Communications of the ACM - Self managed systems
Computer science teacher preparation is critical
ACM Inroads
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How do we best prepare middle and high school students for college and career pathways in software engineering? Current industry and academic trends suggest that students are best prepared for postsecondary success in new and emerging interdisciplinary fields through extensive training in higher-order thinking skills, such as creative thinking, problem solving, critical thinking, and computational thinking, as well as the development of advanced technical skills, such as applied computing and engineering. To address the urgent need to prepare students for postsecondary industry and educational pathways that utilize software engineering principles, the Office of Postsecondary Readiness (OPSR) within the NYC Department of Education has created a comprehensive curricular program in software engineering for students in grades 6 to 12 called the Software Engineering Pilot (SEP) program. OPSR seeks to improve college and career readiness for all students by placing the SEP program in twenty (20) NYC public schools --ten (10) middle schools and ten (10) high schools-- by the fall of 2013. In this poster session I will outline the various aspects of our comprehensive curriculum, including innovative approaches to teaching abstract concepts, and present the recommended overall curricular scope and sequence for introducing software engineering to students in grades 6 to 12.