Paper Info
Title
Who AM I?: understanding high school computer science teachers' professional identity
Abstract
Quality computer science (CS) teachers are critical for secondary computing education. In addition to increasing the number of high school (HS) CS teachers, there is a great need for supporting those teachers to grow and stay as committed, effective teachers. Recent literature on teacher education suggests that teachers' sense of commitment and (other aspects of) teaching profession is tightly linked with their teacher identity. However, the current educational system in the U.S. does not provide typical contexts for teachers to build a sense of identity as CS teachers. This study is intended to gain an initial understanding of CS teachers' perceptions about their own professional identity and potential factors that might contribute to these perceptions. Our findings indicate that current HS teachers teaching CS courses do not necessarily identify themselves as CS teachers. They have different perceptions related to CS teaching. Four kinds of factors can contribute to these perceptions: teachers' educational background and certification, CS curriculum and department hierarchy, availability of CS teacher community, and teachers' perceptions about the field of CS.
Year
DOI
Venue
2012
10.1145/2157136.2157283
SIGCSE
Keywords
Field
DocType
high school computer science,cs course,current hs teacher,teacher identity,cs teaching,effective teacher,cs curriculum,cs teacher,teacher education,cs teacher community,own professional identity,education system,community,professional development
Computer science,Professional development,Curriculum,Teacher education,Educational systems,Pedagogy,Hierarchy,Certification,Multimedia,Perception
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
21
1.85
1
Authors
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Lijun Ni112811.77
Mark Guzdial22274354.35