Coding for Teacher Education: A Recurring Theme that Requires Our Attention

Although the topic of students and teachers learning to code in schools has received increased interest in recent years, issues of teaching computational thinking and coding have been with us in technology in teacher education for more than 40 years. Beginning with the work of Seymour Papert and the publication of Mindstorms in 1980, educators have debated the need for including coding in the curriculum. In Mindstorms, Papert presents a compelling case for teaching programming and computational thinking in preK–12 environments. Papert (1980) makes his point clear in a now famous quote:

In most contemporary educational situations where children come into contact with computers the computer is used to put children through their paces, to provide exercises of an appropriate level of difficulty, to provide feedback, and to dispense information. The computer programming the child. In the LOGO environment the relationship is reversed: The child, even at preschool ages, is in control: The child programs the computer. And in teaching the computer how to think, children embark on an exploration about how they themselves think. The experience can be heady: Thinking about thinking turns the child into an epistemologist, an experience not even shared by most adults. (p. 5)

It is interesting to note that arguments on both sides of this issue seem to have changed little over the years. People opposed to teaching coding argue that the vast majority of today’s students will not become computer scientists and that time spent learning coding could be put to better use. People in favor of teaching coding agree that most students will not become computer programmers, but argue that learning to code provides opportunities for students to experience and understand how computers are controlled and operate, as well as valuable problem solving experience. Specifically, current arguments for teaching coding include:

• Providing initial experience in computational thinking.

• Helping learners understand how coding controls computers and thus how they can control computers.

• Helping make students creators rather than just consumers of technology.

Three of the nine International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards for Students (ISTE, 2016) detail areas where learning coding is essential:

(3) Knowledge Constructor—Students critically curate a variety of resources using digital tools to construct knowledge, produce creative artifacts and make meaningful learning experiences for themselves and others.

(4) Innovative Designer—Students use a variety of technologies within a design process to identify and solve problems by creating new, useful or imaginative solutions.

(5) Computational Thinker—Students develop and employ strategies for understanding and solving problems in ways that leverage the power of technological methods to develop and test solutions. (see http://www.iste.org/standards/for-students#startstandards)

Obviously, including programing experiences in teacher education or in preK–12 environments is a challenge and can seem difficult to some educators. This challenge might explain why we have been discussing this issue for more than 40 years with little action. We need to recognize, however, that newer languages like Scratch and Scratch Jr. and specific suggestions for using coding across the curriculum are now available in numerous places, with Edutopia (https://www.edutopia.org/article/coding-across-curriculum) providing some of the most accessible resources in this area. In addition, Code.org has created the Hour of Code program, which has met with success in recent years. Both nationally and internationally, clubs and schools are taking up the challenge and participating in the Hour of Code program, as well as successfully embedding coding and robotics into their programs. Code.org provides valuable resources for teachers, teacher educators, and students and creates a platform for “non-computer-science types” to get started with coding. There exist similar beginning activities using Scratch and Scratch Jr.

Increasingly, teachers and researchers are sharing information on how to implement successful coding experiences in classrooms. In the new ISTE book Learning Supercharged: Digital Age Strategies and Insights from the Edtech Frontier, authors Lynne Schrum and Sandi Summerfield provide interesting and valuable stories of successful approaches used by teachers for introducing coding in classrooms (Schrum & Sumerfield, 2018).

In addition to coding activities in particular subject areas, the coding experience provides experience in problem solving: defining problems, breaking the solution down into parts, creating and organizing the parts, testing the program, and then using information to rework the solution. It is becoming increasingly clear that coding needs to find a place in both preservice and in-service teacher education.

Given the availability of easy entry coding experiences through Scratch, Scratch Junior, and Code.org, it seems that teaching coding should soon become more than a recurring theme and evolve into a commonplace activity for both preservice and in-service teachers. As teacher educators, we can begin this process by educating ourselves about appropriate resources and designing situations to share these approaches with preservice teachers. We also need to be able to share the rationale behind the teaching of coding as we work to integrate this new literacy into teacher education. Ultimately, our work in this area will empower both students and teachers with a new relationship with technology that enables the user to communicate with computers in new and powerful ways.

We are pleased to announce that JDLTE will produce a special issue on Coding and Computational Thinking in Teacher Education next year. The call for papers for this special issue is included in this issue.

The articles in this issue of JDLTE provide teacher educators with evidence-based practices for designing innovative learning environments. In the article “Flipping With the First Principles of Instruction: An Examination of Preservice Teachers’ Technology Integration Development,” Jacob Hall proposes the flipped classroom approach as an effective method for supporting preservice teachers’ technology integration development. Findings indicate significant gains in preservice teacher self-perceptions of increased pedagogical knowledge. Torrey Trust and Emrah Pektas offer “Using the ADDIE Model and Universal Design for Learning Principles to Develop an Open Online Course for Teacher Professional Development” to support professional growth of teachers located around the world. The article details the course design and facilitation process and offers insights about how to develop effective online learning experiences for diverse groups of educators. Wei Wang and colleagues examine the development of the TPACK framework with a specific focus on assessing preservice teachers’ TPACK development via five different research methods in the article “Preservice Teachers’ TPACK Development: A Review of TPACK Literature.” Finally, Kevin Graziano and Sarah Bryans-Bongey provide insight into the ways teacher preparation programs respond to the need for K–12 teacher to be proficient in online learning in the article “Surveying the National Landscape of Online Teacher Training in K–12 Teacher Preparation Programs.” Together these articles continue to strengthen pedagogical practices in the field of educational technology.