Susanne Stigberg in cooperation with Henrik Stigberg from the faculty of education submitted a paper about “Teaching Programming and Mathematics in Practice: A Case Study from Swedish Elementary School”.
Programming and computational thinking have emerged as compulsory skills in elementary school education [1]. Sweden, for example, has integrated programming in mathematics education with the rationale that it fosters problem-solving and logical thinking skills and motivates students to learn mathematics. However Forsström and Kaufmann [2] found sparse research on the use of programming in mathematics education and ambiguous evidence for improved student motivation and performance. They call for more research that explores what happens when programming activities are integrated into normal classroom routines, evidence from practice. Stigberg and Stigberg provide such evidence from practice and report on ”How is programming integrated in mathematics education in elementary school in Sweden?”. They conducted an explorative case study, following three mathematics teachers during the school year 2018/2019. Their contributions are three-fold: (1) they provide an account of how programming is taught in mathematics education (2) they discuss how teachers reflect on the challenge of teaching programming and (3) they report on students’ understanding of programming and their view on the relationship between programming and mathematics.
[1] S. Bocconi, A. Chioccariello, and J. Earp, “THE NORDIC APPROACH TO INTRODUCING COMPUTATIONAL THINKING AND PROGRAMMING IN COMPULSORY EDUCATION,” 2018.
[2] S. E. Forsström and O. T. Kaufmann, “A Literature Review Exploring the use of Programming in Mathematics Education,” Int. J. Learn. Teach. Educ. Res., vol. 17, no. 12, Jan. 2019.