Programming is increasingly being taught in schools in Sweden and around the world. Programming has been taught and assessed for a long time both in upper secondary schools and in universities, but in the lower grades, programming as part of technology education is still rather new. Therefore, there is a need for assessment criteria for programming in compulsory school. The aim of this chapter is to examine the criteria that individual teachers use when they grade and assess students in tasks related to programming. This study uses Q methodology. The informants, 28 programming teachers, were asked to sort and rank criteria regarding the assessment of programming according to their own subjective beliefs. The results were analysed using factor analysis to find groups of similar informants. The results reveal two teacher groups, where one puts greater emphasis on process criteria while the other primarily emphasises product criteria. Moreover, both groups place high value on students’ ability to explain the program, which can be interpreted as a combination of product and process where the student uses the knowledge they have acquired and turns it into their own knowledge. At the end of the chapter, formative assessment is discussed, based on the results relating to process criteria, and how teachers can use these criteria to help students progress

Previous research shows a discrepancy between different teachers’ assessment of student theses. This might be an even larger problem in the context of teacher education, since teacher trainers originate from different disciplines. This study aims to investigate how different assessors prioritise between criteria for assessment. Criteria were elucidated using repertory grid interviews with teacher trainers. These criteria formed the basis for a web-based Qsort that was distributed to teacher trainers at three different universities. The 66 teacher trainers in this study represented different disciplines, but were all engaged in the supervision and examination of student theses from teacher education programmes. The analysis revealed three different factors, which have been labelled: logic text structure as product, research process as product and results as product. The differences may not be explained by the background (e.g. discipline, university or gender) of the teacher trainers. Together, these three factors explain why teachers assessing student theses may accentuate different personal criteria. Hence, this might impact on their grading practice and also the interrater reliability.

In schools around the world the part of technology education related to programming is increasing. There is a lot to learn about teacher’s assessment and grading of students in assignments that are related to technology, particularly in programming. Simon (2012) analyzed introductory programming exams and found that a large percentage of the marks were awarded for the product and the coding skills of the student and less for other skills such as design, debugging, testing, or explaining and documenting.To be able to give formative support teachers should also be able to assess the process in the classroom;students tinkering, creating, debugging, persevering, and collaborating. The aim of this paper is therefore to examine teachers’ individual criteria, explicit, tacit and subjective criteria, when they grade and assess students in technology tasks related to programming. We interviewed 6 teachers in Sweden, representing lower secondary school, upper secondary school and university (teacher and engineering education). A Repertory Grid Technique interview combined with a Comparative Judgement gradingwas used to examine teachers’ individual criteria in assessment. The expected outcomes from themethods are captured criteria that are implicit and based on teachers’ experience, sometimes seen as teachers’ gut feelings. Two types of criteria were found; product criteria assessing the program and process criteria assessing the ongoing process. We compared these criteria with an instrument measuring the development of creativity designed for Art education. We claim that the use of process criteria will help the teacher and the students in developing programming skills.

Vid den senaste lärarutbildningsreformen beslutades att på de flesta lärarutbildningsprogrammen ska lärarstudenter skriva självständiga arbeten omfattande totalt 30 högskolepoäng. Vid många lärosäten har detta lett till en uppdelning i två olika självständiga arbeten: en konsumtions- och en produktionsuppsats. Denna studie undersöker om konsumtionsuppsatser – en typ av kunskapsöversikter – innebär en ny bedömningspraktik för lärarutbildare som examinatorer. Examinatorer vid lärosäten med lärarutbildning har blivit intervjuade och fått besvara en enkät rörande dessa bedömningskriterier. Resultaten indikerar att en majoritet av examinatorerna inte ser stora skillnader mellan att bedöma en konsumtionsuppsats och en mer traditionell produktionsuppsats där egen empiri i form av till exempel intervjuer samlas in och analyseras. Vid intervjuerna framkom dock några skillnader mellan de två uppsatstyperna. Dessa hänger huvudsakligen ihop med antingen hur strukturen byggs upp, vad som är metod eller hur forskningsförankringen är framskriven. Slutsatsen blir att den nya form av uppsatser som konsumtionsuppsatser innebär inte tycks ha renderat i någon stor förändring av bedömningspraktiken hos examinatorerna.

One of the consequences of the latest Swedish teacher education reform from 2011 is that a student teacher is required to write two student theses during her studies. These student theses should together represent 30 ECTS. One common way to implement this requirement is that the student writes two theses, where the first one is a systematic review of earlier research and the second one a more traditional empirical thesis. This article investigates if this new type of student thesis – that is, systematic reviews written by students as the first part of the requirements for teacher qualification, also involves a new kind of assessment practice for the examiners at the teacher education programmes. In the student thesis the student is supposed to demonstrate skills concerning several formal learning aims of the teacher education to obtain their qualifications. These include to follow the development of knowledge within a field and solve problems. The student thesis is not only important for the individual student to obtain qualifications, but has also been used to evaluate the teacher education programmes. Despite its significance for students and schools of education, very little research has been conducted on practices in the assessment of systematic reviews. Earlier research related to assessment of student theses demonstrates the difficulties with agreement in assessment practice. The results from earlier studies regarding the importance of the examiners’ background present a divided picture. While some research point to the examiners’ own subject or experience as important when judging theses, other studies do not.

Critical thinking is fundamental to 21st century learning and has thus become an important part of the technology curricula in many countries. Critical thinking draws on the ability to examine, analyse, interpret and evaluate, as well as asking questions and participating in discussions about risks and benefits of different technological solutions. An important task for teachers is to support young children in developing these skills. Students on a Swedish primary school teacher education programme were given an assignment inspired by the concept of ‘disruptive technologies’ (Barlex, Givens & Steeg, 2016; Manyika, Chui, Bughin, Dobbs, Bisson & Marrs, 2013), choosing from one of nine disruptive technologies and searching for information. The list was created on the grounds that these are technologies that are likely to have a significant effect on the students’ lives in a not too distant future. Based on the information found, the students were to critically analyse the technology they had chosen. This case study was performed through a thematic analysis of 120 assignment texts. The analysis showed that some of the suggested technologies were chosen more often than others. Autonomous cars came top, although robots in elderly care were the most frequently chosen technology among female students. The students performed well in the searching and collecting process. They found information about pros and cons for their chosen disruptive technology. However, the analysis also showed that the students had difficulty evaluating and problematising the information they had found. In their conclusions they did not change their original point of view. Even though they found more negative aspects of a new technology, they accentuated the positives.

Species identification is part of the biology education and is argued to be important for students to understand biodiversity and evolution. However, there is not enough time for thestudents to develop their ability to identify species within the biology courses. In this paper,we argue for a different model for teaching this topic. The idea comes from the ability to recognize a bird just from its appearance, known among ornithologists as jizz. This conceptcould theoretically being connected to the dual memory system model that implies thathuman beings have two different way of processing information, System 1 and System 2. System 1 operates as a pattern matching process in which already experienced situations arematched against a new situation. Video recordings from an biology field excursion, astimulated recall with the teacher of the excursion and interviews with the students show that the teacher use pattern matching as he recognize species during the excursion. However, healso highlights the important role of the environment to be able to identify plants. In histeaching, he also mentions one typical characteristic for the student as a way to consciously confirm the first, rapid pattern matching. The results indicate that it might be fruitful to teachcarefully selected species to students. Furthermore, even if the students do not remember the exact species name, they recognized the species and they more often remembered the groupor family of the species, even six months after the excursion. This shows the greatimportance of teaching plant identification (or recognition) not only theoretically, but primarily outdoors.

Recent research on science education has increasingly focused on the role of exploratory talk for learning science in school. This study was conducted in third grade in the Swedish compulsory school and shows how difficult exploratory talk in science is to achieve. The recordings of each lesson focused mainly on the teacher but included the pupils as the teacher interacted with them. The empirical material was analysed from two different perspectives: ways of communicating the science content and communicative approach. The analysis of the classroom practice showed that scientific descriptions were dominating ways of communication. Only in a few cases explanations of scientific phenomena were in focus. Those situations caused turning points into more interactive/dialogic communications or exploratory talk. One main conclusion is that exploratory talk and scientific explanations are not easily achieved when working in primary school. These skills are not automatically attained by the use of inquiry-based material - it needs to be trained!