ERIC Number: EJ1380641
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2022-Dec
Pages: 27
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: EISSN-1946-6226
Assessment of Code, Which Aspects Do Teachers Consider and How Are They Valued?
Neutens, Tom; Coolsaet, Kris; Wyffels, Francis
ACM Transactions on Computing Education, v22 n4 Article 46 Dec 2022
In many countries, computer programming is becoming an integral part of the secondary school curriculum. However, many teachers, especially in the first years of Flemish secondary school, have limited experience with teaching programming. To improve their knowledge about programming, many different types of professional development programs have been proposed. Nevertheless, these programs mostly focus on technical skills and less on pedagogical skills. One aspect that is often overlooked in these programs is how teachers can assess code. To get insight into what teachers currently value when assessing code, we designed an experiment that analyzes the different aspects teachers consider during the assessment of code. During the experiment, the teachers (N=13) assess a set of programs from five different fictional learners. After the assessment, they participated in a semi-structured interview, giving us insight into the assessment process. We evaluated the transcripts of the interviews using deductive thematic analysis using a coding schema defining the different aspects of code that can be assessed. Additionally, we linked the assessment strategies of teachers to their teaching experience. Our results indicate that many teachers are unaware of the different concepts that can be part of the assessment of code, which might lead to inaccurate or invalid feedback. Moreover, although our experimental group was too small to draw hard conclusions about the inter-case results, our results indicate that the number of concepts considered by teachers seems to increase with experience. These results provide an initial insight into the code assessment practices of teachers and reveals interesting pathways for future research into the assessment of code.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Secondary School Curriculum, Computer Science Education, Programming, Coding, Secondary School Teachers, Faculty Development, Evaluation Methods, Feedback (Response)
Association for Computing Machinery. 2 Penn Plaza Suite 701, New York, NY 10121. Tel: 800-342-6626; Tel: 212-626-0500; Fax: 212-944-1318; e-mail: acmhelp@acm.org; Web site: http://toce.acm.org/
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Belgium
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A