The Life and Growth of Year 12 Computing in Victoria: An Ecological Model - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 128

We will now look at the way the history of this development unfolds from the
point of view of the ecological model.
4.1 Turning Points and Ecological Explanations
4.1.1 The First Turning Point We Examine Is the Birth of a New Organism
In the Victorian education system, as in many education systems around the world,
senior high school studies have closely reflected the major disciplines in universities.
When the HSC subject Computer Science was first introduced in 1981, however, it was
done without the existence of many corresponding subjects in Australian universities.
Our ecological model asks us to look at the relationships of this new subject to the
other organisms and to the environment: tertiary institutions, schools, teacher groups and
the general public. Most of the pressure to introduce this subject came from outside the
Education Department, and secondary school teachers had little involvement in
determining its nature or content.
The public: parents, students and employers; readily accepted HSC
Computer Science, and student numbers taking the new subject in-
creased rapidly. In its first year, 120 students from 10 schools studied
Computer Science, but this number increased by over 50% in each of
the next five years before making a slower increase to over 2200 in 1991
(only a little smaller than Geography) with virtually every secondary
school in the state offering the subject. [23]
Melbourne and Monash universities, which saw themselves as guardians of academic
standards, initially rejected the subject, not allowing its inclusion in admission scores for
their courses. Their stated reason for this was that the component of assessment allotted
to the formal examination was only 35% in HSC Computer Science rather than the usual
50%. (The subject designers had allotted only 35% to the formal examination to allow
space for practical work in programming to be given some weight.) When pressed, sev-
eral academics from these institutions admitted that they considered the subject of little
serious academic worth, and 'not an appropriate subject to study at a secondary school
level' [1]. They would often state that they would prefer to have a student with no
knowledge of computing who they could introduce to computing concepts, rather than
one 'who had learned bad programming in BASIC'. The fact that the Computer Science
subject had been specifically constructed to address this particular concern by the study
of top-down design and structured programming missed their notice.
Parallels can be drawn between the introduction of Computer Science and that of
Geography in English schools as described by Goodson [1, 24]. In his analysis,
Goodson makes use of Layton's [25] three stage model of the growth of science edu-
cation in nineteenth century England.
1. Layton suggested that in the First Stage, a new subject stakes its place based
on grounds of pertinence, utility and the needs and interests of the learners. In
this stage learners are attracted as the subject relates to matters that concern
them. Teachers tend not to be trained specialists, but pioneers who bring mis-
sionary zeal to their task.