Maria Knobelsdorf, University of Dortmund, Germany - Didaktik der ...

Some teachers would use applets or software to do a simulation
of a network or to show the pathway of the data
through the Internet. Others would use films as a kind of
visualization. Some would use newspaper articles to describe
a problem that could then be handled in class. Worksheets
are also popular materials.
4.7 Integrating Students’ Perspectives
Most teachers agreed that students’ perspectives are important
in planning the lessons. Only a few said that students’
perspectives are not relevant. They are convinced
that students are not interested in finding out how the Internet
works. One teacher compared the students with fish
which do not need to know what water is.
Those teachers who agree that students’ perspectives have
to be taken into account, claim to observe students’ perspectives
during classes and to take them into consideration.
About half of the teachers said that the lessons they plan
would change the students’ conceptions of the Internet.
We also asked teachers to describe their students’ conceptions
of the Internet. Teachers think that students imagine
the Internet...
• to be like a Super-Computer.
• to be like a cloud that surrounds the whole world, and
you can connect everywhere with this cloud.
• to be like a cupboard filled with information
• to consist of unstructured connections between the computer
to have something like rays to a radio tower or
a satellite
• to function like a phone call
5. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK
In the previous chapter we discussed the different teaching
methods and learning objectives which we discovered in
our survey. These answers only refer to that part of the interviews
dealing with the question of the planning of lessons
on the topic of networks and the Internet.
An interesting result is that most teachers think that networks
and the Internet is an important topic to teach, but
for various reasons they do not do it. One widespread reason
seems to be the problem of not having enough content
knowledge about this topic. This problem can fortunately
be solved easily by developing teacher training courses.
An obvious result is that teachers have a clear idea on how
to plan lessons, although they feel a lack of knowledge about
this topic. Their pedagogical knowhow seems to help them
in overcoming this lack of knowledge. This might be important
in developing teacher training. It shows that teachers
rather need training on content knowledge than on pedagogical
knowhow.
An astonishing result for us was the fact that in CS it
seems to be usual that students were allowed to choose the
topics they wanted to learn. This can probably be explained
by the lack of generally accepted standards and by the teachers’
insufficient confidence in their own knowledge. But some
teachers also mentioned that they thought their students
might know more about CS than they did themselves and
that might explain why students were allowed to make decisions
on the content of their lessons.
78
Contrary to our expectation teachers claim to include students’
perspectives in planning lessons. It is not unlikely
that they may just have given the expected answer. Another
explanation is a presentation about students’ perspectives
that some of the teachers of our sample attended.
The different ways of planning lessons we discussed have
an internal structure, a kind of a pattern which expands over
the other topics taught by the teachers. These patterns are
formed by the subjective theories of teachers on planning CS
lessons. Therefore our next step will be to discover the types
of planning CS lessons, based on this subjective theories.
These types of planning lessons determine not only the topic
networks and the Internet but any kind of lesson planning.
By using these types, our final objective is the development
of guidelines for teacher training. We do not only want
to show in which different ways teachers plan their lessons
but also how to include this knowledge into teacher trainingfor
the benefit of all teachers. Therefore, the differing ways
of planning presented here are a big step towards this goal.
6. REFERENCES
[1] P. Denning. Great principles of computing.
Communications of the ACM, 46(11):15–20, November
2003.
[2] I. Diethelm and S. Zumbrägel. An investigation of
secondary school students’ conceptions on how the
internet works. In Proceedings of the 12th Koli Calling
International Conference on Computing Education
Research, Koli, Finland, 2012. (accepted).
[3] Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) e. V. Grundsätze und
Standards für die Informatik in der Schule. Number
28,150/151 in LOG IN. Berlin, 2008.
[4] N. Groeben, D. Wahl, J. Schlee, and B. Scheele.
Forschungsprogramm Subjektive Theorien. Eine
Einführung in die Psychologie des reflexiven Subjekts.
A. Francke Verlag, Tübingen, 1988.
[5] G. A. Kelly. The psychology of personal constructs.
Routledge, London, 1991.
[6] M. Komorek and U. Kattmann. The model of
educational reconstruction. In S. Mikelskis-Seifert,
U. Ringelband, and M. B. (Eds.), editors, Four Decades
of Research in Science Education - from Curriculum
Development to Quality Improvement, chapter 7, pages
171–188. Waxmann, 2008.
[7] P. Mayring. Qualitative content analysis. Forum
Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social
Research, 1(2):10, 2000.
[8] Medienpädagogischer Forschungsverbund Südwest. JIM
2010 Jugend, Information, (Multi-)Media.
Forschungsberichte. Baden-Baden, 2010.
[9] A.-M. Mesaros and I. Diethelm. Exploring computer
science teachers’ subjective theories on designing their
lessons. In Proceedings of the 5th International
Conference on Informatics in Schools: Situation,
Evolution and Perspectives ISSEP, Selected Papers,
Bratislava, Slovenia, 2011.