Logo image
Back
Barriers and Mitigations: Recruiting and Training CS Teachers in a Large Urban School District
Conference proceeding   Open access

Barriers and Mitigations: Recruiting and Training CS Teachers in a Large Urban School District

Jeffrey L. Popyack, Brigitte Valesey, Tammy R. Pirmann and Daniel Moix
Proceedings of the 57th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V.2, pp 1485-1486
18 Feb 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3770761.3777325
url
https://doi.org/10.1145/3770761.3777325View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open

Abstract

Social and professional topics -- Adult education Social and professional topics -- Computational thinking Social and professional topics -- CS1 Social and professional topics -- Informal education Social and professional topics -- K-12 education
The Jumpstarting Philadelphia CS for All Researcher Practitioner Partnership (RPP) aims to bring equitable, inclusive, and high-quality computer science instruction aligned with educational standards to all Philadelphia students. Launched in 2020, this project brings together researchers, School District of Philadelphia (SDP) teachers and administrators, teacher associations, and community and informal education organizations. We explore equity issues in concert with creating pathways to CS certification, including: •What barriers to offering CS exist in the classroom, building, learning network, district? • What are the challenges within SDP for recruiting a diverse group of CS educators? • What kind of teacher training and support results in the ''easiest/fastest'' adoption, most equitable outcomes, and/or improves academic outcomes for Philadelphia schools? Philadelphia is the sixth-largest city in the US, and SDP is one of the nation's largest districts, with 198,000 students. Pennsylvania initiated Instructional Certification for Grades 7-12 CS in December 2020. This project has worked to help inservice teachers earn CS certification, which for those already holding instructional certification in another subject, requires passing the Computer Science Praxis Exam. For most teachers, this has required significant preparation, especially with computer programming, which has led us to develop and modify an 8-month professional development curriculum. There are many obstacles that serve to discourage participation and impede completion. We discuss barriers identified and efforts to remove or reduce them, and provide an interim progress report.

Metrics

1 Record Views

Details

Logo image