The purpose of "The State of Computer Science in Illinois High Schools Series" is to analyze the landscape, structures, and pathways to and through computer science (CS) education in Illinois and to create a baseline by which to measure the expansion of CS education in the coming years. The series will include five reports, each…

This paper presents both the design and the pilot formative evaluation study of a computer-based problem-solving environment (named LECGO: Learning Environment for programming using C using Geometrical Objects) for the learning of computer programming using C by beginners. In its design, constructivist and social learning theories were taken into…

Computer Science formal education brings together old-timers from two computer-literate cultures. The curriculum is oriented toward the academic community, whose interest is in the abstraction, solution, and proofs of algorithmic problems, whereas many students are technology users, whose main interest is the manipulation of the products of…

An exploration of how year 12 students in a New Zealand high school make meaning of their experiences of different specialist IT (information technology) courses shows that gender identity is a potent factor in their experiences. At a personal level, individual students, males and females, construe their experiences of CPS (computer studies) and…