What is Skill? (and why does it matter?).

This Research-to-Practice Full Paper seeks to investigate the concept of Skill within a Competency Framework, such as that described by the CC2020 document. The notion of skill is fundamental to modern educational discourse. As educators, we strive, not only to impart knowledge, but to help students acquire the skills that they need to flourish in the modern academic and professional environments. We admire skillful practitioners and strive to become more skilled at what we do, recognising that skill is tied to an aesthetic sense - that there is something attractive and deeply satisfying about the process and output of skillful practice. Together with knowledge and disposition, the term is also used to denote one of the constituent components of competence. In computing, for example, the CC2020 document proposes curricular development models which promote skills as key ontological elements and emphasises skill acquisition as a major focus in the educational process. While this is undoubtedly an important, evolutionary development in discipline-based pedagogical practice, we feel that there are still foundational questions to be asked about precisely what is meant by definitional terms that form the core vocabulary of this approach. In this paper, we look at the notion of skill and provide a conceptual analysis which tries to distinguish it from other related ideas. We provide an overview of how skill has been seen historically as both a philosophical and sociological construct and what this means for using the term in educational theory. We examine how to usefully define skill, discuss the part it plays in teaching and assessment, and make recommendations for how it can be viewed operationally within a competency framework, such as that proposed by CC2020

Phronesis: deliberative judgement as a key competence in the post-Covid educational environment.

The global Covid19 pandemic which began in early 2020 is one of the most socially disruptive events to have occurred since the Second World War. It has left a profound mark on the institutions of society, including those charged with education, and its effects will be felt for many years. In this paper, we discuss some of the effects that public health policies have had on the practice of teaching, learning and assessment in the United Kingdom. We review at some of the literature on how current students have coped with the experience of education during Covid and look at potential difficulties that new students may now face when entering university. We suggest that the concept of phronesis, that is practical wisdom or prudential judgement, which can also be thought of as the faculty for making deliberative and evaluative judgements about courses of action, will be a crucial element of any recovery pedagogy since the problems faced are context-dependent and generally involve finding the most effective solutions among a range of options

Archival investigation of a late 19th century accounting information system: The use of decision aids in the American printing Industry

This study investigates management\u27s use of decision aids within the context of an accounting information system of a late 19th century American printing firm. Our findings suggest that the use of decision aids by management transformed traditional ac­counting techniques and the cost accounting system into an intri­cate accounting information system by 1880. These decision aids allowed managers to manipulate accounting information to support decisions involving pricing, cost allocation and estimation, profitability assessment, management of receivables, and inventory control. The findings shed new light on the early work of Alexander Hamilton Church on the issue of idle time accounting and raises questions about the uniform costing movement in the American printing industry

Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company: An examination of contingent liabilities of 1903-1904

The issue about disclosing contingent losses arising from lawsuits has been an accounting problem for decades. Prior to 1953, there was no mandate for recording or disclosing such contingencies. In this study, the 307 court cases brought against the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad Company during 1903 and 1904 are analyzed to determine the impact of nondisclosure in the annual reports. Despite thirty-nine of these cases involved deaths and fifty concerned injuries to employees or passengers, the simple dollar amount of total litigation does not meet a threshold of materiality. Under current reporting requirements, however, some of these cases would have been disclosed. From the relative size of the amounts in dispute, it does not appear that nondisclosure of contingent losses from lawsuits were significant enough to mislead investors

Subject-level quality assurance in computing: experiences from three national perspectives.

This paper examines some aspects of the Quality Assurance processes in Computing departments in three European universities. We first examine the operation of a quality assurance activity in the School of Computer Science in Iceland. The next case is an example from Sweden and finally we present a case from the United Kingdom. In each case, we examine the motivation for the outcome-based assurance methodologies that predominate in countries that are engaged in the Bologna Process in terms of the use of competence-based assessment. We compare the application of these processes to departmental review, focusing on the aims and objectives, who controls the process, the areas covered, the methodology and the use to which the information is put. We discuss some of the implications for teaching when different quality assurance processes are used and finally, we make some observations about the relatively sparse literature on Computing Education subject-specific quality assurance

Nature and influence of managerial accounting during the New South Movement: The case of a Charleston printer

This paper investigated the accounting system of Walker Evans & Cogswell, a printing company in Charleston, South Carolina, in order to ascertain the nature and influence of management accounting during the New South Movement. Through archival analysis, the accounting techniques used by the Company were found to be effective management tools for planning and control during the period in which the Southern economy was transformed from agrarian to manufacturing. The findings raise new questions about existing studies on nineteenth century managerial accounting, especially for the printing industry

In search of a philosophy of computing education.

In this paper, we present a preliminary description of the field of inquiry encompassed by the philosophy of computing education. We first attempt to identify a general framework for investigating characteristic questions of a philosophical nature that arise within the STEM application domains. We describe the categories such questions fall under and use the philosophy of computing to illustrate this process. We also consider an alternative approach to identifying philosophical issues within a practical field, using the philosophy of education as an example. We consider the related subject of the philosophy of engineering education and see how this has recently emerged as an object of study in its own right. We investigate the similarities and differences between this field and the philosophy of computing education, and provide an initial description of the latter subject area. We also discuss how it relates to the subject referred to as Computing Education Research. Finally, we draw some conclusions about why there is this puzzling, apparent lack of interest in current work in this area, and suggest reasons why the pursuit of philosophical inquiry into computing education should be an important aspect of scholarly study in the subject

Influencing student academic integrity choices using ethics scenarios.

Academic misconduct seems to have increased substantially during the pandemic, with a worldwide upsurge in reported cases. The aim of this project is to construct a framework for helping students engage with issues concerning academic integrity and avoid academic misconduct. This Work-In-Progress paper reports on the construction of a scenario-based framework to investigate the beliefs and attitudes of university stakeholders when confronted with decisions about potential academic misconduct. The framework will be based on using scenarios to spur individual reflections and discussions among the students regarding values related to academic integrity focusing on Uppsala University context. A repository of "misconduct" scenarios related to different cultures, including different views and regulations, is intended to support teachers to develop modules tailored to their current need. The underlying idea is to provide students with an understanding of what constitutes academic misconduct in Uppsala University setting and to help them find honest alternatives when faced with temptations to "cheat". Our view is that students, in general, want to behave honestly, and that this framework will provide a means to help students follow their moral "compass" and avoid dishonest behaviour

Quality assurance using international curricula and employer feedback.

The focus of this paper is the quality assurance process for the bachelor program in the School of Computer Science at Reykjavik University, which is a combination of outcome- and process-oriented quality assurance. Faculty members and employers of graduates provided information for the quality assessment. The results provide both detailed quantitative data and more qualitative information that give all stakeholders a variety of ways to interpret the status of the quality of education. This type of assessment has raised the awareness of the faculty members on how abstract topics and learning outcomes from an international standard can be used when revising the curricula of a particular course. A notable feature of this type of analysis is its use of employer-generated data to examine graduate knowledge and skills. The contribution of the paper is to provide an example of how a quality assurance process can be made more valuable to both faculty and degree stakeholders by combining outcome- and process-oriented quality assurance strategies

Steps towards a philosophy of computing education. [Discussion paper].

Is it meaningful to talk about the philosophy of computing education? What is its subject matter and methods? Is it different from, or a subfield of, the philosophy of science education or the philosophy of technology education or the philosophy of engineering education? And how does the study of the philosophy of computing education help us with the goal of teaching students about computing? In this paper, we attempt to examine these questions. We look at the role of philosophical inquiry in the STEM fields and examine the philosophies of education found in those subjects. We first attempt to identify a framework for characterising questions of a philosophical nature that is appropriate for application to the STEM subjects. We describe the categories such questions fall under and consider methodological questions associated with this kind of inquiry. We also look at issues that arise within the philosophy of education and which are relevant when considering the philosophies of disciplinary education. We investigate some of the similarities and differences that exist between these fields and a philosophy of computing education and provide an initial description of the latter. We briefly consider other "sense-making" vocabulary used in computing education research, such as "theory" and suggest reasons why philosophical inquiry should be an important part of computing education research