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Educators, researchers, politicians, tech companies, and others continue to advocate for the importance of K-12 students learning computer science in our increasingly tech-driven society. One way school districts in the United States address this growing demand is by allowing teachers certified in other disciplines to lead computer science courses. Summer and weekend professional development opportunities support these educators in developing the expertise needed for effective computer science teaching, but a great portion of their learning to teach computer science will occur through on-the-job experiences. Our four-year NSF EHR grant explores how a job-embedded professional development program that pairs high school teachers with tech industry professionals supports educators in acquiring computer science teaching knowledge. The research presented in this poster focuses on the third year of the study and includes (a) a theoretical component focused on creating a framework to explain on-the-job computer science teaching knowledge development based on case studies with six teachers, and (b) an empirical component focused on the creation and administration of a computer science teaching knowledge assessment. By the time of the SIGCSE symposium, we expect to have pre-test results from the first administration of our teaching knowledge assessment, completed by both high school teachers and their collaborating tech industry professionals. This poster will present our theoretical framework, resultant teaching knowledge assessment with sample items, and analysis of participants' assessment responses and their relationship to specific teaching experiences.
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Getting to a good place with science instruction: Rethinking an appropriate conception of teaching science
This essay opens with a question about what science teaching would look like in a world where categorical seams of human diversity were not probabilistic determinants of science learning. After revisiting Hewson and Hewson's description of an “appropriate conception of science teaching,” I detail the ways in which the field of science education has advanced in the decades since that article's publication. Drawing upon Cohen's notion of teaching as an “impossible profession,” I highlight how conceptions of science teaching compete with other popular models of teaching and learning science. Fenstermacher and Richardson's distinction between successful teaching, and good teaching is then presented to demonstrate that even science teaching that is considered successful and good remains embedded in a constrained system where well-regarded classroom practices may still lead to accumulated negative consequences. The essay ends with a discussion of complexity and recursiveness in science teaching, an argument for science teaching that includes embedded understandings of that teaching and learning on the part of the students themselves, and suggestions for a revised conception of science teaching.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2029956
- PAR ID:
- 10332001
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Science Education
- Volume:
- 106
- Issue:
- 5
- ISSN:
- 0036-8326
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21742
