ABSTRACT
Preparing teachers to teach computing is more than a matter of re-purposing existing courses for computer science majors. The tasks, knowledge, and skills of a computing teacher in primary or secondary school are dramatically different than that of a software developer. Computing teachers need pedagogical content knowledge, which includes awareness of common misconceptions, methods for diagnosing those misconceptions, and interventions to help students develop more robust conceptions. The job of a software developer requires knowledge and skills that are irrelevant for a computing teacher. To meet the worldwide need for computing teachers, we must design new kinds of learning opportunities that address the requirements of teachers.
In this talk, I will present the findings from our studies of the best practices of successful computing teachers, and describe our efforts in finding new ways to support teacher learning about computing. We find that our most successful teachers read and comment code all the time, but almost never write code. The most successful teachers know the content, but also know the most common misconceptions for that content. We find that on-line learning is challenging for teachers to fit into their lives, but we can make learning opportunities that teachers will stick with if we emphasize activities that are lower-cognitive than just writing code on a blank sheet of paper.
Index Terms
- Preparing teachers is different than preparing software developers: [WiPSCE'14 keynote]
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