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The misspelled word in the title is intentional.

Is the site's scope still aligned with what was in mind, say, 4-5 months ago?

I see more and more questions that are more pedagogy than CS. While the questions are related to both CS and Teaching (as they should), very few are about "technical" aspects of teaching some subject/paradigm/concept.

As an example, it seems to me that the first question that is more technical (when viewing questions sorted by "newest") is this one: My teacher said that java is pass-by-reference when the type is not a primitive

That's 2 months ago. There have been a number of more pedagogical questions since.

It seems to me that the site is getting less questions related to teaching specific things such as loops, git and also our once-popular analogies questions.

So, is it "Pedagogical aspects of teaching CS", or "Teaching(/Learning) CS: Both pedagogy and technical points"?

What are some others' thoughts on this matter?

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This isn't CS, it is CSEducators. It is about how to teach, not what to teach, primarily, with a focus on CS.

We want to teach the "right thing". But if you teach it badly you aren't doing your students any favors and may, in fact, be standing in their way.

I think the balance here is fine.

Even the question cited is about interpersonal relationships (How do I tell my teacher he/she is wrong?) rather than about learning the real truth about Java parameters, which the OP already knows.

It is true, of course, that some questions and (maybe more) answers are transferrable to other fields, especially technical fields. But these are the questions that CS educators actually have. The fact that their math colleagues might have the same problem doesn't make the solution more obvious. More synergy between sites would be good, but less focus on pedagogy would be very bad.

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  • $\begingroup$ I dispute that "what to teach" isn't in our scope, but otherwise, I entirely agree. $\endgroup$ – Ben I.♦ May 14 '18 at 13:37
  • $\begingroup$ @BenI., it was intended as a matter of emphasis only. $\endgroup$ – Buffy May 14 '18 at 13:42
  • $\begingroup$ My upvote here is meant to voice my agreement with this perspective. We address the what, the why, the how of education in the context of the CS classroom. I've been reading MathEd.SE a lot lately, and I think there's quite a bit of more general pedagogy there as well. I believe there's simply a lot that's fair game for us. $\endgroup$ – Peter May 14 '18 at 15:47
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I agree that there has been a shift in emphasis in the questions asked. That shift could be partly explained by having a small, devoted group of askers who keep the site moving when things get slow. However, I can't point to a question that would not have been topical 6 months ago, but is acceptable now. I don't think we've had a shift in topic, just a shift in the bulk of the questions we've been receiving.

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