K-12 Computing Education in Four African Countries
Reviewed by Greg Wilson / 2023-03-20
Keywords: Computing Education
For a few months in 2021 and 2022, it looked like technical conferences might start being more globally inclusive. COVID-19 restrictions meant that even people from affluent countries couldn't travel, so there was finally an effort to create a level playing field for remote attendance. It didn't last: all of the conferences I might have attended this year provided off-site options, but none of them included all of their talks, workshops, and gatherings. My colleagues in Latin America and Africa are therefore shut out of the conversation once again because of visa issues, travel costs, and a dozen other obstacles. As one of them said to me in frustration, "If people from Google and Stanford had to deal with this shit, the ACM would make Zoom conferences mandatory."
People from less affluent regions of the world are often left out of research as well: as that same colleague observed, there have probably been more studies of how students in Washington State program than of students from the whole of Latin America. This paper is a step toward closing that gap. In it, the authors present results from a survey of computer science educators in four African countries and compare them both to each other and to more affluent countries. Barriers to professional development are reported alongside what people actually teach, and some shortcomings of the analysis framework itself are discussed. The authors intend to repeat their survey in coming years, and I look forward to reading those sequels.
Ethel Tshukudu, Sue Sentance, Oluwatoyin Adelakun-Adeyemo, Brenda Nyaringita, Keith Quille, and Ziling Zhong. Investigating K-12 computing education in four African countries (Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria, and Uganda). ACM Transactions on Computing Education, 23(1):1–29, Jan 2023. doi:10.1145/3554924.
Motivation. As K-12 computing education becomes more established throughout the world, there is an increasing focus on accessibility for all, whether in a particular country or setting or in areas of the world that may not yet have computing established. This is primarily articulated as an equity issue. The recently developed capacity for, access to, participation in, and experience of computer science education (CAPE) Framework is one way of demonstrating stages and dependencies and understanding relative equity, taking into consideration the disparities between sub-populations. While there is existing research that covers the state of computing education and equity issues, it is mostly in high-income countries; there is minimal research in the context of low-middle-income countries like the sub-Saharan African countries.
Objectives. The objective of the article is therefore to report on a pilot study investigating the capacity (one of the equity issues), for delivering computing education in four sub-Saharan African countries: Botswana, Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda, countries that are in different geographic regions as well as in different income brackets (low-middle income).
Method. In addition to reviewing the capacity issues of curriculum and policy around computing education in each country, we surveyed 58 teachers about the infrastructure, resources, professional development, and curriculum for computing in their country. We used a localized version of the MEasuring TeacheR Enacted Computing Curriculum (METRECC) instrument for this purpose.
Results. We analyzed the results through the lens of the CAPE framework at the capacity level. We identified similarities and differences in the data from teachers who completed the original METRECC survey, all of whom were from high-income countries and African teachers. The data revealed statistically significant differences between the two datasets in relation to access to resources and professional development opportunities in computer studies/computer science, with the African teachers experiencing more barriers. Results further showed that African teachers focus less on teaching algorithms and programming than teachers from high-income countries. In addition, we found differences between African countries in the study, reflecting their relative access to IT infrastructure and resources.