Computer Science Teacher Professional Development Passport Alliance
To prepare students to learn computer science (CS) skills and competencies needed to thrive in modern society, it is critical to support PreK-12 CS teachers with professional development experiences. However, there has been a lack of professional development participation tracking for individual teachers across CS education research projects, creating challenges to understanding the unique number and characteristics of teachers who have participated in CS professional development.
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), under grant award number 2327863, AIR is addressing these challenges by partnering with the Computer Science Teachers Association and Institute for Advancing Computing Education to create the Computer Science Teacher Professional Development Passport Alliance.
The alliance seeks to fulfill three primary goals:
- Develop and pilot a system for NSF-funded CS education research projects to report their professional development characteristics, participating teacher demographic, and other data identified through research and evaluation;
- Create a professional development passport system that PreK–12 CS teachers can use as part of their professional portfolio; and
- Identify and support the conditions necessary for sustaining the professional development passport beyond the alliance’s three years of NSF funding.
AIR is serving as the evaluation partner in the alliance, conducting focus groups and usability testing with educators, administrators, and professional development providers to provide formative feedback to guide the development of the professional development passport platform.
