SWOT Analysis of Two Different Designs of Summer Professional Development Institutes for K-8 CS Teachers

Abstract

Increasingly professional development (PD) programs have been designed and implemented for pre-service and in-service teachers to acquire CS content knowledge and CS pedagogy and instructional strategies for K-12 students. This paper reports on our adaptation, implementation and research program for K-8 CS teachers across a Midwestern state. More specifically, its PD program for K-8 CS teachers consists of a summer institute with two graduate courses and a series of Saturday workshops during the subsequent academic year. This paper focuses on the two summer courses: one on CS knowledge content including computational thinking, variables, conditionals, loops, arrays, functions, and algorithms, and one instructional strategies, student pedagogy, computer-aided education resources, and community building. We report our SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis of the two summer institutes involving the two courses to identify what went well and what needed improvement. This paper also reviews best practices for summer PD.