Tinkering within the computing SEC syllabus

Abstract

‘Making’ has always been in existence; to survive, people came up with their own ideas, skills and inspirations to develop things to help them live a better, a more comfortable life. ‘Making’ is essential for education as it leads to a progressive one; a movement which is motivated on claims and disciplines very similarly to those by Piaget, Dewey, Papert and Freire (Libow Martinez & Stager, 2013). Nowadays, technology is of central importance to each and every one of us even more to 21st century students. The ‘Maker Movement’ is leading to changes on how people process information and gain technical knowledge. It allows people to share their own ideas and opinions by joining together, experiment, experience and develop new things. This research aims to discover the perception of in-service Computing educators towards ‘making’, after analysing a pack which consists of a series of ‘making’ activities from various sections of the Computing SEC Syllabus. Data is collected through the use of semi-structured interviews with educators coming from different girls’ and boys’ secondary independent/private/government schools. The results derived show that the educators are willing to include ‘making’ activities within their Computing lessons, because they believe that it is highly beneficial for the students. The teachers interviewed believe that besides enhancing the students’ analytical and logical thoughts, students would better understand the Computing concepts and their learning would become deeper and more fun. Nonetheless, participants believe that this should be accompanied by a change in the syllabus.