Page 54 - Getting the Picture Modeling and Simulation in Secondary Computer Science Education

Chapter 2
of CS (organizations and information flow) and information analysis. When asked what they were missing in the curriculum, they most often mentioned (more) programming, social and professional aspect of CS, security aspects, and networks and communication (Tolboom et al., 2014).
2.3.1.2 Teacher Training
Eight years after the introduction of the CS course in secondary education, regular pre-service teacher training was established first at the University of Groningen in 2006, and then another four universities followed. As pre-service university teacher training for other subjects, this is a two-year educational master. Specifically, for CS, only students with a university bachelor degree for CS (or an equivalent) are admitted. During this master, the students both deepen their subject matter knowledge and learn about teaching through extensive internships at school and accompanying theoretical underpinnings concerning CS didactics, pedagogy and educational science (Barendsen & Tolboom, 2016). For those who already possess a master’s degree in CS, a one-year program is available. The number of students obtaining this degree and thus becoming qualified CS teachers in the years 2008-2013 was nation-wide six on average; in 2014 and 2015 there were four, and in 2016 there were three. These numbers do not come anywhere near the perceived need: the expected unfulfilled vacancies are estimated to be 36 in 2018, 52 in 2020 and rising to 86 in 2025 — implying that roughly a third of schools offering CS might not be able to find qualified teachers (Adriaens et al., 2016).
While the number of regular university students interested in becoming teachers is tiny, every year in the meetings of CS teachers’ educators from the five universities involved, we hear about dozens of professionals with a background in IT industry who show interest in becoming CS teachers. However, due to the strict requirements, only a few get admitted to the teacher training straight away.
To help people with university degrees in technology or science to meet the teacher training admission requirements, in 2015 the beta4al15 project was started for chemistry (chem4all), and in 2016 physics (natk4all) and CS projects were added: inf4all.16 Beta4all project is a result of a cooperation of universities offering teacher training (i.e., educational master) where a number of courses are offered to interested candidates as well as to interested teachers, in the form of specifically tailored courses of 6 ECTS each. For CS, these courses were Foundations, 15 http://www.beta4all.nl
16 http://www.beta4all.nl/prog_inf4all.htm
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