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A message to the SIGCSE list serv

Recently there has been an ongoing thread on the SIGCSE list serv about whether or not there is a need for a CS Education PhD. The conversation has gone in multiple directions, some arguing that everyone needs an education degree, and talk about K12 teachers. Here’s my reply:

I have been lurking on this thread for a couple of days, and I would like to weigh in.

I am currently pursuing a self-defined PhD in Computer Science Education from Carnegie Mellon University. The reason it is self defined is because there is no formal program for this. I am building on a core of cognitive science work and computer science fundamentals (since CMU is granting me the degree through the CS department they want to make sure I am qualified).

Before starting this degree I taught K12 for 10 years, and I do not believe that this degree is about making me a better teacher. I do not believe that you need a degree in CS Education to be a good CS teacher at the college or HS level. I do however believe that we need people with CS Education PhD’s to help us shape the curriculum and understand how our students learn.

I have a lot of respect for the work that the SIGCSE community does, however the more work I do in this degree the more I come to understand that education research, especially at the cognitive science level is HARD to do well. In our community we have a large number of CS researchers who are exceptional educators and are doing good research, however there needs to be more work done about the underlying cognitive processes that support the learning of CS.

Not everyone needs a CS PhD’s to be an exceptional teacher, however we do need some CS Ed PhD’s in order to help understand our students, our curriculum and WHY some of our teachers are so exceptional so that we can begin to replicate the small bubbles of excellence that we see throughout high schools and CS departments all over.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 8th, 2009 at 7:58 am and is filed under CS Ed Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “A message to the SIGCSE list serv”

  1. Alfred Thompson Says:
    July 12th, 2009 at 10:01 am

    I posted a similar sort of reply at http://blogs.msdn.com/alfredth/archive/2009/07/12/are-we-doing-it-right.aspx

  2. Are We Doing It Right? | ASP Scribe Says:
    July 17th, 2009 at 3:10 am

    […] but they don’t count as they were all queued up before I left. Note: Leigh Ann Sudol has  A message to the SIGCSE list serv at her blog that is worth reading. Note: A somewhat related post by Mark Guzdial at An […]

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