Introduction—What Is this Guide About? - Guide to Teaching Computer Science: An Activity-Based Approach - page 9

ways to apply different teaching methods, and students' difficulties, misconcep-
tions, and cognitive abilities. In practice, this knowledge may foster their profes-
sional development and enhance their future teaching with several respects, such as,
lesson preparation, activities developed for their pupils, teacher's behavior in the
class, and testing and grading learners' projects and tests.
Chapter 5—Problem-Solving Strategies. The importance of including this topic
in the MTCS course stems from the centrality of problem-solving processes in com-
puter science and the fact that computer science learners often experience difficul-
ties in the problem analysis and solution construction processes. This chapter deals
with pedagogical tools needed to be acquired by computer science teachers to help
their pupils acquire different problem-solving skills, such as successive refinement,
the use of algorithmic patterns, testing and debugging, and reflective processes.
Chapter 6—Learners' Alternative Conceptions. Since alternative conceptions are
not easily detected by conventional testing and evaluation methods, a teacher can-
not effectively deal with alternative conceptions without being aware of their exis-
tence. More specifically, teachers must be aware of their learners' ways of thinking
and mental processes, must gain skills for uncovering alternative conceptions, and
must recognize and use pedagogical tools to deal with these conceptions. In order
to prepare the prospective computer science teachers master these skills, one of
the messages delivered in this chapter is that a learning opportunity exists in every
pupil's mistake (or misunderstanding); in order to exhaust pupil's learning abilities,
however, it is necessary first, to understand the pupil's (alternative) conceptions and
then, to use suitable pedagogical tools to assist him or her.
Chapter 7—Teaching Methods in Computer Science Education. This chapter in-
cludes active-learning-based teaching methods that computer science teachers can
employ in their classroom. The purpose of this chapter is first, to let the students in
the MTCS course experience a variety of teaching methods before becoming com-
puter science teachers; second, to discuss, together with the students, the advantages
and disadvantages of these teaching methods; and third, to demonstrate high school
teaching situations in which it is appropriate to employ these teaching methods. The
teaching methods presented in this chapter are pedagogical tools, different forms of
class organization, mentoring software project development, massive online open
courses (MOOCs), and mobile learning.
Chapter 8—Lab-Based Teaching. This chapter focuses on computer science
teaching methods that fit especially to be employed in the computer lab. The im-
portance of the computer lab as a learning environment for computer science is
explained by the fact that the lab enables learners to practice and explore problem-
solving strategies, to express their solutions to a given problem and to get the com-
puter immediate feedback, and to deepen their understanding of algorithms they
develop. One of the aims of this chapter is to let the prospective computer science
teachers realize that the learning of computer science in the computer lab is not lim-
ited to programming tasks; rather, they, as future computer science teachers, can use
the computer lab in additional ways that further enhance learners' understanding of
computer science. Specifically, this chapter includes the following topics: what is
a computer lab?, the lab-first teaching approach, visualization and animation, and
using the Internet in the teaching of computer science.