Reference Format: Bernadette Spieler, Tobias M. Schifferle, and Tobias Berner. 2022. Beliefs and Expectations of Primary Student Teachers in Informatics. In Proceedings of
the 17th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education (WiPSCE
’22), October 31-November 2, 2022, Morschach, Switzerland. ACM, New York,
NY, USA, 4 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3556787.3556868
Authors:
Bernadette Spieler, bernadette.spieler@phzh.ch, Zurich University of Teacher Education, Centre for Education and Digital Transformation, Zurich, Switzerland
Tobias M. Schifferle, tobias.schifferle@phzh.ch, Zurich University of Teacher Education, Centre for Media Education and Informatics, Zurich, Switzerland
Tobias Berner, tobias.berner@phzh.ch, Zurich University of Teacher Education, Mathematics and Informatics, Zurich, Switzerland
ABSTRACT
With the new “Curriculum 21” in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, media education and informatics have become much more important for compulsory education. However, introducing a new subject is a challenging task. Most university students had no or only very limited opportunities to be exposed to topics of computer science (CS) topics during their school years.
To learn more about students’ beliefs and experiences, a preliminary survey was conducted. Open questions were asked to first-year students (n=251) and students in their last semester who had not yet taken any informatics classes during their studies (n=212). However, the students in their last semester had already completed internships in which they could participate in or conduct “Media and Informatics (MI)” classes. This difference is reflected in the responses: The students of the first semester more often mentioned application skills, and a negative attitude towards CS became apparent. In contrast, the students of the last semester frequently named teaching
methods and characteristics of informatics classes.
CCS CONCEPTS
• Applied computing→Education; • Social and professional
topics→Computing education programs.
KEYWORDS
curricular aspects, primary teacher education, informatics education,
teacher beliefs