A survey of Australian teachers' self-efficacy and assessment approaches for the K-12 digital technologies curriculum

As K-12 computer science (CS) education has been introduced to a number of countries around the world, the CS education community has been busy working to understand the learning and teaching of computing at these year levels, as well as how to build teacher capacity in teaching the subject. So far, much of the work on teacher professional development in K-12 CS education has focused on building content knowledge and skills.

In Australia, schools have began implementation phases of the new curriculum, however, as schools are now approaching formal curriculum reporting requirements, we seek to find out how prepared teachers feel they are to assess student learning in Digital Technologies, and what support they require. We present results from an online survey of Australian K-12 teachers in which they were asked to report their self-efficacy of assessing Digital Technologies against the Australian Teacher Professional Standards and various assessment practices. Teachers were also invited to share what they perceived to be the challenges of undertaking assessment and their self-identified needs for supporting assessment and reporting processes. The findings indicate that primary and secondary teachers report reasonable levels of self-efficacy, however, they still require time and support to develop assessment strategies for the subject area. This paper may support other contexts currently shifting from initial capacity building and curriculum familiarisation toward formal assessment and reporting of CS curriculum.