Semantic waves are part of a Sociology theory by Karl Maton (Maton, 2013) (Legitimation Code Theory). They can be used to help teachers think about what makes a good (or bad) educational experience. We have translated this approach to the concept of Computer Science Education and especially in its application to Unplugged Teaching. It can help improve lesson plans, individual activities, and provides a way to review lessons as delivered, whether face-to-face, online, written or multimedia.

We have also been instrumental in popularising it in the UK as an important pedagogical principle for schools to follow. It was adopted by the National Centre for Computing Education as one of its ten pedagogical principles for teachers to follow. This also led to Ofsted recommending it as part of what a good computing curriculum should look like.

Comprehensive resources about the underlying theory, legitimation code theory and its application across many disciplines can be found at legitimationcodetheory.com/. Below are a range of resources around Semantic Waves applied to teaching computing well.

A Pedagogy Quick Read

• A quick overview of the ideas as applied to Computing

Online Interactive Lectures on Semantic Waves 

• Improving Computing Activities Using Semantic Waves
  • Delivered 20 May 2020 by Paul Curzon
  • Semantic Waves slides 2020

Semantic Waves and teaching programming

• Tips related to teaching programming

Research Talks on Semantic Waves

We gave a talk on semantic waves in computing at the Cambridge Computing Education Research Symposium, April 2020.

• Watch the talk here: Semantic waves: analysing the effectiveness of computing activities, Curzon, P, Maton,K and Waite, J
• Read our detailed answers to the questions asked after the talk here

We also gave a talk about unplugged computing and semantic waves at the Raspberry Pi Computing Education Research Seminar in June 2020.

• Watch the talk and download the presentation here: Unplugged computing and semantic waves 

Bibliography

Book Chapters (for teachers) on semantic waves in computing

Curzon, P and Grover, S (2020) Guided Exploration for Introducing Programming Concepts through Unplugged Activities, In Grover, S. (eds)  An A to Z handbook on teaching programming. ISBN 10: 1734662719  ISBN 13: 9781734662719

Curzon, P., McOwan, P. W., Donohue, J., Wright, S. & Marsh, D. W. (2018) Teaching of concepts. In: Sentance, S., Barendsen, E. & Schulte, C. (eds.) Computer Science Education: Perspectives on Teaching and Learning in School. London, Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 91–108.

Research Papers on Semantic Waves in computing

Curzon, P.,  Waite, J., Maton, K.,  & Donohue, J. (2020). Using Semantic Waves to Analyse the Effectiveness of Unplugged Computing Activities InWiPSCE ’20: The 15th Workshop in Primary and Secondary Computing Education, October 28–30, 2010, Online. ACM, New York.In Press.

Curzon, P, Maton, K and Waite, J (2020) Semantic waves: analysing the effectiveness of computing activities, Cambridge Computing Education Research Symposium 2020.

Waite, J., Maton, K., Curzon, P. & Tuttiett, L. (2019) Unplugged Computing and Semantic Waves: Analysing Crazy Characters. In: UKICER: Proceedings of the 1st UK & Ireland Computing Education Research Conference. New York, Association for Computing Machinery. Available from: doi.org/10.1145/3351287.3351291.

Research Papers on Semantic Waves in general

Maton, K. (2013) Making semantic waves: A key to cumulative knowledge-building. Linguistics and Education. 24(1), 8–22.

Maton, K. (2019) Semantic waves: Context, complexity and academic discourse. In: Martin, J. R., Maton, K. & Doran, Y. J. (eds) Accessing Academic Discourse: Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory. London, Routledge, pp. 59–85.

Also see

Legitimation Code Theory webpages http://legitimationcodetheory.com/

which includes a full bibliography of papers on LCT across all disciplines.