Exploring the Effect of Teaching Methods on Students’ Learning of School Informatics

Abstract

School informatics is a relatively new subject in comparison to mathematics and science. As a result, there is much less research on the area of informatics didactics. Likewise, there is lack of theoretical grounding of the field and associated teaching methods and learning processes. The lack of research in the field of school informatics makes it difficult to identify which methods are effective to teach the subject. In addition, despite the emphasis on a set of well-defined topics, the informatics curriculum makes few suggestions as to which didactical skills teachers need to acquire in order to teach these topics. In fact, school informatics education is still in its infancy. It lacks the extensive research base of materials published for the didactics of mathematics or science. The main research objective of this work is to investigate the effectiveness of teaching methods and their impact on learning school informatics.