Proposed curriculum for programs leading to teacher certification in computer science

Abstract

Would a school system allow a person with only an eight-grade education to become an English teacher? Would a self-taught math teacher be given full responsibility for the high school math program? The answers to these questions are obvious to everyone: to become a subject-matter specialist school teacher, one must demonstrate competency by fulfilling state certification requirements. Yet these same school systems, which have well-defined qualification standards for English teachers and math teachers, today often assign full responsibility for the computer studies/computer science program to teachers who are self-taught or whose formal training is equivalent to an eight-grade education in the subject.