[Year 12 SofDev] A research question...

Fri May 29 18:00:32 AEST 2015

Hi Michael and colleagues

I would just like to respond to the place of stand-alone courses in schools with respect to the Digital Technologies curriculum. One activity that I have done in some forums is to present the scope and sequence of the Digi Tech curriculum (Australian Curriculum) and ask participants to indicate what content descriptions they would feel comfortable teaching and would be able to coherently weave into their teaching programs (this is when I'm talking to a whole school). Most teachers are very surprised when they see the specific nature of the content and realise that this is not ICT as a general capability. For example two content description at years 7 and 8 read: 'implement and modify programs with user interfaces involving branching, iteration and functions in a general-purpose programming languages' and 'investigate how digital systems represent text, image and audio data in binary'.

It is important for schools to understand that Digi Tech is not the new name for ICT. It is easy, however, to understand why there is confusion as the term 'digital technologies' is used within most of the other learning domains to mean ICT. For example, Geog, year 8 'Present findings, arguments and ideas in a range of communication forms selected to suit a particular audience and purpose, using geographical terminology and digital technologies as appropriate. This is an example of embedding the ICT general capability into a domain - it is not a content description from the Digital Technologies domain. Oh, what a difference capital D and capital T make!

I could go on forever, but ...!

Regards
Paula

________________________________
From: sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au [sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au] on behalf of Walker, Michael A [walker.michael.a at edumail.vic.gov.au]
Sent: Friday, 29 May 2015 4:23 PM
To: Year 12 Software Development Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] A research question...

I won’t reiterate what others have said in terms of interesting curriculum, other subjects being sexier and media perceptions – all are good points.

One thing I think is worth exploring is that the same arguments could be used for other subjects. Let’s be honest, past about year 9, most mathematics is not a general capability, but relatively specialist. There’s also a shortage of maths teachers, so why not teach it as a general capability across other subjects. Geography and history both use mathematics, eg, statistics and geometry. Arts could also teach geometry and measurement. Algebra is a general skill so could be taught in most other subjects in various contexts. Then just offer the specialist maths from year 10. Put that to your curriculum committee or for discussion in the wider media and see where that gets you.

Similarly, there is a big push at our school, as I am sure there is in most others, to teach literacy in all subjects. In which case, why do we need English as a separate subject? Language can be taught in other subjects, heck in year 12 SD I talk about data and objects being described by nouns, and use cases by verbs. Try that one in your curriculum committee once they reject teaching maths as a general capability in other subjects!

Yet ICT is taught that way in increasing numbers of secondary schools. I get quite frustrated when as a year 8 Maths teacher we have to include teaching ICT and the usual comment at meetings relates to ticking the box with a token assessment task for the semester so we can report against the ICT capabilities. This isn’t even teaching ICT as a general capability, and it shows in my ICT students at year 11 and 12.

Yet, this should hardly be a surprise that this system doesn’t work. My previous job was as an IT tech SSO at another school. It was quietly observed by a year 7 IT teacher that you could accurately guess which primary school the new year 7 students came from based on what they did with the user name and password I had just given them. The ones that were logged in and waiting in Word in minutes without further prompting came from one, the ones sitting there afraid to press the big green button in case something went disastrously wrong were from another. This is not to criticise the teachers at those schools – the primary curriculum is as crowded as ours and if you are not comfortable with ICT then you too will give a task to “tick the  box” and go back to focussing on things you are comfortable teaching well, especially in this time poor occupation where learning new things needs to justify the time spent in the expected return.

Which brings me to a shortage of IT teachers. Anecdata of people I know in IT suggests that people a few years younger than I am earn over twice what I do. I realise this is no indication of whether they might be good teachers, but if given a choice at the end of high school between a 3 year degree that will potentially increase my earning potential at a much higher rate than a 4 (soon to be 5) year degree whose pay will barely match inflation – what hope does IT teaching as a career have however good the graduate may be in either / both careers? To make things worse, when I finished my degree there were plenty of graduate Maths/Science jobs. Unfortunately I chose IT for my other method rather than Science, so could only apply for pure Maths jobs as there were no Maths/IT jobs available. I was lucky in that a genuine ongoing Maths /IT job came up at the right time in the July of my fourth year, which I got. If I had my time again, I would have been better to have chosen Maths/Science. Hence it’s catch 22 – few IT jobs makes it unattractive to choose an IT method, but with few IT teachers training then schools can’t offer IT as a genuine subject, or need to staff it with reluctant teachers teaching outside their method…

It would also be interesting to explore how the new Digital Technologies curriculum is implemented in schools. When I heard Paula speak last year on the topic, she seemed firmly convinced schools would have a strong incentive to offer it as a standalone subject at years 7 and 8. Sadly from feedback from schools I know the expectation is that Digital Technologies will also be taught as a general capability, including one which currently offers IT as a standalone subject which will cease to do so from next year despite having a trained IT teacher. I certainly haven’t heard anything at my current school about implementing it here, despite asking around.

Michael Walker

From: sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au [mailto:sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au] On Behalf Of Tracey Hubert
Sent: Wednesday, 27 May 2015 11:10 PM
To: itapps at edulists.com.au; sofdev at edulists.com.au
Subject: [Year 12 SofDev] A research question...

Hello,

I am a pre-service IT teacher and long-time lurker. I am working on an assessment investigating issues and debates around the implementation of the (proposed) Digital Technologies curriculum and the implications for schools and teachers. In the Donnely and Whiltsire review, they propose that IT remain a general capability and the standalone subject be scrapped or made optional. One of the arguments is there are not enough suitably qualified teachers and that it can be taught across the disciplines. They obviously miss the point that ITC != computational thinking.

I am curious to hear what practicing IT teachers think about this assertion. I went to a school tour on Friday and was surprised to learn they didn't offer IT as a subject at all, not even in VCE. No electives in Year 9. Nothing. I had a look at the overall statistics for VCE IT apps and VCE Software Development and saw enrolments are significantly down from their 2000–2001 peak. During the online PD for the new VCE subjects, Paula Christophersen mentioned they have increased this year by 10%, but it still seems quite low given the ubiquity of tech and the push for STEM subjects in general.

I was wondering if anyone has any insight as to why they think the numbers have dropped in they way they have. It can't only be explained by the scaling down, can it?

TIA
Tracey

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