Bringing Computer Science Education to Schools in Qatar: Challenges of the implementation

Abstract

Many countries have started national curriculum changes to make computer science (CS) as a compulsory subject for all students in schools. In 2018, a new national computing curriculum has been developed in Qatar for all k-12 grades. Comparing to the old curriculum, the new one focuses on teaching computer science instead of digital literacy. This paper discusses the challenges of implementing this new curriculum from CS teachers' perspectives in Qatar public schools. A survey was conducted of over 392 CS teachers who taught the new curriculum during the academic year 2018/2019. From the analysis of the collected data, it is found that teachers face different challenges including more working loads, lack of support to master the new contents, as well as the need of professional developments to improve their pedagogical skills in order to deliver the new CS concepts effectively. Moreover, the results shows that teachers in preparatory and secondary stages struggle with these challenges more than those in the elementary stage. Although all teachers are computing majors, the majority indicated that programming subjects in all grades are the topics where they need the most support. Accordingly, more support in term of improving teachers' content knowledge, and pedagogical content knowledge is essential in order to achieve the objectives of this reform.