Exploring Math + CS Modules in Secondary Mathematics Education Teacher Preparation Courses

There is wide-spread agreement that K-12 students need opportunities to explore computer science (CS) concepts and computational thinking (CT) for creating highly skilled and competitive citizens in a digital society. Countries around the world are developing and delivering programs to motivate and help students of all ages engage with CS. While these efforts produce some positive results in school districts where resources and specialized educators are available, there are school districts that cannot create new CS classes or hire specialized teachers to teach CS. This creates a need for teachers who are specialized in one subject area to expand their knowledge by integrating CS into their classrooms and disciplines. This qualitative exploratory study begins with investigating how graduate-level teacher candidates in the College of Education understand and engage with modules applying CS to math concepts in early secondary mathematics. Then, we examine the differences in the way the graduate teacher candidates from the College of Education and senior-level preservice teachers from the Department of Mathematics understand and engage with the Math + CS modules. Finally, we analyze how the graduate teacher candidates’ technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) in mathematics transforms into interdisciplinary technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (I-TPACK) during our intervention in their teaching methods course. Our results show that the graduate teacher candidates understand the differences and the similarities between concepts shared by mathematics and computer science, and we see a relationship between previous CS experience and teachers expressing feelings of uncertainty when working on the modules. We also find that compared to the senior-level preservice teachers, the graduate teacher candidates make more connections between the Math + CS material and their pedagogical knowledge, which shows evidence of their mathematical TPACK transforming into interdisciplinary TPACK (I-TPACK) with CS.

MAJOR ADVISOR: Jennifer Parham-Mocello
COMMITTEE: Mike Bailey
COMMITTEE: Ben Lee
COMMITTEE: Margaret Niess
GCR: Christopher Sanchez