Understanding CS Teachers’ Professional Identity

Currently, we are facing big challenges of preparing and supporting K-12 CS teachers. In addition to increasing the number of CS teachers, there is a great need of supporting those teachers to grow and retain as committed, quality teachers. As suggested by teacher identity theory, teachers’ sense of commitment and (other aspects of) teaching profession is tightly linked with their sense of identity. This study starts to explore ways of supporting CS teachers through understanding their teacher identity. We start with introducing the unique challenges of preparing and supporting CS teachers, and then describe the qualitative study aimed at understanding CS teachers’ professional identity, which has the potential to offer insights for sustaining and supporting CS teachers.