Pedagogical patterns: A means for communication within the CS teaching community of practice

Abstract

The computer science high-school teaching community of practice possesses a rich collection of distributed practical knowledge consisting of individual teachers' expertise regarding pedagogy. However, without a proper means of communication and rules of discourse, the individual pieces of knowledge might not be transferred properly within the community, and eventually might get lost. Only when fertile professional communication lines have been established, can the growth of common shared, reusable knowledge bases be reinforced and nurtured. Pedagogical patterns are intended to capture the expert knowledge of the practice of teaching and to transfer that knowledge to other practitioners. This paper discusses how the culture of patterns can be employed to transfer pedagogical knowledge, and thus reinforce peer-communication and collaboration within the computer science high-school teaching community of practice.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully thanks the editor and the reviewers for their insightful comments, and Orna Muller and Cecile Yehezkel for their useful feedback on earlier versions of this paper. The author also gratefully thanks the teachers who participated in the Patterns and Pedagogy workshop.