Abstract
The 2017 reform of the Swedish national curriculum requires that all compulsory school mathematics and technology teachers integrate programming into their teaching. The new programming policy poses a particular challenge since a majority of the affected teachers have little or no previous programming experience. This paper reports on a study of teachers preparing to implement the new policy. Insight into the preparation process was made possible through recorded group conversations and data were collected in March 2018, less than 4 months before the formal enactment of the new curriculum. The results, conceptualised by using a framework for intrinsic and extrinsic challenges, reveal several challenges that can potentially affect the uptake of the programming policy and the quality of implementation such as uncertainty about the subject content, unequal professional development opportunities, lack of teaching materials and recurring problems with school IT infrastructure. This study seeks to provide knowledge about teachers’ concerns and expressed needs while negotiating programming as new curriculum content and thus aims to contribute to the understanding of teachers’ strategies to approach the 2017 Swedish educational reform that introduces programming. Such knowledge is valuable for the possibilities to better understand under what circumstances programming is included in school mathematics and technology. The results illustrate the complexity of curriculum reform implementation and may be of value for decision makers at all levels of school policy and also for providers of both in-service and preservice teacher training.
Highlights
This paper explores consequences of the inclusion of programming in the 2017 Swedish curriculum for compulsory school from a teacher perspective
The results are presented in two sections: (1) Intrinsic challenges for implementation of programming, (2) Extrinsic challenges for implementation of programming
This study explored the following research question: What challenges for integrating programming are expressed by in-service teachers? This was done by analysing a group of teachers’ conversations about an upcoming policy change which introduces programming as core content in mathematics and technology
Summary
This paper explores consequences of the inclusion of programming in the 2017 Swedish curriculum for compulsory school from a teacher perspective. It was found that schools on average assigned Datalära less than one-third of the recommended time of 80 h and that professional development initiatives were scarce (Riis 1987) During this period, there was increased access to more purposeful software which lessened the need to spend time on making programs (Rolandsson 2015). The school digitalisation efforts of the 1980s would later be described as top-down initiatives where teachers’ experiences and professional development needs were not sufficiently recognized (Farkell-Bååthe 2000; Hylén et al 2002) and pedagogy, teaching methods and subject integration remained more or less unchanged (Riis 1991 in Farkell-Bååthe 2000)
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