Impact

Our research has had major societal impact in a number of ways.

Our Semantic waves research linked to unplugged computing was adopted by the UK National Centre for Computing Education as one of their ten key pedagogical principles.
Ofsted, the UK inspectorate of schools, references multiple aspects of our research as to what makes a high quality computing education used to guide their inspections: unplugged computing, semantic waves, storytelling and the importance of design in programming.
Our resources are used internationally by thousands of people in hundreds of countries (both students directly via our CS4FN project and teacher support through Teaching London Computing). The Teaching London Computing Website (as of the end of 2023) had had over 2 million hits.

As a result of our profile in Computer Science Education Research we have been involved in organisations contributing to policy changes.

McOwan and Curzon were original founding members of Computing at School created to support teachers. It also was instrumental at a policy level in Computer Science replacing ICT in the English school curriculum, and now taught from primary school upwards. Curzon, Sentance and Waite have all been Board members at various times.
Curzon and Sentance were members of the Royal Society Working Group on Computing Education that led to the UK Government allocating £84 million to support computing teachers and the foundation of the NCCE. Waite also contributed, commissioned to write the literature review that formed a foundation for the work.
Curzon has been a member of the NCCE Academic Advisory board, appointed by the UK Government since its formation. It has supported teachers nationally through resource development and CPD.

Curzon, was named the 2020 recipient of the IEEE Computer Society Taylor L. Booth Education Award “for outstanding contributions to the rebirth of computer science as a school subject.”