Computer Science in Secondary Schools in the UK: Ways to Empower Teachers

Abstract

The recent move towards more Computer Science in school in the UK has obvious implications for teacher education, both for in-service and pre-service teachers. In England and other parts of the UK we have seen an unprecedented rate of change in the way that curricula are changing from a focus on learning to use software applications to the introduction of Computer Science throughout primary and secondary schools. In this paper we describe some of the challenges that we have faced, the progress made in the integration of CS, and the support provided for teachers in their professional development. Current developments seek to support teachers with varying needs in a holistic way and we propose a transformational model of professional development [1] for CS, both for in-service teachers as well as forming the basis of new teacher training programmes.KeywordsCS teacher educationteacher professional developmentCS secondary school education