Barriers to New Zealand High School CS Education - Learners' Perspectives
Chamindi K. Samarasekara, Claudia Ott, Anthony V. Robins · Proceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education · 2022
Ten years ago new computer science and programming achievement standards were introduced to New Zealand's national curriculum for students in their final three years at high school. However, as recent research has shown, the goal of placing these subjects on a par with subjects such as Physics and Maths has not been met. Therefore it is timely to investigate why student participation and retention for computer science and programming standards remain low. In this article, we present results from an in-depth qualitative study of students' perspectives regarding computer science and programming achievement standards. We identify eight main themes which students report as directly influencing their participation and retention in these standards. For example the placement of these standards outside the core academic areas in the curriculum, issues with the content, the assessments, and support materials as well as the guidance provided by some schools were identified as major obstacles for participation.