The Impact of the English Computing Curriculum on Young People as Delivered at Key Stage 3

In 2014 the UK became one of the first countries to formally include computing in its National Curriculum Framework. The new Computing Curriculum had a broader focus, including fundamentals of computer science, computer programming and digital literacy in order to prepare young people for the digital economy and future digital world. This doctoral research focuses on the impact of the new computing curriculum on young people at Key Stage 3, particularly using three core themes of the computing curriculum: digital economy, digital literacy, computational thinking. The analysis used these core themes with thematic coding to answer the research question: To what extent do the young people subject to the English computing curriculum (as delivered at Key Stage 3) and their teachers, feel it prepares young people for a digital economy and the future digital world, specifically in terms of being digital literate and being able to think computationally? The research fieldwork was conducted across 3 secondary schools in the northwest of England and comprised of qualitative group interviews with 54 young people and extended individual interviews with 9 teachers. This research found that young people did not feel the computing curriculums was adequately preparing them for the digital economy – specifically they did not feel they were learning to be digitally literate and considered that computational thinking was something that people were either naturally good at or not. This thesis contributes to the field of Computing Education by being one of the few studies to use qualitative methods to understand young people’s experience of computing education.