"I would be afraid to be a bad CS teacher": Factors Influencing Participation in Pre-Service Secondary CS Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives. Teachers are essential to making computing education available to students. A key place to sustainably prepare computer science (CS) teachers is in pre-service preparation programs, which are often required for certification in the United States. Prior work has examined many reasons that people choose to become teachers - or choose not to - but little prior work has examined factors that shape the pursuit of CS certifications in pre-service in particular. Participants. We recruited five teacher candidates who chose to pursue CS training in a new pre-service teacher preparation program in the United States and five candidates who expressed interest, but ultimately opted out. Method. We conducted semi-structured, remote interviews and performed a thematic analysis to inductively identify factors that influenced candidates' decisions. Findings. Candidates displayed many conceptions of justice that motivated them to teach CS, including repairing past wrongs in education, improving representation, and expanding literacy. Candidates reported many content knowledge and identity factors, including negative experiences in CS education, low CS self-efficacy, and a sense of not belonging or being respected in CS communities. Capacity for care as novice teachers was another factor: candidates feared not being able to care for students' needs while experiencing exhaustion from teaching and training during a pandemic, as well as the risks of added course preparation workload from being certified in multiple subject areas. Finally, candidates also considered opportunity costs like loss of income and job security as factors influencing their decisions. Conclusion. These factors highlight the importance of surfacing and dismantling implicit barriers, like injustice and inequity, and explicit barriers, like funding and overwork, so that future teachers feel confident in teaching CS and feel able to create equitable, inclusive environments for students to learn.