Introduction—What Is this Guide About? - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 8

• The guide is not limited to the teaching of a specific computer science curricu-
lum, neither is it limited to the teaching of a specific programming language nor
to a specific programming paradigm.
• The pedagogical topics that the guide deals with should not necessarily be ad-
dressed by their presentation order in the guide.
• The programming language we use in the guide is Java, since currently it is one
of the most common languages. The Java code can be translated, of course, to
any other programming language.
• The guide contains much more material than a single MTCS course can contain.
Therefore, each instructor should select the topics and activities that fit the con-
text in which the MTCS course is taught or, in other computer science teaching
frameworks, the specific purpose for which the guide is used.
• When the guide is used as the textbook of the MTCS course, it should be remem-
bered that the course should be based on active learning (see Chap. 2); that is,
computer science teaching cannot be learnt by reading this guide.
• Chapter 14 presents two optional syllabi for the MTCS course. However, many
options exist for the teaching of the MTCS course and, accordingly, the material
presented in this guide can be organized and implemented in additional ways
(see, e.g., Chap. 12, which presents a course organization around one central
idea—recursion).
• Each lesson of the MTCS course can be organized in many ways. Activity 110
(Sect. 14.2.2) illustrates several options as to how to start the first lesson of the
MTCS course.

1.4.2 The Content of the Guide Chapters

In what follows, we briefly describe the content of each chapter of the guide.
Chapter 2—Active Learning and the Active-Learning-Based Teaching Model.
This chapter presents an active learning-based teaching model for implementation
in the MTCS course. This model is applied in the various chapters of this guide in
most of the offered activities.
Chapter 3—Overview of the Discipline of Computer Science. This chapter ad-
dresses topics associated with the nature of the discipline of computer science and
with cross-curriculum topics. The importance of these topics is explained by the
fact that even today no consensus has been reached with respect to one agreed upon
definition for computer science, and different scholars view it differently. Specifi-
cally, the following topics are included in this chapter: what is computer science?,
the history of computer science, computer scientists, social issues of computer sci-
ence, programming paradigms, computer science soft ideas and skills, interdisci-
plinary aspects of computer science and big data.
Chapter 4—Research in Computer Science Education. This chapter focuses on
research in computer science education. The importance of including this topic in
the MTCS course stems from the fact that computer science education research can
enrich the prospective computer science teachers' holistic perspective with respect