High School Computer Science Teacher Preparation Programs - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 260

15.1.1 Background

In the final report of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), K-12 Task
Force Curriculum Committee (Tucker et al. 2003 ), the Israeli high school computer
science curriculum has been mentioned to illustrate the fact that “the development
of K-12 computer science is making more headway internationally than in the
United States.” The report continues: “In Israel, a secondary school computer sci-
ence curriculum (Gal-Ezer and Harel 1999 ) was approved by the Ministry of Higher
Education and implemented in 1998. It blends conceptual and applied topics, and is
offered in grades 10, 11, and 12” (p. 6). In 2010, the curriculum has been updated
in light of the new developments in the field of computer science. The curriculum
comes in two versions: a basic version and an extended one.
It is proposed, however, that the Israeli high school computer science curriculum
is not the only contributor to the Israeli system of computer science education in the
high school. Based on an analysis of this system, a model for high school computer
science education is sketched (Hazzan et al. 2008 ). Here, we describe an updated
version of this model.
The model consists of interrelationships among five key components:

• A well-defined curriculum (including written course text books and teaching
guides)
• A requirement of a mandatory formal computer science teaching license
• Teacher preparation programs (including at least a Bachelors degree in computer
science and a computer science teaching certificate study program)
• National center for computer science teachers
• Research in computer science education

It is proposed that each of these components, as well as the relationships among
them, establishes the solid infrastructure of the Israeli high school computer science
program, strengthens it, and makes it, as is indicated by the ACM K-12 Task Force
Curriculum Committee report, one of the leading computer science high school
curricula in the world.
The next section presents the details of the model. The description is partially
based on Hazzan et al. ( 2008 ).

15.1.2 The Model Components and Their Amalgamation

Figure 15.1 presents the model which reflects the structure of the Israeli system of
high school computer science education.
In what follows we first elaborate on the five components of the model. Then
connections among these components are described.

National High School Computer Science Curriculum Here are several of the key
principles that guided the curriculum development (Gal-Ezer et al. 1995 ):