Computer science education


Computer science education or computing education is the science and art of teaching and learning of computer science, computing and computational thinking. As a subdiscipline of pedagogy it also addresses the wider impact of computer science in society through its intersection with philosophy, psychology, linguistics, natural sciences, and mathematics. In comparison to science education and mathematics education, computer science education is a much younger field. In the history of computing, digital computers were only built from around the 1940s – although computation has been around for centuries since the invention of analog computers.
Another differentiator of computer science education is that it has primarily only been taught at university level until recently, with some notable exceptions in Israel, Poland and the United Kingdom with the BBC Micro in the 1980s. Computer science has been a part of the school curricula from age 14 or age 16 in a few countries for a few decades, but has typically as an elective subject.

Computing education research

on computing and teaching methods in computer science is usually known as Computing Education Research. The Association for Computing Machinery runs a Special Interest Group on Computer science education known as SIGCSE which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018, making it one of the oldest and longest running ACM Special Interest Groups.

Women in computer science

In many countries, there is a significant gender gap in computer science education. In 2015, 15.3% of computer science students graduating from non-doctoral granting institutions in the US were women while at doctoral granting institutions, the figure was 16.6%. The number of female PhD recipients in the US was 19.3% in 2018. The gender gap also exists in other western countries. The gap is smaller, or nonexistent, in some parts of the world. In 2011, women earned half of the computer science degrees in Malaysia. In 2001, 55 percent of computer science graduates in Guyana were women.