Lessons Learned from "BJC" CS Principles Professional Development
Thomas Price, Veronica Cateté, Jennifer L. Albert, Tiffany M. Barnes, Daniel D. Garcia · 2016
Computer Science Principles (CSP) will become an Advanced Placement course during the 2016-17 school year, and there is an immediate need to train new teachers to be leaders in computing classrooms. From 2012-2015, the Beauty and Joy of Computing team offered professional development (PD) to 133 teachers, resulting in 89 BJC CSP courses taught in high schools. Our data show that the PD improved teachers' confidence in our four core content categories and met its primary goal of training teachers in equitable, inquiry-based instruction. In this paper, we present the evolution of the BJC PD, its challenges and lessons that we learned while continually adapting to teachers' needs and contexts.