Cybersecurity Education Across the Middle and High School Curricula
Aaron R. Gierhart, Yeṣem Kurt Peker, Lydia Ray, Lixin Wang · Advances in educational marketing, administration, and leadership book series · 2024
Technology and its applications are advancing rapidly, making it challenging to assess the implications of its use. Exacerbating these issues is a lack of cybersecurity professionals in the workforce. In Summer 2022, the researchers implemented GenCyber as a six-day professional development camp for middle and high school teachers, focusing on a broad range of cybersecurity principles. Participants designed two lesson plans to foster cybersecurity learning across the content areas. This case study explored how participants perceived the impacts of GenCyber on their instructional practices. Data sources included their lesson plans and a focus group interview. It was found that participants perceived the camp as impactful on their teaching practices. They were able to address needs and issues of practice, increase student engagement, and foster interdisciplinary and career connections; however, the participants' lesson plans aligned to a limited scope of technology and engineering contexts. Conclusions and implications are shared, including ways to improve future professional development.