In continuation..
Starting with Mark Guzdial’s blog on What Changes CS Education? to Alfred Thompson’s post on What does it take to make a change in CS education? there has been an interesting thread of conversation going on. Because the semester is in full swing and I have a LARGE machine learning homework out right now I originally started just a comment on Alfred’s blog. Well.. For any of you who know me, I am very passionate about this subject and after writing a few paragraphs figured it was getting too long for just a comment.
So to start, here is my comment on Alfred’s blog, with more, new comments below:
::sigh::
Forgive me for being an education purist, but I think this is part of the reason why we are in the pickle that we are in as a discipline. Relying on tools or the industry to define the introductory experience, and even more so the novice experience is .. well.. crazy? ineffective? ridiculous? not sure what the right word is.
When the biology department tries to decide what biology knowledge makes someone a literate citizen they don’t look at what professional biologists are doing. They don’t look at what nifty tools are available for teaching biology. They decide what it should mean for your average American to have an understanding of biology. They define a set of broad standards that would allow a knowledgeable teacher to implement those standards in a classroom in one of many different ways, potentially using one or more of the tools available to them. Then they train the teachers. To BOTH have an understanding of biology AND an understanding of what it means to teach biology - both to be familiar with the standard curriculum and the pedagogical nature of the course.
How is this different from what we do? We argue about what the right “foundation” is. College CS people argue about why AP is not good, but the AP program is one of the few programs with a solid curriculum, that does TEACHER TRAINING. While there are great things being done in a few places, its often hard to find something (outside of AP workshops) that a new/novice teacher can hold on to, and take back to their administrator as “standard”.
We need to stop arguing about language, tools, etc. and decide what it means for the AVERAGE American to be literate in computing. (notice the computing - not the computer science, its a bigger question than just CS) Then we need to write a set of standards, or agree that the ACM’s standards are good. There needs to be consensus in the message coming out from our community. Then there are the economics to consider. How are schools going to pay for this?
and now for the new part
It really does boil down to economics in the long run. We can train 10,000 new teachers, and ACM can publish excellent standards that are used by every CS teacher in schools, but unless we somehow make it cost beneficial or cost neutral to schools - those 10,000 teachers (for the most part) will not find a job unless they are filling a retiring teachers spot. There are two types of economics going on here. First, the money issue, how in the world are schools going to afford to pay for a new teacher for a course that is not required, and currently doesn’t exist in the school so there is no demand for it?
Secondly, the economics of the student’s schedule. Students’ days are currently full. Any high school teacher can tell you that. The days we remember of study halls in high school or “free periods” are a thing of the past. In the competitive college market students have taken to PACKING their schedule with as much as the possibly can, with the largest percentage of AP classes they can to try and get into the best schools with the best scholarships. As of right now, college admissions officers give no more weight to AP CS than any other ELECTIVE AP. So why take CS, when you can take a language, art, music or one of any other AP courses? And if it is not an AP course why take it when an AP course has more weight on your transcript?
So, there is no money to hire teachers for this elective course. And there is no student demand for the course. How does picking a better tool fix the economic problem we are facing? How does writing a better textbook fix this? Yes, it may change what is happening in colleges, or in a few established HS programs - but there are bigger issues here.
I have some ideas about this, but to save time I’m going to leave this with the questions. (Machine Learning - homework calls) But as we consider whats going to make the LARGE changes, in the location that we all agree is where it needs to be (K12), the economics are undeniable and unavoidable. Lets keep those in mind too.
Sunday, September 20th, 2009