Month: February 2018

We just published results from a 2-year study investigating how teachers teaching the AP CS Principles course for the first time used our online PD materials, PD4CS. Our results showed that the teaching and computing background of teachers had a significant impact on the teachers’ need for and use of online PD material. More specifically, novice CS teachers needed and used PD for developing their pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Non-CS teachers needed and used PD materials emphasizing content knowledge. Experienced CS teachers believed they had little need for PD even though they were teaching a new course. Our study makes three recommendations for designing effective online PD for CS teachers: match PD to teachers’ background, align PD with the course curriculum, and use effective motivational design to enhance teacher engagement. You can find the full paper here

Thumbnail Image Credit: rawpixel.com

We have a new chapter in the Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education, in which we discuss how computer science efforts to increase the role of computing in schools gives us a unique opportunity to expand computing education research. Specifically, we have laid out directions for future research around computer science teacher development and factors that influence student learning in computer science. However, we argue that computer education researchers needs to move beyond experimental design as the standard for methodological rigor and value other theoretical perspectives and approaches. Here is a link to the chapter

Reference: Yadav, A., Sands, P., Good, J., & Lishinski, A. (2018). Computer science and computational thinking in the curriculum: Research and practice. In. J. Voogt, G. Knezek, R Christensen, & K-W Lai (Eds.). Handbook of Information Technology in Primary and Secondary Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-53803-7_6-1

Thumbnail Image Credit: Artem Sapegin