Lots of talk about certification
The CSTA and others have been talking a lot about certification as their new report “Ensuring Exemplary Teaching in an Essential Discipline”. The question is as we talk about certification in CS I would caution us against relying too heavily on models of certification for other disciplines.
There was an interesting article a short time ago in Curriculum Matters (an Education Week blog) about some of the identified problems with the teaching profession, especially in STEM disciplines. Also at this year’s IES (Institute for Education Sciences) conference I attended a panel on teacher certification (they were comparing alternative certification against traditional certification, and showed no significant difference in student performance between the two.
As we move computer science forward and hope to better prepare our CS teachers for the classroom, lets make sure that the preparations themselves are right.