Abstract
The world is permeated by informatics, even the youngest children encounter informatics systems and the respective phenomena. Consequently, even primary school children must acquire the necessary informatics competencies to act in this world in a self-determined manner. A study on the integration of informatics education in European education systems by the Committee on European Computing Education showed that in 2017, none of the German states provided informatics competencies in primary school. In the following years, as the study Reviewing Computational Thinking in Compulsory Education (2022) shows, progress towards more informatics education in primary schools has been made in various European countries. For example, in Sweden, informatics content has been integrated into the curricula. However, the current situation in Germany was not analyzed in this study.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the current state of informatics education in Germany’s primary schools, comparing it with pioneering countries, and to identify potential for development. For this purpose, 53 curricula of different subjects in all 16 German federal states (as there is no specific subject for informatics) were systematically scanned for informatics content. Subsequently, the informatics competencies found were categorized with respect to the CSTA K-12 standards in order to work out which subject areas are currently dealt with to what extent.
The results show eight out of 16 German federal states integrated informatics competencies as a mandatory part of primary level education. With regard to the main concepts, Algorithms and Programming and Computing Systems are particularly addressed, whereas the area of Networks and the Internet is only assigned in one federal state. The greatest potential for development is to be seen in teacher training so that the competencies required in the curricula can be developed professionally with the children.
“The project underlying this article is part of the “Qualitätsoffensive Lehrerbildung”, a joint initiative of the Federal Government and the Länder which aims to improve the quality of teacher training. The programme is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The authors are responsible for the content of this publication”.
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Notes
- 1.
If German terms are used, these are marked in italics.
- 2.
Detailed information can be found within the document: https://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/Dateien/pdf/Eurydice/Bildungswesen-engl-pdfs/dossier_en_ebook.pdf.
- 3.
Science, technology, engineering, and math.
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Nenner, C., Bergner, N. (2022). Informatics Education in German Primary School Curricula. In: Bollin, A., Futschek, G. (eds) Informatics in Schools. A Step Beyond Digital Education. ISSEP 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13488. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15851-3_1
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