Software Engineering in Primary and Secondary Schools - Informatics Education is more than Programming

• Published in: 2016 IEEE 29th International Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEET) pp. 132 - 136
• Main Authors: Bollin, Andreas, Pasterk, Stefan, Antonitsch, Peter, Sabitzer, Barbara
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.04.2016
• Subjects: Colleges; Conferences; Curricula development; Education; Informatics; Primary and Secondary Schools; Programming; Programming profession; Software; Software engineering; Teachers; Training
• ISSN: 2377-570X
• DOI: 10.1109/CSEET.2016.26

Software Engineering is definitely an important subject matter and it is taught all over the world: at Universities, at Colleges, and recently also at High Schools. There are international Software Engineering curricula, standards, and certificates, but there is no manifestation of Software Engineering (and related practices) in the course syllabi at primary and secondary schools. There are good reasons for it, but based on the authors' experiences gained in combining Software Engineering topics with school projects and based on discussions with teachers and curriculum designers, this paper shows that informatics education can be much more than just programming. Even more, the paper shows that it makes sense to interweave Software Engineering topics with school projects and to motivate for the most important practices related to that field.