Introduction—What Is this Guide About? - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 2

This variety of readership is also addressed by using the following terminology
throughout this guide:

• Learners : Computer science learners in any framework, either in the university
or in the middle and high school.
• Students : Prospective high school computer science teachers, that is, the students
enrolled in the MTCS course. When it is important to indicate that the students
are learning toward their high school teaching certificate in computer science, we
call them prospective high school computer science teachers .
• Pupils : High school computer science learners.

In this chapter, we also present the motivation for writing the guide (Sect. 1.2); the
MTCS course, for which the guide can serve as a textbook (Sect. 1.3); the structure
of the guide (Sect. 1.4); and how it can be used in different frameworks of computer
science education (Sect. 1.5).

1.2 Motivation for Writing this Guide 1

The dynamic evolution of the computer science field poses also educational and
pedagogical challenges, including computer science teacher-related issues, such as
recruitment, pre-service teacher preparation, support for teachers' ongoing profes-
sional development, and pedagogical and instructional design of teaching and learn-
ing material (Stephenson 2005 ).
In this context, The ACM K-12 Education Task Force Report draws attention to
the need for appropriate computer science teacher training programs and notes that
“teachers must acquire both a mastery of the subject matter and the pedagogical
skills that will allow them to present the material to students at appropriate lev-
els” (Tucker et al. 2007 , p. 18). However, according to a recently published report,
“Despite the existence of National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Educa-
tion accreditation requirements for computer science, very few pre-service teacher
preparation programs have the current capacity or coursework developed to prepare
computer science teachers” (Wilson et al. 2010 , p. 12).
Nevertheless, in many places, a computer science teaching certificate is not
required in order to teach computer science. In the USA, for example, a survey
conducted in 2007 reports that approximately 53 % of the respondents replied that
their state does not require a computer science teaching certification (CSTA 2007 ).
Further, even programs that deal specifically with the training of computer science
teachers do not necessarily include explicit reference to the teaching of computer
science. Rather, in many cases, the training refers to teaching in general and, at