The Rise of CS Across the Pond with Phil Bagge
In this interview with Phil Bagge, we discuss the rise of CS in UK curricula, the evolution of Phil’s pedagogical approach, how time constraints impact pedagogical approaches, not letting the loudest voices drive instruction, how research informs Phil’s approach for working with teachers new to CS, how to emphasize student agency in teacher professional development, and much more.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week alternates between an episode
where i unpack some scholarship
and an episode where i interview one or
more guests in this week's particular
episode i'm
interviewing phil bagg who has been
doing computer science education in the
uk before it became part of the national
curriculum
in our conversation today we discussed
the rise of cs in the uk
the evolution of phil's pedagogical
approach how time constraints impact
pedagogical approaches
not letting the loudest voices drive
instruction our research informs phil's
approach for working with teachers new
to cs how to emphasize student agency
and teacher professional development
and so much more there are people and
organizations and curricula that phil
mentions in this particular episode and
i include links to those in the show
notes which you can find at
o'leary.com or by simply clicking the
link in the description for the app that
you're listening to this on
all that being said we will now begin
with an introduction by phil
so my name's full bag and i have quite a
lot of jobs really
lots of different sort of variety of
things i do i teach at two different
primary schools
i have done my best to maintain having a
teaching role still
unlike most primary school teachers
which is your elementary school in the
states
i don't teach all the curriculum i just
teach the computing
then i also work for hampshire's
inspection and advisory
service so i work helping schools
running training working with the
computing
managers computing leads persons
responsible for their computing
curriculum in school
working with them helping them to design
new curricula run lots and lots of
training
cpd continual professional development
that's
really me in a nutshell really can you
tell me the story of how
you started teaching computer science
education like in the classroom before
it was actually part of
a national curriculum yeah so this is
quite an interesting one really so i was
an ict skills advisor we actually had a
job title called an advanced skills
teacher and what that means is that i
talked as a primary school teacher for
four days a week and then i was employed
to go
and support other schools anywhere in my
sort of area
and to help them with computing and i
loved the job it was great fun
loads of opportunities to get into
schools and i'd done
lots and lots of work in my own school
at really sort of raising the level of
ict
information and communication technology
and i loved it and we've done lots of
things with we wanted the first schools
to go
and have a google domain even before
there was google classroom
we'd rolled that out to first of all the
teachers then the year six children
that's the ten to elevens and then
all the way down what years and years
before anyone else had got into all of
that
i loved all of those things but i always
felt that there was a sort of a plateau
where children could get to once you
sort of learn every sort of
google skill or you learn every word
processing aspect or how to make a good
video and all of that's got
you know loads of great things in it
there was nowhere else they could go
and i was sort of looking for something
that would really challenge my pupils
and really make them interested and give
them that sort of sense of something
that they could
really improve and that there was so
much bigger than them
that they could really sort of dig their
teeth into and think oh i can really
start with this but i'm not gonna
finish it in a couple of weeks you know
i was looking around for something and i
bumped into computing at schools which
was an organization that was starting to
so promote
computing science in the classroom so i
joined that
i think about 2012 and it was just a
mailing list when i joined it from all
sorts of people
across the country you know from lots of
different perspectives and i joined it
from the sort of primary side
and i started just experimenting you
know i started trying all sorts of
programming things with my
class that i had then i am probably the
only person
ever who has tried to teach python with
seven and eight year olds
you know so because i didn't really know
any better i just tried all sorts of
things and
little by little i made some horrendous
mistakes one of which i've just
mentioned
i sort of realized there was something
really quite cool in all this and really
quite exciting and i loved some of the
things that the children would
be able to get into and i loved the fact
that it was just so much more open-ended
with so much more sort of knowledge and
understanding that they really
had no chance of plumbing in the depths
of
my time with them anyway so what i did
is i actually approached a whole load of
head teachers because i
had this other role i approached a whole
load of head teachers
and i said how about you come and let me
work for you in your school and i'll
teach some computing science
now i've got to be honest i think most
of them didn't have a clue what i was
talking about
but because i had a good reputation as
somebody who would improve their ict
curriculum they thought you know
so five of them said yes and i ended up
sort of going through all these
different schools
you know half day here a day here and
teaching computing science
and lots of programming lots of scratch
so i'm doing this and then of course
just after i started this
the announcement came that ict was going
and it was going to change into
computing
and so there was a new national
curriculum which was written
and so everything sort of changed but i
sort of preempted that i remember at one
point having a video
chat with about four people in the uk
and we were probably the only four
people in primary
who were teaching any computing science
you know anywhere and two of them were
in private school and then there was me
and southampton in a state school
and there was another lady that was
about it
at that point so yeah that's sort of how
i got into that sort of cider
so how did it go from like a small group
of people who were engaging this
into being part of the national
curriculum basically i think there had
been
quite a lot of lobbying of the then
education
secretary who was doing a big curriculum
rewrite anyway
a lot of the people in the computing at
school sort of group
lobbied and worked on and they basically
i think persuaded him
to allow them to write a new curriculum
now i didn't get involved in the
original writing it bit
but i did get involved in the first edit
of it which was quite exciting and
actually
whatever anybody says it did have some
primary school teachers it did have some
secondary school teachers you know it
wasn't just an imposed curriculum on
us i don't think we got everything right
really
exciting and interesting process and i
never thought in any of my time
that i would ever be involved in taking
part in editing a national document so
that was quite exciting in some ways
what were some of the motivations behind
lobbying for it so like i see a lot of
value in computer science
in general but the typical discourse in
the united states is well there's these
unmet jobs we need to fill this job
market by
training kids k-12 now so that way they
can
fill these jobs i'm curious is it
similar in england like is that
part of the push for getting it in the
national curriculum or was it something
completely different
in the uk there was a lot more made of
jeanette wings call to have
computational thinking skills
so i think that was part of it and then
i think there was a visit by somebody
quite prominent from either google
or one of the big tech firms who came
over and gave a speech and basically
said look
you know you guys from the uk you did a
brilliant job of
kicking off sort of computing in the
early days you know you've got the
original code breakers at brixley park
you know and you've got all that
wonderful sort of starting and you've
sort of abandoned it all and you've
missed out on that strand
and then there was a lot of teachers
from the sort of 1980s when there was
an aspect of computing science in the
curriculum going yeah you know there was
and
we sort of abandoned it and gone sort of
microsoft office
i think probably a lot of people sort of
saying well we've missed something
we've cut something out of our
curriculum and we're at danger of
missing out i don't think
really the main thing that was pushed
was a jobs market i certainly don't
remember it like that anyway
yeah that's interesting one of the
things i'm interested in is just like
the larger discourse like how are people
communicating and whatnot but like
another thing that i'm
really interested in is the changes that
educators or the system as a whole makes
over time
and so like i have been constantly
reflecting on well how is it that i have
changed over the last
number of years that i've been in
education but i'm curious from your own
standpoint like
how has your own approach to pedagogy or
philosophy as
education changed over time and like
what led to some of those changes
yeah i think in some ways i was at a
little bit of a disadvantage when i
first got into this because
there was almost nobody anywhere doing
computing science at the level of
education i was doing
and so my first of course was to go and
look at the sort of scratch foundation
and
at that point it seemed to mostly be
saying right just let the children get
on and do this stuff
let's just be totally constructionist
you should just be the person who's
there facilitating a bit and now okay i
know that's
probably a little bit of caricature
of what they were saying so i tried that
approach first of all
right let's go play with this stuff and
see what we can come up with and after
about six months of doing that i
felt really depressed i thought actually
i'm not convinced any of my pupils are
really making any progress they seem to
be stuck on
lots of coloring in sprites lots of very
very low level activities
and so i thought i've just got to try
something different really so then i
went probably
the opposite and i went very
instructionist and a lot of copy coding
and then of course you're trying to sort
of still keep that creativity in there
so you're thinking well okay
we're copy coding but i've got to give
children a chance to make some stuff as
well because
it's no point if you're just copying it
that's boring you know so
did that for a while wrote lots of work
off of that
tried lots of things found that that was
quite a good
introductional approach that children
you know
learned the sort of programming
environment from that sort of things
but after about i don't know 18 months
two years of that
maybe a little bit longer i looked at
sort of what was coming out a couple of
years
later of the children who had just done
that approach
and i was sort of equally depressed
really i just thought well i've sort of
gone the other way and
there are a group of children who are
doing quite well from this
but it's not all of them it's not
universal it's not equitable enough you
know
so i felt quite depressed about that at
that point i'd even written a book with
lots of open projects in there
and things so it was quite a big sort of
thing really for me
just to come back and think hang on
there's got to be a better way really
and it's probably at that point i came
back and started
reading a lot much computing research
and at that point you and the states had
gotten bored
people from israel got on broad loads of
people were sort of getting on board
this
and so we're starting to see more
research come out
and more people writing research for
novice programmers
in block based languages so then it
becomes a bit more interesting and at
that point i'm reading loads and loads
of stuff
and having really sort of teach myself a
lot of things as well at the same time i
mean i was really lucky
that one of my really good friends in
southampton professor
les carr at southampton university he
has just been a wonderful mentor
the type of person who's happy to sit
there and explain something
to an absolute idiot like myself on
occasions you know and that has been
just brilliant
and so being able to have that time to
unpick ideas
read research i actually ended up going
back
to sort of use modify crate which i'd
looked at
quite a long time in the past but i
hadn't really sort of engaged with it i
thought well this sounds good
and even had a little go at it but i'd
taken it a bit too much at face value
so i'd given the children stuff right go
use this and then right let's make some
changes to it and i hadn't been very
sort of
guided through the process and then of
course
one of my favorite researchers in the uk
is a sue sentence
and she came up with this sort of prim
which is a lovely adaptation of views
modify creates
now her research is all a secondary
pupils which is our sort of 11 year olds
plus
but i thought to myself hang on this
then made more sense of use modify crate
because it made me think actually it's
not just use it's more investigate
and investigate can be a bit more of a
guided process
it can be a little bit more you know you
the teacher think about the concepts and
things you want them to come up with
you want them to really look at so maybe
you should write some questions for that
and really sort of focus what they look
at
and the same for the modify aspect you
know maybe
if we get children to really sort of
focus in on the bits
so if i've taught them about count
controlled loops let's ask them to
modify some count controlled loops and
then they'll learn a bit more about
count controlled loops
and the lovely bit also was that was
adding that lovely predict bit
before everything that thinking about
the bigger purpose for the code
then really the process for me has been
trying all of that so trying a sort of
strand of use modified crate but with a
bit more structure to it
trying to work out what's a really good
way to go from pupils who modify code
to pupils who can create because in fact
if they can't come out with agency in
the programming process
what's the point they're not going to
enjoy you're not going to enjoy it
so how do we get them to go from that
modifying bit to the creating bit
and that's been a really exciting thing
you know sort of making slightly harder
modifications
often with a sort of block based
programming approach at first i would
give children a whole project to make
right you know go make something that
uses controlled loops and then thinking
well actually
it's easy for the child to start in the
original project that you made
and add a whole thing into there because
that's nearer to the modification
they've got all their examples on hand
oh okay that's a better first step and
then they can get into making their own
you know totally independent thing it's
been a sort of a real
process of looking at this research and
thinking what's cool about it
what works and how can i adapt this from
something that was written for python
for text-based languages how can i adapt
that
into block based languages and for my
much younger children as well
and also as a computing inspector and
advisor
i'm always thinking well that's great
but i've also got lots of teachers are
going to be teaching this who don't have
the same level of knowledge that i have
so how can i write stuff into that
questions and hints and
things so that it enables them to teach
this successfully
and actually the prim structure really
works
well for that with the sort of questions
because
it's a lot closer for our elementary
primary teachers
to a lot of the strategies they use for
teaching literacy
and english and math in fact it fits
better pedagogically
for what they understand for other areas
of teaching i had a lovely
training session where i went in and i
did some things for the first sort of
evening
and i left them with some modules of
work to do and
two of the year five teachers which are
nine to ten year olds
about a month later i came back and they
said oh phil this is brilliant we went
and did this with our class and they
totally nearly got it and then really
they just sold it to the rest of the
school you know
that all the other teachers who were not
quite sure again oh yeah yeah this is
called it
because it's a lot closer to working
pedagogy that they can see happening in
other areas
as well the other thing that's been a
big thing for me with this has been
the introduction of concepts and
thinking about progression as well
i realized early on that i introduced
too many concepts too quickly
there was a lot of cognitive overload so
going back to things like
non-computing science things like
sweller's work on
cognitive load theory and thinking
actually why is it children love this
lesson
but the next week they can't remember
half of it you know
and thinking well actually maybe it's
because i introduced too many things
and i've just literally cognitively
overloaded them really
so coming back out of that and thinking
well okay well
what's a good progression taking some
lovely stuff from your everyday
computing guys who have done a
great job in a really nice progression
and really helped me for definites to
think that through
and to think about what's more complex
that has made a big difference to my
curriculum
taking things i used to do in eight nine
year olds and you can actually
loops in loops that is a really
complicated one let's leave that to a
little bit later
you know maybe variables too early let's
leave that to a bit later you know and i
love also
sushi grover all her vela stuff all her
understanding
the concept away from the computer first
and we've always done
quite a lot of that in primary anyway
she brought about a bit more rigor
to that aspect than i'd had before and
that has also helped
a lot of the teachers that we're working
with because they like this idea of
introducing a concept
away from the programming language first
there's some nice research about the
transferability of that between
different programming languages as well
if you teach the concepts away from
just one programming language which i've
definitely seen
children find it easier to go from one
block based programming language to
another
because the concepts were taught outside
of the programming language so it's
easier for them to
take that and go oh yeah that's a count
controlled whatever
that's an indefinite loop you know we
got that that was nothing to do with
scratch that was just a concept we did
in an algorithm somewhere you know
so yeah if people haven't heard i did an
interview with shuchi
and it's a good interview she's got a
book that came out probably about a year
ago
so i can dive deeper into that having
like
worked in research but also as an
educator like i know there's always like
more questions to ask and like i really
wish there was more research on
a b or c i'm curious for you like what
do you wish there's more research on
that could inform what you do or what
the teachers do that you work with
yeah i think one of the biggest
difficulties for me
has been having to take often research
that is
one stage of education above where i'm
at or even sometimes two stages
and try and think well how can i get the
bits out of that which would work for my
elementary pupils
so a big thing for me would be to have
much
more elementary research into this
and we've got a lovely lady jane waite
in the uk
who's done some lovely primary based
elementary based research
into design in programming especially
with sort of block based things
and i just think we need more of that
really no
not siri that bit but more research into
elementary aspects of this
because i think we can garner things
from research at a higher level but
we're always having to then
do that thing where we're yes that's
true but also our children have got less
experience of life or of maths or of
literacy
you have to do that sort of translation
approach which is not always the easiest
thing
so yeah that would be a big one for me
yeah that makes sense a lot of the
research that i've
been interested in have been in more
informal spaces and those informal
spaces usually are with older people but
also have a range from like elementary
kids through
like adult and because of that like it's
kind of hard to sometimes translate into
what would this look like in a
formalized educational space and
it was fun experimenting with that but
it definitely was a lot of work trying
to
reconceive of something in a new venue
essentially i enjoyed it in that really
early stage when i first looked at
a lot of the programming research almost
none of it was in a school's context
having run clubs for children they're a
very very different thing to
teaching and you can get a whole load
more work out of children
when you're in a formal educational
space because they're expecting to do
that
they're expecting to work hard with this
well that's my experience anyway so
i think they are a different thing
really here's probably
something a bit controversial i just
wish everybody
in research would stop keep saying that
they are
following constructionist principles
almost every single research paper you
read
they say and we're all following
constructionist principles
and then you read the research and you
think i don't know
you're following the construction of
principal in as much as
someone's making something which is
great and actually i think you know that
massively valuable thing but
i do get a little bit fed up of reading
that
and thinking well you're not really
following a full constructionist
principles there really let's be honest
you know
yeah i agree with constructionism and a
couple of other areas of
research where i have like dove deep in
it it's clear when some people have read
the abstract and not actually read
the large body of work that actually
describes the thing that they're
claiming to do so yeah i totally
totally know what you're talking about
with that in a prior conversation you
had mentioned that
i think it was on average students had
about 12 hour long sessions throughout
the year
i'm curious like how the approaches that
you've
kind of like landed on as like hey this
works really well how those are kind of
match to that 12 one hour time blocks
and if you would
go with a different approach like let's
say you had like every single day an
hour a day
in the classroom well first of all it's
worth saying that
we've actually got three times that
amount of time okay but the
the programming
computing science bit okay there's
another 12 hours which most primary
schools would use for more
information technology which could be
anything from green screening to video
making to word processing that sort of
side of things
and then there's another 12 hours that
we'd mostly dedicate to online safety
okay and thinking about how do we make
good citizens
schools are totally free to change that
percentage of time
and to do more of different things i
confess that on occasions i do
do more computing science than the other
two but it is important to do some of
the other two as well
and actually for our primary pupils you
know they do need functional
skills in things as well as the
understanding of computing science and
and they do need to have a really good
discussion think about
some of the issues around being a good
citizen
online and how they can avoid some of
the dangers and make the most of some of
the positive things so
you know that's important too so
although i have a bias towards the
computing science i have to say
having taught all of them for many many
years i think it is important that we do
have a balanced curriculum that has
other things in there as well
now the original question though it was
about i suspect you know if i had more
time than those 12 hour sessions
so first of all it's worth saying not
every school splits it into an hour so
for some of my schools they have a
longer slot
one of my schools i have the equivalent
of an afternoon a week
which is about a two and a half hour
slot so schools are very
different in their approach to this i
think it is true that that sort of
code comprehension methodologies that
sort of use modified crate prim
those sorts of things do lend themselves
quite well to picking them up
starting something go working that way
through it quite independently
in pairs so it actually does work quite
well on that sort of
slot for so many weeks sort of yeah i
ask cause like i've worked in
some districts where i would see the
kids every single week
year but then i also worked in another
district where
i would see the kids for three weeks
straight every day for like 40 minutes
and then i wouldn't see them again for
six more weeks so like
each approach was like afforded some
things but also constrained other
approaches that i could have used so
like project-based learning was great
for the three-week
chunk of time because every day they
were coming in and working on things but
that
might not have worked as well when i
only saw them 30 minutes for a little
bit
but they all kind of had their pros and
cons so i was just curious if it would
change for you
okay so it's worth saying i tend to use
the code comprehension stuff for
the programming that we're doing which
is mostly screen based
if i'm doing projects that involve
design and technology
that involve things like the crumble
control board
we do an independent electronics project
we do a robot wars project
and those tend to have a different
structure to them
it's a lot more difficult to do code
comprehension with those sorts of things
and in some ways i use the screen based
stuff to really sort of
make sure children really understand
that and then when you get into doing
the more
the projects which involve building
things as well
that you're not having to teach so much
of that and you are much more doing a
sort of a
creative project a more project based
learning approach
that is a different thing and i have
tried a bit of code comprehension with
that
side of things and it sort of works i
wouldn't have said that was the best
thing for that
i'm still trying to work out the optimal
strategy for that sort of programming
experience really
now the way you're describing this it
sounds like it's almost like a set
time or a set class that students go to
separate from like their i don't know if
you call like a homeroom teacher
is that accurate it is for me in my
schools that i teach in
but in most primary schools that
wouldn't be in most primary schools
computing would be like every other
subject would be taught by the class
teacher
your homeroom teacher you know wouldn't
be a specialist
so there are schools that do employ
specialists to do it but
the majority would be the class teacher
so of course anything you do
has to work for somebody who's a
non-specialist really
so with that being said like in the
states like when it is a just like a
general classroom teacher
they're often trying to find ways to
integrate with another subject area it's
not learning computer science for the
sake of learning computer science or
computational thinking
it's trying to find a way okay yeah we
value that but we really need to improve
our math scores so is there a way that
we can do both at the same time
is that also something that teachers in
uk deal with or
is it like a separate no we learn
computer science for the sake of
learning computer science
it's interesting that because left over
from our old ict curriculum
was this idea of the best way to teach
ict was to integrate it into other areas
so a lot of people took that when they
went from ict to computing
they took that approach and went oh yes
we previously if we were going to do
word processing we might do that with a
literacy fill
or the history project and actually
there's a lot of brilliant stuff that
integrates really well from that one of
the things i've argued
very much for though is to look at
computing science in a different way
so i would say that that information
technology and that
is a servant to the rest of the
curriculum
because in a way it's not really its own
subject
it's how to use lots of stuff to work
our way through the digital world
whereas what i've argued quite heavily
in the uk is that actually
computing science is its own subject now
that doesn't mean that it's not going to
have impetus and topic and
things that you're going to be exciting
which will link to others but it's not a
servant to maths
it's not a servant to history if those
things coincide
in a great way go for it there was the
scratch maths project which was a big uk
thing
and that looked at whether learning math
skills
using scratch would improve your math
skills actually although it found that
it would improve the computational
thinking
skills of children it didn't actually
found that it massively improved their
math skills really
personally i think it's much better to
teach the computing science for its own
sake
because it's a really interesting
exciting subject in its own right
i think that is respectful to computing
science
and that doesn't mean you won't end up
hitting touching other things i mean i
do a lovely
project around cartesian coordinates
because it fits really well
and it's a lovely maths link and i do
think it makes a difference to their
enjoyment and excitement of using those
yeah that makes sense and
from like an educational psychology
perspective i worry when we focus
so much on integration in the states
that it
gets rid of the joy of being able to
create through computer science and just
like
exploring the medium and it kind of
turns it into basically like a digital
equivalent of a worksheet so like yeah
you're coding but you're just coding to
solve
like predetermined answers rather than
to like create something or solve like
problems that have open-ended solutions
so that's kind of like my
fear with some of the way that i've seen
integration happen
i'm a big believer in it's nice if you
can find a link
but i think often the thing that loses
out most when people
stretch those links and make them fit is
the computing science
and i don't think that's fair to the
subject what it would say though
is that we should look for a variety of
genre in this you know
it shouldn't all be gaming it shouldn't
all be math stuff
typically for the primary i think the
stuff that does some shape drawing type
stuff is great
logo was the one that led the way in
that you know we can definitely do some
great stuff in scratch or
other block based programming languages
gaming definitely making some games is a
great thing
and children can put a great stamp of
interest in what they love
on that you know and i think some app
making in for me covers lots and lots of
other sort of things you might make
everything from a fish tank to something
that adds up some numbers or you know
so i'm a big one for believing that we
should never
think that children like certain things
and we should also be really careful in
the classroom
for being driven by what the noisiest
children say
they'll have a little story so i
remember teaching a computing science
thing which was about
how we could use computing science to do
some basic math problems
and how we could use variables in order
and there were some quite noisy boys in
that lesson who would sort of
in no uncertain terms they'd done the
work but they'd let me know that it
wasn't really anywhere near
as exciting as the gaming project we've
done previously and i was
just walking away from this project
feeling sort of you know
okay i think that worked they did what i
wanted them to do but i was just coming
around the corner and there were these
five goals and they rushed up
to their class teacher who they've got a
better relationship with because
she teaches them all the time and they
say oh miss that was a brilliant session
we really enjoyed that
it's really interesting and i thought
phil you
must not judge it just by the noisiest
kids in the class
it actually made me think oh i've just
got to make those genres available to
all the children
as long as we've got a balance of stuff
that's great and they will find the
things they enjoy
and they'll put up with doing the other
things because they're still learning
some stuff you know
yeah that was definitely something that
i tried to do when i was in the
classroom and then with the curriculum
that i currently create like just
constantly trying to find
that balance between like stories and
like design
and games and apps like so that way it's
not just like one thing
because while i might love a game based
curriculum some kid might hate it
last year in both of my year five and
six classes
the best games were made by my goals
easily
really really well produced so i don't
believe we should think this thing all
you know it's all the boys who love the
games
that's rubbish i just think we should
just have this open thing which is
let's give them a wide variety of genres
and let them find the things they like
in that
second guess it either you know because
we'll probably be wrong
yeah no that's a good point i'm curious
like through all these different
approaches that you've tried
over the years and like with the
research how has that kind of informed
your own approach when working with
teachers who are new to teaching
computing in their classrooms
i think it's interesting there are
things i still use
so even from that original instructional
thing say
we're doing a session of cpd on
introducing to scratch
so i will often do a very instructionist
because in some ways people need to see
some stuff early on
same with my pupils in fact most of them
can't do co-comprehension type
methodologies
if they don't understand the basics of
the environment so there is a place for
some of that
which i think is still useful but i also
want my students and my teachers to work
harder than me
and actually if the only approach is
instruction i'm probably working harder
than them whereas actually when i
get them to start thinking for
themselves a little bit more
funneling them into trying some of those
things
i also am a big believer in sort of
paired work
even for some of the sort of prim stuff
and for teachers as well i'll say look
lina i want you to pair up with somebody
else
who's about the same so if you've never
done any of this choose someone who's
never done any of this
don't go and find the one person who's
done it all because that is not going to
help you
they will do all the work for your sit
back and you know so find someone who's
about the same
level as you and then you'll struggle
together
you've got to know that i'm a big
believer that we all going to make bugs
in this that bugs are in
totally normal don't be worried about i
won't be funny with you
i'll be totally cool if you get stuff
wrong i get stuff wrong in front of the
children sometimes it's totally normal
it's going to be normal for you in the
classroom as well that actually is a
liberating thing for a lot of teachers
because they're used to other curriculum
areas
where you know if you write the wrong
spelling of something on there and
someone comes in it's like
and here we're saying well actually you
are going to do the wrong coding
sometimes it's just
you know even professor les carr from
southampton university
is coping with bugs on a daily basis and
that's probably
quite a liberating thing for a lot of
primary school teachers when they hear
that
okay all right so i can start then it's
not the end of the world if i
make some mistakes you know the other
thing i'm a big one when i'm
working with other teachers it's really
just talking about
some of the ways that children avoid
learning so i will often talk about
learned helplessness
how children will try and get you as the
teacher
or the child sitting next to them to do
the work for them and then we look at
strategies that can help teachers to get
children around from that
now secretly i'm doing two things yes
i'm helping them with real strategies
that work really well in the classroom
but i'm also challenging their own
learned helplessness because actually
there is in
almost every elementary primary school
there are teachers
who rely on other people to do their
technology for them and that's not a
helpful thing for them
when i've done sessions with this i
always remember doing
a really big session with four schools
and
the lead head teacher for a whole group
of about 25 academy schools
she came up after the first session when
i talked about learned helplessness and
she said i've got to be honest with you
i have been really learnt helpless in
the past and she said
i'm going to stop doing that now and i
tell you something the
impact i had honestly the amount of work
that everybody else put in
because she was leading from example
really you know
by recognizing that and you could see
that at school where we better take this
seriously and do it if she thinks that
you know
you know so that's another big approach
which i think is really important
and also i think it's really important
to just
put computing because a lot of people in
the uk
would not have had a computing
background in their own education so
they wouldn't have had a computing
science bit because it hasn't really
been in
our education system for a long time for
me a lot of that
is about framing and saying well
actually what we're doing is the
gatekeepers to a whole set of knowledge
and that actually if we leave that bit
of knowledge out of children's
curriculum
then that's another gate that a lot of
them will never push on
so really you're restricting their
opportunities in work in university
in the future and then also talking
about
how much computing although you might
not become a programmer
how much an understanding computing can
be interesting for lots of other
sciences
and for all sorts of other areas of
development so i think you know don't
just think about it as
you're opening up programming you're
opening up children's eyes to how a lot
of the world works
and that might be useful for them later
on when they go and do other things as
well and if you don't open that door a
lot of them will never push it
themselves
and actually primary school teachers are
pretty cool at wanting to give
opportunity
yeah and actually often find rise to
that occasion
you've mentioned it a little bit but i'm
curious like how do you
encourage teachers to do this in a way
that emphasizes
agency with kids so whatever strategy
you're choosing
whatever sort of pedagogy i think it's
important to have an agreement with your
pupils
that actually they are going to get some
create time in there
say i'm using something like the code
comprehension methodologies
what that's been great is great for
enabling me to actually support those
children who need the support
most so i typically two-thirds of my
children can get on with that pretty
independently and with a partner
they can do it they can mark it then
they can go on to the next sections they
can do it themselves
but that then freed me up to work with
those children who need me to read stuff
who might need me to scribe a question
because their writing's not so fast
what's been absolutely wonderful out of
this has been seeing those children who
in previous lessons i might not even
notice that they'd actually
not done much now really giving them the
time
so my whole focus and time is then taken
up really with helping them because the
rest of the children getting on doing it
pretty independently
and that has been absolutely lovely i
mean i've had children where the class
teacher has said to me well so and so
uncertain i
really can't get them to do anything and
then we've had some sessions and
because i've read the questions to them
and then they've played and worked
out and puzzled it out and then
sometimes i've said oh what do you think
what's the answer oh yeah write this mr
mac and they've got the
questions right they've got the answer
right they've tested stuff themselves
they've done it themselves
sometimes you're seeing their look on
their faces of realizing that they're in
a total mainstream lesson
and they've achieved just as highly as
all the rest of the children there
it's just wonderful yeah and then the
other thing part of the agreement really
if a child is really working hard with
that maybe
engaging with me with reading those or
having a real good go
if they're struggling after a certain
period of time if i feel they've really
worked hard i would just go and cross a
couple of questions off the end of their
to-do list
to get them onto the next section to
make sure they get at least a third of
that lesson
if not more to actually make something
because there's nothing worse
not having that create time in that
personal agency really
children pick up if you're fair you know
whether you're fearing how you are with
the class your discipline structures
your
relationships so really protecting those
bits of the curriculum and making sure
that they have full access to every bit
of it
which includes that create time goes
down very well with them
and i think i get more effort out of
them because they know i'm going to make
sure they get some time to make some
stuff
one of my critiques that i've seen with
some people who focus on computational
thinking or even computer science is
they do it for the sake of understanding
but not applying and so
they don't actually create things with
it i've always had a problem with that
like
having a background in music education
like when i was getting my degrees i had
to take music theory courses
and music theory courses you're
analyzing music for the sake of
analyzing music you don't actually
compose anything
you don't create anything new you're
just looking at what somebody else
created and went oh this might be what
they thought of but it's probably not it
and so there's like no application of
the understanding of it
it's not that there's not value in it
it's just like what's the point of
learning this thing if i can't
do something with it and i can't create
my own music or my own
program or whatever no i totally and
utterly agree with you
actually i think it was diane levitt i
did a session
in new york on agency although i'd
always had this idea of agency before i
think it was who gave me that first word
you know when i was trying to learn some
programming
just having a list of this does this and
this does this and this does this
i can read it through i can have a quick
go at those things
after a while i lose the will to live
and so actually it's so important to do
something with it and i think
any methodology that you choose it's
important that it has
some form of creation i personally don't
think that
stops at primary i think that should go
through all of
computing science education yeah you
know my friend les carl will tell me
right
so his students are off to make this web
app that fits with this sort of
aspect of much much more complex
programming and i think well yeah
so you're still having that agency and
that creation and that
gui design and that you know as part of
your project so
yeah i'm a big one for thinking that's
important what do you think
is like preventing educators from doing
as well as they would like to
in the classroom or with computer
science like as an example in the states
all these standardized tests that takes
the focus and anything that takes time
away from that is considered to be like
less than so computer science is often
put on the back burner as like well no i
need to focus on preparing students for
this particular test so like that's how
i might respond like well maybe we
shouldn't really focus on
tests as much so in the uk because the
computing science is part of the
national curriculum
state schools have to actually teach it
and now that doesn't mean they have to
teach in the way i think they should
teach it you know they can choose
whatever they like
so that is a real plus so you've already
got this sort of starting position
that definitely helps you've got a sort
of common set of aims
and what we found in our school
inspection system
previous to the last sort of ten years
or so
or five years really the inspection
system's been focused very heavily on
maths and literacy
so you're right and then what happens is
teachers because the inspection system
is focused on that in primary
then teachers squeeze all the systems
and heads
squeeze all of the other bits of
curriculum and to do more
maths and literacy because that's what
you're being judged on so we do have
that
we have a situation though about two
years ago really where
the chief inspector for schools
recognized
that actually the other aspects of
education were being squeezed
and started to tweak the inspection
system to asking questions about the
wider curriculum
and actually that's been really useful
for us because it's enabled us
to encourage schools to take geography
and history and art and
music and computing bit more seriously
we do have a bit of a strange system
though because our academy schools don't
have to do
quite the same national curriculum focus
and we do still see some schools
squeezing that
the best schools do recognize i think
that actually children want a variety
of things personally i do feel our
key stage 3 which is our 11 to sort of
has gone a bit too focused on the exam
testing regime we did have for quite a
while
a bit of a programming project that got
you points towards your exam
or you could do that and then that was
taken out in favor of a sort of a more
exam based
and personally i think that was a
mistake like would you say it's a time
thing as well
like oh we only have a limited amount of
time if only we had
double the amount of time like we could
get so much more done one of the things
we find in the uk
is the primary schools the elementary
schools if they feel that their maths
and their literacy is a good enough
standard to
get through you know inspections and all
rest of it then you find that their
focus goes on to the wider curriculum
and improving that and that's lovely
because they then come and work with
people like me
but in some ways that upsets me a little
bit because it's
all those children who maybe aren't in a
school
who have got to that standard who are
often the ones who are not asking for
help not getting any support now
don't get me wrong i do understand the
importance of writing and reading and
the importance of that
but actually i think a broader education
that should be
valid for everybody i mean i've been
doing a bit of work with teach first
and i've been quite impressed with the
fact that they try and place teachers in
the most
difficult areas really or the areas that
have more social deprivation
they're trying to push this sort of
wider curriculum thing
as much as they can if you were to like
wave a magic wand
and either fix something related to what
you're just talking about or have it so
that all
teachers across the uk were to be able
to understand something
like a concept philosophy whatever like
what would you
wish for and why i just wish
that every school would engage with
open-ended
programming languages directly
rather than any sort of roach learning
or
very heavily scripted computerized type
thing i believe in the messiness of
programming and the making mistakes for
it and having agency over stuff
and i'd much prefer schools who were
willing to
get their feet dirty with scratch or the
crumble programming language or the
micro bit
or python or whatever you know rather
than
going down a very heavily scripted
computerized
scheme for that some of the language and
platforms that you just mentioned
are like block based some of them are
text-based i'm curious where you stand
in the like there's that debate that
goes on
with when should you transition or is it
okay to just do
like gui or block based like all the way
through
like k-12 yeah i mean it's an
interesting one
see our national curriculum says that
you must use
at least one text based language in our
key stage
three and four which is from eleven year
old up that doesn't mean that teachers
straight away from eleven go right
okay let's throw out all text let's
throw out all block-based programming
languages
but it does mean that there will be a
transition
at some point and probably the most
popular in secondary is python really
now i've talked python quite
successfully
in primary as well and i really enjoyed
teaching it in fact i felt the children
really enjoyed it we got something out
of it
the only reason i really moved away from
it is not because i didn't like it it
was because
i felt that in lots of ways it was a
real hard ass
to take a non-specialist teacher and
actually
train them in the use of it in a short
space of time whereas actually i felt
the block-based programming language i
could do that
so it wasn't so much that i had any
great philosophy behind that
there's some interesting sort of
approaches to try and think about
transitioning i do like things that
is it pencil code that has that ability
to flick between the block based and the
text based and there's a few other
programming languages that have
sort of experimented with that sort of
thing and i think that's useful
i do also think that that whole idea of
introducing the main
concepts away from programming is
massively useful as well because you
know at the point where we get to
something else and we go well that's
still a count controlled loop
that's still an indefinite loop it looks
different it doesn't work exactly the
same way as scratch but actually
it is i think that introducing concepts
away from computing
sort of helps whether i'm really clear
on when the best time to transition
maybe at the point where the children's
typing and writing skills are good
enough to cope with
more typing and writing that must be
part of it
and the ability to spot very small
syntax errors
yeah that makes sense my kids did block
based
up through third grade and then from
fourth grade on they had the choice of
continuing with scratch or they could do
ruby or javascript or swift and the kids
who did make that transition
even as early as fourth grade they made
all these like leaps that i knew were
not
in the platform that they were using
like it didn't teach them how to do that
and when i asked them well how did you
figure that out they're like oh well i
figured like
here's how i do it in scratch and then i
just imagine what i do in javascript and
i was like that's it
that's what you're supposed to do it's
interesting to say that because when i
was doing both
i had some children describe that same
process and one of them actually said i
would go
and prototype it in scratch and if i
could do it in scratch i knew i could
then go and write it in python
yep how do you practice or iterate on
your own abilities
so you've done a lot of different
pedagogical approaches and you've
worked in different positions like
either working with students or working
with teachers but how do you
personally try and improve or refine
that
yeah so probably a really
key thing for me has been the
relationship i have with
les carr from southampton university to
the point of actually
doing some programming together learning
some bits you know if i get to the point
where i think actually i really do want
to get this thing
i would often go and have a chat a
conversation or a bit of a session
learning some things
and the other place is we have
an organization called computing at
schools uh
cass and there's lots of great people on
that
that you can go and work with lots of
forums that you can discuss stuff or put
stuff off on say oh
you know what's a great place for
improving your skills in cersei and then
at the moment we've got the national
center for computing education that's
been around for a couple of years now
and they are developing some really good
courses
and to further your knowledge and to
understand other aspects of things
my difficulty is i often really love all
that much more advanced stuff
but how much time do i have to do that
in some ways if it was left to me and i
didn't have to actually teach it in
primary and write
resources and you know all for books and
all sorts of stuff then i'd probably be
sitting there with a micro bit
trying to work out what the next thing i
can do i've had to be quite sort of
constrained ultimately i'm a teacher if
my pupils aren't getting the very best
out of their computing science at the
age they are
and being able to take some quality
skills and understanding
and agency up to the next step then i've
not really done my job really so while
you were mentioning that i
was just thinking of something so i'm
curious what your perspective is on this
one of the things that i really
appreciated when working with students
is i
knew long term where they were headed if
they were to head down a particular path
maybe several years so like having done
app development
all these things that they might not
currently be working on but if they had
a question i was able to guide them that
would assist them further down the road
but also having done professional
development teachers i know they don't
have the time to learn several
programming languages and ides and
platforms et cetera like i have
so they're going to learn the basics of
what they need to be able to teach at
that grade level but they don't
necessarily know where it's heading
several years down the road and i'm
curious what your thoughts are with that
like
how has that helped you when working
with young elementary kids even though
you're working on this really advanced
thing and you know that they're never
gonna do that with five-year-olds
do you feel like that has helped prepare
you for working with those kids and
teachers
i think certainly the discussions on the
bigger things about how computing work
have always been useful even if it's
sometimes to decide that you don't do
those
because actually they're not cognitively
at the level that there's enough
abstraction understanding to really make
sense of that
but even that can be a really good thing
because that in itself
is a decision about what to include and
what to not include
in my very earliest computing science
teaching i was a sort of uh
i've learned some new things let's just
go through it out there
which is good from a trying stuff
perspective but it's also
major league cognitive overload on
occasion for some children
right so in terms of seeing where it's
going in the future
and what the possibilities are i think
to be fair
i see more of my secondary colleagues
picking up children
and giving them a bigger perspective as
to where those things are in the future
i think my job as an elementary teacher
is more about
can i get you to secondary with enough
excitement and enthusiasm
and enough knowledge to make some stuff
that you go into your computing lessons
as an 11 year old in secondary gain oh
bring it on
i'm ready for this you know so if they
go in with that
and then their teachers will start
sharing all this
wider stuff around because mostly in our
secondary schools they're being taught
by a computing specialist
who will have a bit more understanding
and i could do that
some of it and i have had primary school
pupils who've come back many years later
and said actually mr bake i got a job in
programming and it was your set of
lessons
when we were in year five nine to ten
year olds that triggered it all off
yeah so that does happen but i also
think you don't want to heavily
force a child into a pathway i agree
too early you want to keep it exciting
but
if they get excited about science
instead and go off on a
chemistry thing wait and hopefully some
of that computation will be useful in
some of their science as well yeah that
makes sense
when i was in a case six school so that
was like what
five-year-olds through 11 or
kids excited
about the subject like i just wanted
them to have fun creating but
the most recent district that i was in
it was k-8 so it was like five-year-olds
through like early teenagers
so i had that opportunity not only get
them excited but also like okay now we
can dive even deeper into it so
yeah your answer definitely makes sense
to me i have had children
at the age of 10 and 11 come up to me
and say mr back how do i get a job in
computing
you know so i think you have to be ready
for some of those questions
and actually i talked to them about
developing their programming i also said
look you're going to need some maths as
well
so don't dump your maths curriculum
because that's going to be useful for
you
in the united states like there's a high
burnout rate like i think it's like 50
of teachers leave within the first three
to five years something like that i
don't recall the exact stats but it's
really high like that
how do you personally try and like
prevent that kind of burnout because
with computer science in particular like
you never stop
learning so that might be motivating for
some people but it could also be like
okay well what i learned a year ago
now i gotta learn something brand new
and like it never ends
it does never end in as much as we're
always inventing better ways of doing it
but actually i've often presented to
primary school teachers and said well
you know it's true that information
technology is always changing and you
know what will be the next big thing
after the ipad or the touchscreen
that is always true but actually the
fundamental
building blocks of the programming
languages even going back to
ada lovelace there will be a recognition
of some aspects of that programming
language even all the way back to then
so there's a constancy in computing
science at the moment i do think the
whole ai thing may
change that a little bit more but
there's a bit of a constancy or
at the point where someone develops
something that can do
not just a zero and a one but a zero one
and a two at the same time you know
so at that point we get into a whole
different thing but at the moment
i'm often surprised when i'm doing
training
that i will get someone who's a lot
older come and say oh well i did some
logo or some fortran or something way
way back and actually for all the
concepts you're talking about i learned
about then and i said oh brilliant
exactly so there was something that was
constant from your
previous training that you can take in
and yes we've got more exciting
interesting ways of doing it but hey
well done you've got some transferable
skills what about for teachers who
might not have the time like if they're
a general classroom teacher and they're
teaching the computer science
stuff basically on the side like it's
not their main gig
how about for them how would you
recommend that they continue to learn
while also
not overwhelming themselves with always
having to stay up to date
in most of our primary schools we often
have a computing lead
and it's that person's job to actually
keep abreast of the curriculum and keep
the other teachers updated
now when that's working well that means
that that person should be
i mean typically in the uk going along
to the
local community groups that we organize
maybe once a term
picking up new ideas new methodologies
new things
to think about and taking it back and
thinking well how do i disseminate those
things you know do i do 10 minutes in a
staff meeting do i lead something
you know a good computing lead is worth
promoting and helping and nurturing
and i expect a lot of our job really is
trying to get those people into groups
of communities of practice
and then encourage them present them
with training opportunities you know
those sorts of things
and then encourage them to take that
back into their schools
so i think that's important burnout is
something that happens for all teachers
and i do
massively worry at the moment in the uk
for the head teachers
i have never seen so much workload put
on them by covered
regulations and all sorts of other
things i very much
fear for our education system in the
next couple of years because i think
we're going to lose
a lot of head teachers and experienced
head teachers are really valuable
and can make a big difference and i
wonder whether we might lose some
teachers in that as well
so before we started recording we were
just kind of
talking a little bit about covid and you
were mentioning that there were some
like equity
issues around like just a lack of
devices
for kids or even like internet i'm
curious like thinking
not necessarily just on the device front
but just broadly with equity and
inclusion like
how have educators or organizations like
try to improve
in equity and inclusion in relation to
computer science
and it doesn't need to be just framed
incovid like it could be before that as
well
there's a lovely group called cass
include
that have been really sort of
championing
inclusion they've been doing lots of
events and things
and pushing that side of things and
encouraging us all to sort of think
about
that side of aspects and then i think
it's the job of people like me to take
some of that
back and disseminate it so even in
my own practice you know i think it's
important to think about
what are you doing in terms of equity
in different areas for example i went to
a session i don't know
seven years ago on basically sexism and
they said to me well you know
male teachers often will challenge their
male students and do the work for their
female students
and i thought oh god there's no way i
would ever do something like that
i'm a modern bloke you know and i went
back and was running a code club that
evening
and there was a group of lads who were
making a game and they were stuck on
something and i said oh
just going to say here's a hint and then
i walked off and left them and there
were two girls who were making a unicorn
game
and they said mr beckham didn't i and i
went and took over and did it for him
and i thought oh my goodness
you know i have professed that sexism is
wrong and no rest of it and here am i
just
perpetuating this so i think it is
important
that we do have groups that raise these
issues and say it and then i think it's
really important as we as educators
and we were responsible for training so
to run those things past
and sort of check out i think sometimes
we
have this big s sexist or big
r racist thing and yet all of us are
capable of small racist
things and actually checking our
practice constantly is important and
thinking you know so have i not helped
those two
indian kids because i think i've got
this viewpoint that they should be good
at technology anyway
so there's a whole load of sort of minor
racist stereotypes that we all have to
some extent
and challenging our own and then just
being honest
and saying look i have to keep
challenging myself because
i was born in 1967
you know i'm not going to be totally
there yet so i think
those aspects are important i think also
there's been
some really nice work around trying to
help
people see people from their same
background or their same sex
who have done really well so there's
been a lot of work put into
representation in terms especially
female computing scientists
which has been a big issue in school
says lots of sort of posters and things
and promoting
and it's been nice in the uk to see a
lot more
if you go to a computing conference
you'll see a much more diverse
set of people presenting than you might
have done 10 years ago
and i think that's really good i don't
think we're there
i think you know our government bought
out a thing quite recently
in effect pretending that there was no
institutionalized racism and
everything was great in the uk and i
personally think
that until we really got an equal
playing field for everybody
then that can't actually be true so i
think there's still a lot of work to be
done on this
if you think of like a listener to this
podcast who might be able to help you
with something like what is something
that you are working on that you might
need some help with so one of the things
i write a lot of computing science
resources
and i've often looked for and maybe this
is not so much a computing science
question really some ways but
what is the best way to ask questions of
younger children
you know i would be really interested if
anybody's got any educational or
computing science research
into the best method of putting a
written question down
now at the moment i tend to write a
question and i try out with about three
classes and i
think oh god that was an awful question
because oh no i might go and rewrite it
and try again but there must be a better
science behind that so if there's
anybody
out there who knows anything along those
lines i'd be really interested
one of the things that we've talked
about internally at boot up is a math
process for asking questions called
cognitive guided inquiry
and so that has some really good
questions that are math related but very
easily can
transfer over to thinking like an
algorithm in math
with an algorithm in computer science
and whatnot but then there's also
another podcast that i did on like open
guided and closed questions and like
those kind of broad questions
i'll make sure to send that to you so
i'm writing myself a note no that's
lovely thank you i i look forward to
listening to them
do you have any questions for myself or
for the field
i'm particularly interested in what the
best educational research combined with
the best sort of computing science
research so
i think we're still a very very young
subject yeah especially at this age and
i think we
gonna go through a whole sort of when we
think of where maths
teaching and learning has come and
that's probably taken hundreds of years
to get here
and actually we're really really early
on this sort of journey
i've been really excited i'm writing
some new resources and some new books
and i've agreed with the authors that
we're not really making much money out
of the books but we've agreed
to put all the money that comes from
those books back into editing them and
improving them
and taking them on and doing rewrites of
them
and that i think is really important
because actually
we will have some great insights but
there will be things we learn
in the next few years which will be
great to put in and i think
that's probably what excites me most
about this process that it is a process
of
change and development and improvement
and i'm just really pleased that i've
had a chance to be
in on the ground floor in this tiny
little bit in the uk with the elementary
side of
or sorry primary site of teaching so
that's an interesting point about having
to like
update the books basically like i was on
a team that helped write the standards
for computer science in the state of
wyoming
and they typically have a cycle of like
they go back and revise
the standards and then update them to
something new and when we all met we're
like
you're probably going to want to cut
that in half at least like
because in five years things are gonna
change
no that's true the other thing i suppose
i'm probably really interested in
is this combination of working
with researchers but also working with
teachers as well i think it's really
important to sort of keep the two people
the two sides of these things closely
sort of connected
and that's probably why i've always
appreciated those
researchers who have made the time to
include teachers in their
wider circle because i think it's not
just a research-based thing
it has to actually be taught and
probably my greatest
compliment ever was up at southampton
university and meeting
i don't know about three or four
professors and one of them saying
actually i had a look at your work on
variables that you'd published around
some text-based stuff we were doing at
the time and i really liked it and i
even adjusted some of that for teaching
my university students another oh my
goodness
one what a lovely person to actually
come back and say that to you
and two the fact that actually someone's
can learn enough to re
recognize that you know you can learn
even from something and
when something's been distilled a lower
level a more basic level and that there
was value in that
yeah that's a nice compliment so then i
guess my last question would be
where might people go to connect with
you and the organizations that you work
with yes so i have a website which is
code it which is code iphoneit.co.uk
of which i publish free programming
stuff on there and sorts of other bits
and pieces my
email address is on there as a hampshire
computing inspector hampshire will sell
me out anywhere
in fact i have been all over the world
at some point in time and doing stuff
if any of your listeners want to work
with me then they're very welcome to
send us an email
and we can discuss things and with that
that concludes this week's episode of
the csk8 podcast i really hope you
enjoyed this interview with phil i know
i certainly did
and i hope you consider sharing this
with others stay tuned next week for
another unpacking scholarship episode
and two weeks for now for another
interview hope you're all staying safe
and are having a wonderful week
Guest Bio
Phil is a Computing Inspector/Advisor working for Hampshire Inspection & Advisory Service and CAS Computing Master Teacher. Involved at the drafting stage in creating and refining the 2014 Computing Curriculum through the BCS and CAS. He currently teaches computing science in two Hampshire schools. A contributing author to Compute-IT KS3 Scheme of work and author of How to teach primary programming using Scratch and Crumble Creations, How to teach physical computing in primary classes. His Computing science resources are the sixth most used primary computing resource in the UK.
Phil is passionate about
The importance of every child being exposed to quality computing science teaching and learning opportunities
The power of computing to develop pupil resilience and perseverance
The importance of mastering formative assessment to unlock great progress in computing
That every primary teacher can teach outstanding computing lessons
That computing is all about problem solving
Phil can be contacted for advice about improving Computing at your school.
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People Phil mentioned
Jeannette Wing (the person who coined “computational thinking”)
Sue Sentance (PRIMM: predict, run, investigate, modify, make)
Learn more about the UCL ScratchMaths Curriculum that Phil mentioned
Learn more about the National Centre for Computing Education
Resources to assist with asking questions
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter