A Regional Professional Development Program for Computing Teachers: the Disciplinary Commons for Computing Educators

Computer science is a relatively young but important discipline in both secondary and post-secondary education. This paper describes the design and preliminary implementation of a regional teacher professional development program for computing teachers: the Disciplinary Commons for Computing Educators (DCCE). The main goal of DCCE is to build a vibrant community of computing teachers, where teachers could actively share and investigate their own teaching practices, get exposed to diverse forms of practice and gain confidence and knowledge about teaching computing courses. We start with presenting some unique challenges to computing teacher education and explaining the rationales for the design of the DCCE program addressing some of those challenges. Then, we describe the methods and preliminary results from the implementation of the first year pilot DCCE cohort. Overall, this project is dedicated to exploring potential ways of supporting inservice computing teachers. Description of the Program The Problem and Objectives Computer science education (more broadly called computing education) is critical in both secondary and postsecondary systems, which, in a variety of ways, can contribute to the intellectual development of students, the innovation potential of other scientific disciplines, as well as the economic well being of countries (Ericson, et al., 2008; Shackelford, 2005). However, computer science (CS) is a relatively young discipline in K-12 education. CS educators and researchers are facing unique challenges, including teacher related issues such as the recruitment of computing teachers, pre-service computing teacher preparation and in-service teachers’ professional development. First of all, as the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) reports (Ericson, et al., 2008), we are facing a crisis in CS teacher certification. There is a significant lack of consistency in CS teacher certification standards in the US. In many states, a CS teaching certificate is not required in order to teach computing courses (Khoury, 2007). Thus, teachers with little or no CS training are frequently assigned to teach computing courses. Meanwhile, in some states, since new computing teachers cannot be certified as computing teachers due to the lack of certification programs for computing education, they must meet the certification requirements in some other discipline, in which they might not actually wish to teach. Furthermore, the evolving nature of the computing field also brings big challenges to computing teacher education. Although there have been efforts and progress in developing a model curriculum for K-12 CS (Tucker, et al., 2006), there is still much confusion about CS in K-12 education. Computing teachers have to deal with multiple challenges related to curriculum standards, varied programming languages, updated disciplinary knowledge, teaching methods, maintaining student interest, etc. For instance, the field of CS has its own problems in coming to an agreement for defining this field (Denning, 2005, 2009). The ACM Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science (Tucker, 2006) provides a useful definition of computer science for high school (HS) educators, seeing CS as “the study of computers and algorithmic processes including their principles, their hardware and software design, their applications, and their impact on society.” However, among those not familiar with the discipline, there is still a tendency to confuse the study of computer science as a scientific discipline with other uses of computing technology within education, particularly computing literacy (the mastery of basic software applications), keyboarding, or educational technology (Ericson, et al., 2008). As a result, many policy-makers, administrators, and even computing teachers are failing to provide students with access to the key academic discipline of computer science. Secondly, from the CSTA National Secondary Computer Science Survey, the greatest challenge teachers are facing in teaching computing is still the rapidly changing technology (CSTA, 2009). Teachers have to update their CS content knowledge and related technology used in teaching CS. Similarly, due to the short history of computing education in K-12, not much is known about the best teaching practices for computing. Moreover, since there are so few computing teachers, these teachers are especially isolated, where often there is no one else in their buildings, or even in their school districts, to ask for support in the content or pedagogy for teaching computing. Therefore, in addition to teacher preparation, there is a great need for continual support and professional development for in-service computing teachers.