Informatics for All The strategy

Informatics for All is an initiative devised jointly by ACM Europe and Informatics Europe. Its purpose is to give due recognition to Informatics as an essential foundational discipline for education in the twenty-first century. Informatics is the science underpinning the development of the digital world, and it is having a profound effect on all aspects of modern society. The discipline has fundamental conceptual and practical facets. The considerable economic impact of its technological developments, as well as its role in empowering research and development across all sectors, has created an imperative to address educational issues. The initiative is based on the long-term recommendations of the report “Informatics Education in Europe: Are We All In The Same Boat?” which presented the state of relevant education, and related teacher training, across Europe. Its conclusions highlighted the serious need for an initiative to ensure that Informatics is properly recognised within the educational systems so that Europe is well placed to compete globally in reaping the benefits that flow from Informatics. This paper highlights the need for a two-tier strategy for Informatics education at all levels. First and foremost, the first tier takes the form of Informatics as a specialisation, i.e. a fundamental and independent school subject. The second tier would be the integration of Informatics with other school subjects. To achieve this goal, in both tiers research is needed to address what and how to teach (curriculum, methods and tools), and how to educate teachers. To address this grand challenge important recommendations on Informatics are provided in Section 3.2, on Teacher issues in Section 4.2. and on Research in Section 5.3.