I look forward to the start of each school year and I’m excited to try new ideas in my classroom. This year brings about more to be excited about in my doctoral program. In my prior courses, I had been focusing on the barriers to data literacy and data analysis skills for high school students. From a research perspective, I have realized that I am more interested in looking at teacher preparation, rather than student outcomes. Therefore, I’ve pivoted my research interest to focus on professional development needs and supports for elementary school teachers to meet New Jersey Computer Science Standards. In 2020, New Jersey adopted student learning standards for Computer Science and Design Thinking. These standards incorporate a broad range of computing concepts and core ideas including computing systems, data, engineering and design, algorithms and programming. This is a great step forward, but we won’t see impacts just by publishing standards. Within my particular high school, we have dedicated CS teachers with degrees and training. But teachers K-8 don’t necessarily have this expertise. I wondered, how are we preparing teachers to help their students meet these standards in our digital society? This was one of the questions I posed as I began the doctorate program, and I’ve come back to it.
Often when I think I have a novel idea, a bit of research leads me to realize that I’m a few years behind. In 2014, Goode, Margolis, and Chapman published “Curriculum is not enough: the educational theory and research foundation of the exploring computer science professional development model”. While the study was focused on a particular curriculum, Exploring Computer Science (ECS), I believe the practices employed by the researchers and professional development(PD) facilitators transcend the ECS curriculum. The authors note that students learn best when they are actively learning, collaborating and engaged in inquiry-based approach. Traditional PD, the “one-stop drive-by event” isn’t engaging. The authors note the success of ECS PD is that it is modeling what should occur in the classroom – which is “active, participatory, creative, and engaged learning”. What we know about effective teaching and learning isn’t just for our students, it is also for our professional development. I look forward to delving more into CS teacher professional development in the coming months.