Work

Enabling Professional Growth and Identity of High School CS Teachers through One-on-One Coaching

Year: 2025

Type: conference-paper

Abstract: We designed a one-year coaching program to provide U.S. high school CS teachers with the ongoing support to help shape their professional growth and identity as CS teachers. Our research question for this project was: Does CS coaching facilitate teacher professional growth and identity as a CS teacher? Adopting a mixed-methods approach, our study leveraged pre- and post-program surveys, ongoing coaching logs, and introspective self-reflection checklists to triangulate data from both coaches and coachees. Coachees' rated their professional growth and identity significantly higher after the intervention compared to before, and this difference indicated a large effect. Both before and after intervention, coachees indicated they identified partially as CS teachers, and this sense of identity grew after intervention. The success of this pilot, rooted in effective professional development practices, demonstrates how engaging teachers in coaching can motivate their interest in teaching CS. Professional development providers and regional agencies can replicate and adapt these processes to empower new CS educators.

Source: ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE)

DOI: 10.1145/3641555.3705172

Authors: Jennifer Rosato, Fatima Brunson, Joseph C. Tise, Laycee Thigpen, Monica M. McGill

Institutions: University of Minnesota, University of Minnesota, Duluth, Spelman College, Institute for Advancing Computing Education

Language: English

Topic: Teacher Education and Leadership Studies

Subfield: Education

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Quality education

Open Access status: bronze

Funders: National Science Foundation, Universitas Brawijaya