Certification is a hot topic for K-12 computer science educators. It’s a big issue in public schools but not so much in private schools. The concern in private schools, who often see certification as a “nice to have” rather than a requirement for hiring, is more about qualified. It’s tempting to assume that certified equates to qualified but given the state of certifications for CS teachers that is not always a safe assumption. One can’t assume that not certified equates to not qualified either. So what is a school do to?
Laura Blankenship asks some good questions in a post titles Am I Qualified? on her blog. I am a person with nine years of classroom teaching experience but no certification so a lot of her questions felt familiar.
The people who hired me to teach high school computer science (something like 17 years ago now – wow!) told me that they were interested in qualified far more than certified. This was a private Catholic school so they had that flexibility. BTW many of their teachers were and are certified. They send something like 98% of their graduates to four year universities so they do seem to have some good results.
Still while I had lots of technical experience I didn’t have much teaching experience at that time so they were taking something of a chance. Not everyone with a solid technical background makes a good teacher. It takes more than technical knowledge. Some of that is taught in education schools but from what I have seen of certified teachers not everything you need to know is taught there either. There is a lot of on the job learning no matter what your education background. Half of certified teachers don’t last more than 5 years in the classroom so even that is no certainty of success.
An other question that comes up when discussing certification is what person with a degree in computer science is going to want to take less money as a teacher when they can work in industry? That’s a fair question. But take a look at this story of a Harvard grad who left Microsoft to teach at Issaquah High School. Some people are happier as teachers. Contrary to popular opinion money is not everything.
There is also the possibility of having it both ways. Working in industry full-time and teaching part-time. See this New York Times article about putting engineers in the classroom via the TEALS program that Microsoft is sponsoring. Of course it helps if these engineers in the classroom have some training which they do get through the TEALS program. They also get paired with certified teachers who no doubt help them a lot with the “how to teach” part of their roles.
What it boils down to are several basic issues:
- The politics of public schools that require certification
- The question of what makes someone qualified to teach computer science
- How do we train people who want to teach computer science to make sure they are qualified?
If we can solve question three question one largely goes away as an issue except as long as we have realistic alternative certification plans for people who are qualified. That makes question two the key one we need to worry about. How do we define qualified in a way that balances the needs of everyone = prospective teachers, hiring schools, and of course the students we want taught.
But these are not easy questions. Worse still we have lots of people coming up with different and sometimes contradictory answers.
BTW the Computer Science Teachers Association has some research on the subject of certification on their web site. Check them out for more information: