Getting Experience in Computer Science Education - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 235

facilitated in the MTCS course, in which the students deal with and analyze teach-
ing scenarios taken from the practicum of other prospective CS teachers.
The teaching experiences in a variety of environments increase students' con-
fidence as CS teachers, as well as elevate their awareness to students' learning
processes. Therefore, some institutions offer in addition special laboratory teaching
or micro-teaching courses. In these courses, prospective teachers practice a variety
of teaching situations in a friendly environment (to a small group of pupils or peers)
with a close guidance of an instructor. If such courses are not available, and the
MTCS remains the only opportunity in which the prospective CS teachers can gain
any teaching experience, then the instructor of the MTCS course should try to find
additional opportunities to let the students experience and reflect on CS teaching
situations before practicing real teaching situations in the schools. For example, and
as has already illustrated in this Guide, short presentations can be integrated in the
MTCS course, in which the students teach their peers a CS topic or present to their
peers the product of an activity they worked on.

13.2 The Practicum in the High School 1

13.2.1 General Description

This section focuses on one of the central components of CS teacher preparation
programs—the practicum—the stage in which the prospective CS teachers practice
real CS teaching situations in high schools. The objective of the in-school teaching
practicum is to bring prospective teachers closer to the field work of teachers while
actually teaching the knowledge domain (Eick et al. 2004 ). With respect to high
school CS teaching, the importance attributed to the practicum is expressed, for ex-
ample, in the Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science, prepared by the ACM
K-12 Task Force Curriculum Committee (Tucker et al. 2004 ), which outlines stan-
dards that refer to the preparation of CS teachers (see also Stephenson et al. 2005 ).
The practicum is carried out in different ways. Some programs require a full year
participation in school activities; others require that the practicum be performed for
a specific, shorter period of time. In all these cases, however, as has been mentioned
above, the main objective of the practicum is to let the prospective teachers experi-
ence what real teaching is, before becoming CS teachers.
To achieve this goal, the practicum is usually performed with the guidance of
two CS educators: an in-school mentor, a CS high school teacher who trains the
student and guides him or her during the practicum; and a university mentor who is
a faculty member in charge of the academic aspects of the practicum. In most cases,
the academic faculty member who teaches the MTCS course is also the one who ac-
companies the students in their practicum. During the period in which the students
are in the school, they accompany their in-school mentor, observe lessons taught
by him or her, assist in various activities, and, of course, at a certain stage, start

1 Based on Hazzan and Lapidot ( 2004 ), ﾩ 2004 ACM, Inc. Included here by permission.