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  1. Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), which includes knowledge of student understanding and knowledge of instructional strategies to support learning, is a component of teaching expertise that develops over time and with experience. In this poster, I present exploratory work to identify and categorize PCK amongst secondary teachers new to computing. Four teachers participating in a multi-year case study completed a questionnaire where they (a) listed student difficulties with linear data structures and (b) described how they address the topic in their teaching. Using a content analysis approach, I analyzed the quantity and type of responses provided. Since little research exists describing computing PCK, I also compared responses against public data sources gathered from experienced teachers who completed similar tasks. Results show that participants provided more ideas about student difficulties than teaching strategies and they focused equally on difficulties with programming notation and with programming pragmatics and plans. In contrast, the experienced educator list included a wider range of difficulty types. Ideas about teaching strategies focused mostly on presenting information, while the experienced educator list focused mostly on providing problem solving tasks. Unlike participants, the experienced educator list referenced real-life examples as an instructional strategy. Lastly, the responses provided by participants were not simply a subset of the experienced educator list and included unique ideas. On the poster I suggest possible contextual and experiential differences between new and experienced computing teachers that might lead to these differences. 
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  2. The recent groundswell of interest in computer science education across many countries has created a pressing need for computing teachers at the secondary level. To satisfy this demand, some educational systems are drawing from their pool of in-service teachers trained in other disciplines. While these transitioning teachers can learn about computing pedagogy and subject matter at professional learning workshops, daily teaching experiences will also be a source of their learning. We studied a co-teaching program where instructional responsibilities were distributed between teachers and volunteers from the tech industry to explore how specific teaching practices supported teacher learning, with a focus on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Through qualitative analysis of questionnaire and interview data gathered from three teachers during one school year, we identified the practices they engaged in and how their learning related to the enactment of those practices. Our results highlight several factors that influenced the ways in which teaching practices provided participants with opportunities to learn PCK: (a) active participation of students and volunteers; (b) teacher’s level of content knowledge; (c) interdependent practices; and (d) immediacy of the classroom environment. 
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  3. Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is specialized knowledge necessary to teach a subject. PCK integrates subject-matter content knowledge with knowledge of students and of teaching strategies so that teachers can perform the daily tasks of teaching. Studies in mathematics education have found correlations between measures of PCK and student learning. Finding robust, scalable ways for developing and measuring computer science (CS) teachers’ PCK is particularly important in CS education in the United States, given the lack of formal CS teacher preparation programs and certifications. However, measuring pedagogical content knowledge is a challenge for all subject areas. It can be difficult to write assessment items that elicit the different aspects of PCK and there are often multiple appropriate pedagogical choices in any given teaching scenario. In this paper, we describe a framework and pilot data from a questionnaire intended to elicit PCK from teachers of high school introductory CS courses and we propose future directions for this work. 
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  4. 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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  5. One of the critical barriers to increasing pre-collegiate computer science course offerings in the U.S. is a lack of qualified computer science teachers. Programs such as TEALS, a teacher preparation program pairing high school teachers with computing professionals to offer CS courses, provide opportunities for in-service teachers to gain experience teaching computer science. However, it is not clear whether the high school teachers develop sufficient pedagogical expertise to sustain high-quality computer science course offerings at their schools. Furthermore, the field of computer science education lacks valid and reliable ways of measuring pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), a construct that describes the knowledge teachers need for effective instruction. In this poster, the authors present these results from the first year of a three-year NSF grant to study how TEALS participation influences novice computer science teachers' PCK: 1) a theoretical framework describing the critical components of CS PCK, 2) the results of the first field test of a CS PCK assessment, including the psychometric properties of the assessment, and 3) a comparison of how teachers performed on the assessment at the beginning and end of their first year of computer science teaching and how they performed relative to their computing professional mentors. 
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  6. There is a critical need for computer scientists in the new digital age, a need that is not being met largely due to a lack of qualified computing teachers in K-12. In this project, we explore a three- year, on-the-job teacher preparation program (TEALS) that pairs high school educators with computing professionals to teach introductory computing courses. We are currently conducting a mixed-methods study to explore the change in teachers' pedagogical content knowledge within this professional development model. 
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