A national curriculum for the study of computing became compulsory in English secondary schools in September 2014, replacing the study of information and communications technology with computer science (CS). This posed difficulties for teachers and students who did not have knowledge or experience of programming. This study was designed to…

Software security is inevitably dependent on developers' ability to to design and implement software without security bugs. Perhaps unsurprisingly, developers often fail to do this. Our goal is to understand this from a usability perspective, identifying how we might best train developers and equip them with the right software tools. To this end,…

Computational Thinking has been described as an essential skill which everyone should learn and can therefore include in their skill set. Seymour Papert (Papert, 1980) is credited as concretising Computational Thinking in 1980 but Jeanette Wing (Wing, 2006) popularised the term in 2006 and brought it to the international community's attention.…

Studying computer science (CS) in elementary schools has gained become popular in recent years. However, students at such a young age encounter difficulties when first engaging with CS. Robotics has been proposed as a medium for teaching CS to young students, because it reifies concepts in a tangible object, and because of the excitement of…

Evaluating the quality of students' programs is necessary for better teaching and learning. Although many innovative learning environments for computer science have been introduced, the scarcity of program evaluation frames and tools is a demanding issue in the teaching practice. This study examined the quality of students' Scratch programs by…

This article reports on implementation of a problem-based learning intervention developed with the intention of finding time for computer science (CS) in the elementary school day. This study investigated differences in effects on students in particular socio-demographic groups using a quasi-experimental design. We first provide an overview of the…

Understanding the students' programming misconceptions is critical in that it identifies the reasons why students make errors in programming and allows instructors to design instructions accordingly. This study investigated the mental models of programming concepts held by pre-service teachers who were novice programmers. In an introductory…

The underrepresentation of certain groups in computing has led to increasing efforts to develop computing curricula that is responsive and relevant to a more diverse group of learners. The current paper used a Quick Scoping Review methodology to identify research that has implemented and evaluated culturally responsive and relevant K-12 computing…

The purpose of this study is to identify secondary computer science (CS) teachers' pedagogical needs in the United States. Participants were selected from secondary teachers who were teaching CS courses or content in a school setting (public, private, or charter) or an after-school program during the time of data collection. This is a qualitative…

In these early stages of implementation of the English computing curriculum policy reforms, there are uncertainties with regards to the intentions of computing to young people. To date, research regarding the English computing curriculum has been mostly concerned with the content of the curriculum, its delivery and surrounding pedagogy. In…