gulf between teacher supply and the urgent demand to satisfy the needs of education in the digital age.

This lack of teacher competence has a direct impact on school children: applications to study computer science at university slumped in the early part of the millennium—especially amongst females—and many of those who started a university computer science degree course found themselves dropping out during the first year, surprised at what computer science is and what studying it entails.

Two more recent high-profile national policy reports—one by Nesta (Livingstone and Hope 2011) and the other by the Royal Society (Royal Society 2012)—made the very same observations. Both reports noted that ICT suffers from a poor reputation amongst pupils, parents and industry, who consider it dull and unchallenging and hence a low-value discipline, especially compared to other “strategically important and vulnerable” Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects (HEFCE 2011). With ICT largely embedded across the primary school curriculum, secondary school pupils found ICT in secondary school neither stimulating nor engaging (Sentance et al. 2012). A review of vocational education for 14–19-year olds in the UK (Wolf 2011) further notes that the undemanding nature of ICT qualifications in secondary schools is readily exploited by schools: due to a disproportionately high national league table weighting associated with vocational qualifications, easily-achieved high results in ICT offer a welcome boost to a school’s league table position. Furthermore, as ICT is typically presented by schools as their “computing” offering, students who might otherwise enjoy studying computer science are actively put off from what they are incorrectly but innocently led to believe is computer science (Crick and Sentance 2012; Brown et al. 2013), as well as wider challenges surrounding gender, diversity and socio-economic differences in ICT and computing (Kemp et al. 2018).

The development and implementation of a new computing curriculum in England from September 2014 (Department for Education 2013) provided a significant shift from ICT to computing, but provided little lead time to support existing teachers in their transition to this new curriculum. The grassroots organisation Computing At School (CAS)³—formed in 2008 to support teachers and address the perceived challenges of declining computing in UK schools—played a central role in this curriculum reform process in England (Brown et al. 2013, 2014). A central pillar of the CAS model in England is a “Network of Excellence” (Sentance et al. 2014), in which regional “Master Teachers” develop subject knowledge as well as pedagogical skills in a local, face-to-face, peer-to-peer delivery model. Whilst largely successful in densely populated urban areas, providing easy networking and the ability to form active communities of practice, a number of challenges to scaling and sustaining this approach have been identified (Sentance and Csizmadia 2017; Sentance and Waite 2018), including developing pedagogic content knowledge (Hidson 2018). A related model has also been developed in Scotland, with similar challenges identified (Cutts et al. 2017).

In November 2017, the Royal Society published a report (Royal Society 2017) which was a follow-up to its earlier report (Royal Society 2012) which had catalysed the curriculum reform process in England. This second report articulated many of the challenges discussed above in supporting “computing for all”, highlighting the scale of funding and changes to policy and practice required to make this a reality. In particular, alongside curriculum and qualifications reform, it stressed the importance of teacher recruitment and in-service training, as well as evidence-informed practice, particularly the need for effective pedagogic approaches for teaching computing.

Having outlined the state of education in the UK as a whole, we now restrict our attention to Wales. As our aim is to identify the requirements for effective curriculum reform in a nation or region which enjoys the same characteristics and challenges as Wales, we start by describing these characteristics. We then outline the recent history of education and curriculum reform with particular emphasis on ICT and computing.

Since 2000, Swansea University—as elsewhere across the UK—suffered a steady decline in the number of students enrolling in computer science, with the worst effect on the already-dwindling numbers of female students. In an attempt to address this worrying trend, the University reached out to local secondary school ICT teachers. However, there was positive resistance; for reasons explained later which did not apply to teachers in England, teachers in Wales felt over-burdened and disinterested in exploring any perceptions of inadequacy in the curriculum and their delivery (Crick and Sentance 2012; Brown et al. 2013).

As it was proving impossible to influence schools and their ICT teachers directly, Technocamps was created in 2003 to promote computing amongst their pupils. This was a programme of engaging interactive computational workshops taking place on the university campus whose ultimate aim was to subtly re-introduce computer science into the ICT curriculum by generating the demand from the students. Originally developed at Swansea University, Technocamps hubs have since been created at all of the universities across Wales, thus offering full national coverage.

Teachers in Wales were happy to “treat” their classes to these “day out” activities; but they were then faced with the prospect of satisfying their pupils’ newly discovered passion for computing, programming and computational thinking by introducing “Technoclubs” as lunch-time extra-curricular activities in the school. With substantial help, resources and guidance from Technocamps—along with the fact that in many cases students appeared to be more technically informed and digitally literate than their teachers—these clubs have flourished, and the impact of Technocamps in changing attitudes in Welsh schools regarding ICT and computing has been widely acknowledged, both by the Welsh Government, as well as by the teaching community in Wales. The spectrum of Technocamps activities is presented in detail in Crick and Moller (2015); here we assess its wider strategic impact.

Measuring impact: Wales divided

In 2010, based on long-term empirical data regarding its effect on school children’s attitudes towards computer science and technology careers—as well as that of their teachers—Swansea University was awarded £3.9 million funding towards a £6 million 4-year project (with the remaining £2.1 million generated through matched funding from the university) by the Welsh Government under the EU’s European Social Fund (ESF) Programme. This funding provided the necessary support and infrastructure to run Technocamps with regional hubs at the Universities of Aberystwyth, Bangor and South Wales. Due to EU funding restrictions, Technocamps was prohibited from providing any support (specifically, resources for workshops, teacher sessions, Technoclub support, etc) to schools outside of the socio-economically deprived Convergence Area in the west (see Fig. 1). Thus, the project could not work with schools in the eastern region of Wales—including its capital city Cardiff—bordering England.

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Whilst an unfortunate artefact of the European funding, a fortuitous side effect of this restriction was that it allows for a true assessment of the interventional impact of Technocamps, as the nation was invariably divided into two halves: West Wales received the full Technocamps experience, whilst East Wales (including its capital city, Cardiff) did not.

Cardiff is also the primary base of Computing At School (CAS) in Wales; as presented in “A brief history of computer science education in the UK” section, CAS has been widely recognised for their role in reforming the computing curriculum in England (Brown et al. 2014). Since 2010, Technocamps has supported CAS in promoting their teacher-led initiatives, specifically the local/regional CAS hubs and the Network of Excellence model (Sentance et al. 2012; Brown et al. 2014; Sentance et al. 2014).

In 2012, CAS Wales was awarded a grant of £70,000 from the Welsh Government to support the initial development of a Network of Excellence model of teacher-led activity across Wales, complementing the millions of pounds granted to CAS by the UK Government for this initiative in England. Despite the financial support for CAS Wales, and the networking support it offers teachers in Wales, the CAS model (Sentance et al. 2014)—so successful in heavily populated and geographically dense areas of England—has never managed to gain traction in Wales. For example, whilst CAS hubs across the UK are generally run by schools for schools (or rather, by teachers for teachers) abiding to the principle of the teacher-led approach (Sentance and Csizmadia 2017), virtually all of the CAS hubs across Wales rely on the leadership offered by the university academics who manage the various Technocamps hubs. Sentance et al. (2014) demonstrate the effectiveness of the Network of Excellence model in England where critical masses of competent and engaging teachers are found in densely populated regions; but in Wales, teachers have generally not been as self-organising compared to England to promote the wider CAS agenda to support curriculum reform and build a teacher-led community. This is partly attributable to the uncertainty surrounding ICT curriculum reform in Wales over the past 5 years (Crick and Moller 2015), especially compared to the highly visible reforms in England; but even this uncertainty is fed by the reluctance on the part of Welsh Government to introduce radical change for which the teaching community is unprepared (Barnes and Kennewell 2017).

In contrast to this, an independent review of Technocamps activity in the (socio-economically disadvantaged) Convergence region of Wales carried out for Welsh Government estimates that 5% of its secondary school-aged youths engaged with Technocamps through Workshops, and that more than a quarter of the secondary schools in the region have established Technoclubs (Wavehill 2015). Furthermore, the new GCSE and A-Level Computer Science qualifications (with its exams taken at ages 16 and 18, respectively)—which has had poor uptake in Wales due to the lack of clarity surrounding curriculum reform—are now starting to be adopted by an increasing percentage of these schools, whilst schools outside of the Convergence area (and outside the reach of the Technocamps ESF-funded project) continue to deliver the ICT curriculum as is. In an online survey carried out amongst all Welsh ICT teachers in February 2015, when asked to rate from 1 (very little) to 10 (very much) the extent to which Technocamps created an increase in the teaching of computer science, the average response was 7.3 with over 80% of the respondents (26 out of 32) giving a top-half grade.

Although it could not operate within the non-Convergence area of Wales, Technocamps promoted all of its extensive online computing resources to all schools outside the Convergence area of Wales, and supported the activities of CAS Wales in promoting its Network of Excellence model of practitioner-led school-based activities throughout Wales. However, despite the ongoing efforts of CAS Wales, there are few active and sustained school-based computing clubs that are not inside the Convergence area and established due directly to Technocamps workshops and follow-up engagements (Crick and Moller 2015).

In further support of this claim, we consider the following national example. The Annual Technocamps Robotics Competition is open to all schools across Wales, with increasing levels of engagement over the past 5 years. However, every single one of the 43 teams entered in the 2013 competition held near Cardiff travelled in from a Convergence area Technoclub formed on the back of Technocamps workshops and follow-up engagements with Technocamps initiatives. By the time the competition returned to Cardiff in 2017, the Technocamps hub at Cardiff University had become increasingly active (being freed from the restrictions of the European-funded project) and there was a healthy number of Cardiff-based Technoclubs taking part in the competition. However, these still did not represent a significant proportion of the teams competing, and every one of these clubs was heavily subsidised and supported by Technocamps. Most of the schools entering teams were from the traditional Technocamps heartland in the West of Wales and mostly able to take part without any further Technocamps intervention.

The above provides clear evidence that the Technocamps model of intense direct engagement through campus-based workshops, in conjunction with teacher CPD and support, is crucial for success in promoting the uptake of the discipline of computer science in Wales. The lack of confidence and isolation felt by the teacher community in Wales means that computing clubs have only arisen—and will likely only continue to develop—through direct involvement of and engagement with initiatives such as Technocamps. In comparison to similar challenges in Scotland (Cutts et al. 2017), this situation might only change through clarity regarding curriculum reform, as well as sustained long-term funding to provide professional development for the teachers across the whole of Wales.

When establishing a model for viewing school computer science education, it is apparent that there is substantial diversity between school education systems (Snyder 2012), and this can create obstacles when trying to understand progress made in one country and potentially replicate it in another (Hubwieser 2013); this is also pertinent to the devolved (and diverging) educational systems of the UK.

We are now seeing a number of successful initiatives, activities and interventions which may prove useful to other nations reforming their curricula, especially in the context of developing broader societal digital competencies. However, there remain significant challenges, particularly around improving the wider public perceptions of the disciplines and its inherent educational and economic value, the quality and utility of qualifications available in this space, as well as how to upskill the entire teaching community of Wales. This is the profound and long-term challenge—certainly not unique to Wales—that has to be recognised and addressed before a number of nations see the type of computer science education that is sustainable and does not actively dissuade students from progressing onto degree-level study or opting for diverse technology-based careers.

Through this national case study for Wales, and in particular evidenced through the Technocamps project and model, we have identified a number of overarching themes that frame the “lessons learnt”. This provides for potential replicability as a case study of a national engagement model for other similarly sized countries and regions of a comparable geo-political composition to Wales that are on a similar computer science curriculum reform journey.

Two overarching themes are apparent; firstly, such effort has to be viewed as a multi-pronged approach, requiring an overarching holistic strategy, working collaboratively with teachers, pupils, schools, parents, local and national government, etc. For example, with Technocamps, it was clear that through the European Social Funds project, funding directed at young learners was not enough: there is a wider ecosystem of activities and engagement, providing an opportunity for partnerships, co-design and co-production with key actors and stakeholders. Secondly, there is a need to overcome the challenges of recurrent funding and support to ensure long-term sustainability of the interventions. As this invariably requires a systematic change, single interventions to a single cohort of students are clearly not enough; it has to be a multi-year, co-ordinated effort (Repenning 2018). Furthermore, any new initiatives must address local and regional needs whilst at the same time maintaining strategic coordination at the national level; as argued, the long-term delivery model of Technocamps has had a clear impact on engagement, upskilling and the wider perception changes in ways that other less intense and sustained models have failed.