Building K-12 Teacher Capacity to Expand Uptake in a National CS Curriculum

In 2018 Ireland launched a new, nationwide Computer Science curriculum for upper second-level students. The biggest challenge preventing uptake of the subject is a low supply of teachers qualified to teach the subject resulting in most schools not offering the subject, preventing most students from having the choice in the first place. Currently, approximately 150 secondary schools (of 723 nationally) offer the subject. Most school teachers who aspire to teach CS do not have a degree in computing and typically have very low self-efficacy in programming, as previously reported in the literature. There is a need to help these teachers to confidently de-liver the national CS curriculum at second-level in Ireland. CSLINC is a platform and MOOC offering teachers a scaffolded approach towards building their confidence for formal CS content delivery. CSLINC provides courses that teachers can deliver to junior second-level students before the official, national CS curriculum is offered at senior-level. This poster provides overview of the benefits of this system for second-level teachers in Ireland, which will also be of value to the computing education community internationally.