High School Cybersecurity: Curriculum Concepts, Content, and Course Construction

Cybersecurity touches nearly every aspect of daily life of students, their family, and larger society. The ubiquitous connectivity of devices and ever-connected students drives the need for cybersecurity education at a deeper and more technical level than in any previous generation.

The High School Cybersecurity Curriculum Guidelines (HSCCG) were developed using the Principles of Curriculum for Understanding (National Research Council, 2002) and the Backward Design methodology (Wiggins and McTighe, 2005). The National Research Council (2002) principles call for curriculum to be developed based on the organizing principles of the domain, depth of understanding, models of inquiry and truth verification in the field, and connections that allow students to tether school learning with real-world application. Backward Design is a methodology for expressing curriculum in alignment with the National Research Council Principles. These methodologies were explicitly chosen because they are grounded in research on human learning (National Research Council, 2002). The High School Cybersecurity Curriculum Guidelines (HSCCG) express the knowledge domain for secondary level cybersecurity learning, and are being used to support high school courses, teacher professional development, and the development of instructional materials.

This talk will briefly introduce the curriculum guidelines and share educational resources and lesson plans based on the HSCCG. For additional information, to sign up for the mailing list, and access the courseware, please visit https://TeachCyber.Org.