«Teaching Computing in School: Is research reaching classroom practice?»
Sue SentanceDirector of Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre University of Cambridge
Abstract
Increasingly computing is becoming part of the school curriculum in countries around the world. In addition, the number of research papers and projects focusing on K-12 computing education has grown almost exponentially over the last decade. But is that research reaching the classroom? If not, what are the mechanisms that we can use to ensure that it does? In this talk I will look at different ways in which research knowledge can be mobilised into practice in school. The study of knowledge mobilisation suggests that research can impact on practice through knowledge transfer, knowledge translation and/or knowledge transformation. I will look at different approaches to supporting the transformation of research into classroom practice, and augment the discussion with some examples from work we’ve been engaged with in England.
Bio
Sue Sentance is the Chief Learning Officer at the Raspberry Pi Foundation and Director of the new Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Centre at the University of Cambridge, UK. She received her PhD in Artificial Intelligence from Edinburgh University back in 1993, and since then has worked as a secondary teacher, teacher trainer, university lecturer and researcher. At the Raspberry Pi Foundation she acts as an advisor for the Foundation on all their teaching and learning activities, and leads the research team. She has played a leading role in the government-funded National Centre for Computing Education, and leads the Gender Balance in Computing research programme. Her research areas include programming pedagogy, specifically PRIMM, and teacher professional development in computing.
