A Continuous Coaching Model for High School Computer Science Teachers

The United States will need more than 30,000 high school teachers qualified to teach computer science by 2025. While Florida’s Escambia County school district has recently been ramping up efforts to prepare high school teachers in the state, there is a critical need for teacher professional development opportunities. This partnership between University of West Florida, Escambia County School District (ECSD) and Florida’s Department of Education will develop ongoing support and training for current teachers such that they can successfully teach the Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles course, which has been shown to increase student interest and engagement in computing.

Though a model of continuous coaching, this partnership will create a cohort of teachers prepared to teach the AP course. At the same time, the team will work with school guidance counselors on strategies to recruit and support students in computing classes, with the goal of increasing the number of students who enroll and are successful in computing classes.

This proposal will explore a continuous support coaching model, based on Knight’s instructional coaching model, for increasing the pool of future educators without deep pre-existing content knowledge, who will be prepared to coach and teach AP Computer Science Principles (AP-CSP). The coaching model, offered by the University of West Florida’s computer science faculty, will be focused on the pedagogy of computer science, implemented using a constructivist pedagogical approach.

The three areas of focus of the coaching model will include: (i) teaching assistance and feedback; (ii) just-in-time assistance offered by coaches; and (iii) lesson modeling. These new coaches and teachers, selected from in-service Math and Science teachers, will be catalysts for broadening participation of computing in Florida high schools, some of which do not yet offer a computing course, and increasing the pass-rates in AP CSP.

The project aims to recruit four new coaches, seven new teachers, and seven school guidance counselors to be supported and trained by the program.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.