A study on attitudes and emphases in computer science teacher preparation

This paper focuses on the development and implementation of computer science (CS) teacher preparation programs, which are two of the main educational and pedagogical challenges faced by those involved in CS education. Specifically, the paper presents the second stage of a study, the first stage of which focused on the accumulative knowledge gained in Israel over the past twenty years on CS teacher preparation. The first stage of the study, presented in SIGCSE 2010, emphasized the obvious: CS deserves designated CS teacher preparation programs. The second stage of the study, presented in this paper, is based on a deeper analysis of the data gathered in the first stage. Specifically, we approached a wider community of CS teacher educators (from Israel, Europe, and the USA) and explored its perspective on one element of teacher preparation programs - the Methods of Teaching CS (MTCS) course. The conclusions from this stage can be viewed as a comprehensive framework for the design of an MTCS course, both in terms of topics to be included in the course as well as the relative weight (in time) that is to be dedicated to each topic.