Changing aims of computing education: a historical survey

ABSTRACT

Computing education has been an important and sometimes contentious issue ever since the advent of modern computing. Debates about computing education have closely followed job markets, technological development, academic interests, societal concerns, and changes in the perception of computing. The themes in computing education debates can be characterized by emergence and formation, standardization and organization, accommodation to change, and divergence. The focus of computing education has expanded outward from the computer to programming, algorithms, and information, as well as to the organizational, social, and cultural environment of computer systems.

This survey gives computing education researchers an overview of some of the central issues and disputes in computing education over the brief history of modern computing. The survey highlights the emergence of educational initiatives, concepts, joint efforts, and institutions of computing education, and outlines the relatively short history of computing education research. The survey is structured around four overlapping themes: computing education as technological training, as training for software development, as a central element for the field’s academic recognition, and as training for computational problem-solving in any domain of knowledge. Each theme has played a role throughout the history of modern computing, but their relative emphases have changed over the years.

KEYWORDS:

• Computing education
• computer science education
• CSE
• computing curricula
• history
• History of computer science education

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Peter J. Denning and the participants of the Siegen University Workshop “Beyond ENIAC: Early Digital Platforms & Practices”, June 10–12, 2016, for conversations and comments that greatly improved this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Wilkes et al.’s (1951) book is available online at https://archive.org/details/programsforelect00wilk.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matti Tedre

Matti Tedre is a professor at the School of Computing, University of Eastern Finland, and the author of The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline (CRC Press, 2014).  His research focuses on the philosophy of computer science, educational technology, computer science education research, and the disciplinary history of computing.

Simon

Simon is a senior lecturer in computing at the University of Newcastle in Australia. His research in computing education focuses on academic integrity in computing and on the development of computing education research as a discipline, which was the subject of his recent doctoral dissertation.

Lauri Malmi

Lauri Malmi is a professor at Department of Computer Science, Aalto Unversity, Finland, where he is leading the Learning + Technology (LeTech) research group. His research focuses on development and evaluation of advanced software tools to support programming education. He is a regular columnist in ACM Inroads magazine and an associate editor in IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.