Computing as a new compulsory subject in the Macedonian primary schools curriculum

Abstract

Coding (programming) is a skill that nowadays is considered as an important asset. Teaching programming is an activity that becomes more and more popular. In the last few years there are great discussions on inclusion of coding in schools. These initiatives impacted the policy makers in Macedonia to include coding as a part of a new compulsory subject for the pupils at the age of 8. In this paper our focus is on the newest change in the Macedonian curriculum – the introduction of the course “Working with computers and basics of programming”, which can be shortly named as “Computing” in 2015. Here, we present the proposed and accepted curriculum with emphasis on the topics about computational thinking and programming. Then we discuss the available software and tools suitable for the implementation of the before mentioned topics, and present a newly developed game. At the end we explain the background of the teachers, give the format of the preliminary training of all primary school teachers in the country and present the first impressions of the trainers that conducted the training, and we elaborate the teachers’ feedback.