Professional Learning Communities to Support 170 Middle School Computer Science Teachers

Five-unit computer science studies in high school has been found by the Aaron Institute’s research, to predict, among a package of mathematics, physics and English, future employment in high-tech. However in 2022, only 10,800 twelfth grade students graduated the matriculation examination in computer science, a constant number for over a decade. This figure correlates with the number of students in excellence classes, who studied computers in middle school and chose the five-units track in high school. To increase the pool of talent for high-tech, a new government program includes specific targets and resources to expand the scope of excellence classes both in middle school and the ‘high-tech’ matriculation package in high school.

There is however an immense challenge to fulfil this goal since there is a shortage in computer science teachers. Currently there are 300 teachers in middle school, and an additional 200 are being retrained as computer science teachers. Most of the current and future teachers in training started as teachers of other subject areas. This circumstance already leads to a very thin practice of the curriculum. Typically, they tend to teach coding in the Python language and in most cases sideline the more sophisticated components of data and procedure abstraction and solving problems with algorithms.

To begin addressing this issue, we approached the Weizmann Institute of Science. The Weizmann Institute is a center for expertise in science teaching and has very successful experience in creating professional learning communities for teachers. They propose a three-year program, in which initially 20 teacher leaders will be trained to lead 10 learning communities, that will operate across the country. Special emphasis would be placed on areas of the curriculum that teachers find difficult and tend to avoid, such as modelling, reasoning and evaluating real life problems by using computer algorithms. Altogether, 170 teachers will take part in ongoing professional development.

* The text above shows the grant as approved by the Foundation’s Board of Directors / Grant 516