High School Computer Science Teacher Preparation Programs - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 264

Research in Computer Science Education Intensive research in computer science
education is carried out by Israeli researchers who are usually involved in the devel-
opment of the text books and the teaching guides of the nationwide curriculum.
In many cases, this research is carried out during the development process of the
material. The purpose of this research is to guide the development process of the
text books so that the final product fits high school computer science pupils' level,
and it will be possible to teach it during the given period of time.

A typical research project that accompanies the development of new material usu-
ally involves both the development team and a group of teachers who agree to be the
irst to try the new material and to participate in research activities conducted with
respect to that material. The research activities mainly include relective talks about
the teaching process, discussions about pupils' conception of the learned topics,
interviews with pupils, and observations within the pioneer classes.
Such a research process is iterative; at each step, lessons are learnt and are imple-
mented in the next edition of the developed material. Also, during the first stages
of the development process, the research focuses on small number of teachers and
classes; as the development of the material proceeds, additional teachers join the
group of teachers who teach the new developed material. Along such a cyclic pro-
cess, the teacher and pupil populations who use the developed material gradually
increase, and the text books and teaching guides are shaped and converged toward
its final form.
As a bonus, this process boosts the computer science education research in Is-
rael beyond just research directly connected to the evaluation of the course text
books and teaching guides. This additional research addresses, for example, under-
graduate students' understanding of computer science concepts (cf. Aharoni 2000 ;
Armoni et al. 2006 ; Dubinsky and Hazzan 2005 ; Sherman-Kolker 2009 ). It is plau-
sible to assume that the infrastructure needed for this additional research (expertise
in education research as well as in computer science itself) has been established
and shaped by the need to evaluate the high school material during its development
process.

15.1.3 Connections Among the Model Components

Connections exist among the five elements of the proposed model for high school
computer science education. We outline most of them.

Mandatory Computer Science Teaching License and Teacher Preparation Pro-
grams Clearly, a mandatory computer science teacher license requires teacher
preparation programs to be established to grant these certificates; on the other hand,
when teacher preparation programs exist, it is just natural to establish and demand a
computer science teaching license to exploit the experience and knowledge shared
by these programs.