Elementary Math to Close the Digital Skills Gap

Pia Niemelä, Antti Valmari

2018

Abstract

All-encompassing digitalization and the digital skills gap pressure the current school system to change. Accordingly, to "digi-jump", the Finnish National Curriculum 2014 (FNC-2014) adds programming to K-12 math. However, we claim that the anticipated addition remains too vague and subtle. Instead, we should take into account education recommendations set by computer science organizations, such as ACM, and define clear learning targets for programming. Correspondingly, the whole math syllabus should be critically viewed in the light of these changes and the feedback collected from SW professionals and educators. These findings reveal an imbalance between supply and demand, i.e., what is over-taught versus under-taught, from the point of view of professional requirements. Critics claim an unnecessary surplus of calculus and differential equations, i.e., continuous mathematics. In contrast, the emphasis should shift more towards algorithms and data structures, flexibility in handling multiple data representations, logic; in summary -- discrete mathematics.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Niemelä P. and Valmari A. (2018). Elementary Math to Close the Digital Skills Gap.In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-291-2, pages 154-165. DOI: 10.5220/0006800201540165

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu18,
author={Pia Niemelä and Antti Valmari},
title={Elementary Math to Close the Digital Skills Gap},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,},
year={2018},
pages={154-165},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0006800201540165},
isbn={978-989-758-291-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 2: CSEDU,
TI - Elementary Math to Close the Digital Skills Gap
SN - 978-989-758-291-2
AU - Niemelä P.
AU - Valmari A.
PY - 2018
SP - 154
EP - 165
DO - 10.5220/0006800201540165