Development of a Software Education Curriculum for Secondary Schools

Abstract

With more emphasis on importance of software, many countries try to provide software education. Of course Korea includes informatics courses in 2015 revised curriculum, so that software education will be administered briskly in soon. However there are practical challenges including a lack of teaching hour in classes and the monotony of educational contents which occurs with that. To solve these problems, this research develop software education curriculum model that could be practically used for both middle and high school. First this study compare the curriculum of Korea to that of United States and United Kingdom. After analyzing the result, the curriculum model for middle and high school is developed. The curriculum model can be classified into three types, middle, high and advanced-high levels and include key concepts like collaboration and convergence, computational thinking, computing practice and programming, computers and communications devices, community, global, and ethical impacts. To assess the feasibility of our software education curriculum model, examination was made by expert group and a hearing was held by related researchers. Then the model was modified in a way that adjustable to Korea education system. This study provides some important guidances on designing a curriculum for software education at middle and high school. However, there still are difficulty adjusting to the elementary school and university course. To be able to further research, same kind of studies on elementary school and university course need to be done. Also, continuous modifications are required to reflect reality including technological advance, curriculum, and changes of education system.