One of the issues associated with the advances in the application of digital technology is that the rest of society can’t keep up. For example, advances allow new services and opportunities before the political process can implement laws that redistrict damaging applications. Once applications are widely used, it is difficult to implement constraints that may prove burdensome or expensive for citizens and companies that have invested in new capabilities.
Education (K12 and higher education) faces similar and related issues. Rapid advances move the workplace faster than educational institutions can generate skilled practitioners and educated consumers to contribute and benefit from new opportunities. In K12, there is a time delay caused by the need to generate expectations (e.g., standards) that guide what exactly should be taught in specific areas of the curriculum and at specific grade levels, and the delay in hiring or developing skills and knowledge in the appropriate faculty members. For long-term commitments, the delay is exacerbated by the time span required to first develop future teachers with the appropriate skill sets and experience.
We closely follow K12 expectations in North Dakota because we worked for many years before retiring in North Dakota and were involved in working with preservice and inservice educators. What is happening in North Dakota may be of little interest to educators in other states. I raise what is happening in ND because education leaders within the state have made the claim that they are the first to mandate, at the insistence of the legislature, universal coding and cyber security experiences for all students. Even more recent expectations were just established by the state legislature providing another example of politicians requiring commitments from educators.
One of the components of the ND expectations that may be of use to educators in other states are some of the concrete descriptions of what educational experiences are required of educators. Aside from the standards (which were actually established in 2019, but now have a political mandate for demonstrated application), there are guidelines for educator credentials/certificates. As you might expect, various organizations (colleges and other) are seeing opportunities when only professional development is required and practicing educators need to catch up.
North Dakota CS and Cybersecurity Credentials (guidelines extracted from the document I link to above)
The NDDPI issues three levels of Computer Science (CS) and Cybersecurity Credentials. Each requires a valid teaching license issued by the ESPB.
- Level 1 – Allows the recipient to teach any CS or Cyber-related course, including advanced courses, at any grade level corresponding with the recipient’s teaching license. Applicants must complete one of the following:
- 200 or more hours of CS or Cyber training; or
- 15 or more credits in CS or Cyber; or
- 3 stacks of micro-credentials in CS or Cyber.
- Level 2 – Allows the recipient to teach introductory and intermediate-level CS or Cyber-related courses, as determined by the department, at any grade level corresponding with the recipient’s teaching license. Applicants must complete one of the following:
- 40 or more hours of CS or Cyber training; or
- 6 or more credits in CS or Cyber; or
- 1 stack of micro-credentials in CS or Cyber.
- Level 3 – Allows the recipient to teach integrated CS or Cyber-related instruction in other contents at any grade level corresponding with the recipient’s teaching license. The recipient also may teach CS or Cyber-related courses in grades kindergarten through grade eight as applicable to the recipient’s teaching license. Applicants must complete one of the following:
- 15 or more hours of CS or Cyber training; or
- 3 micro-credentials in CS or Cyber.
I would argue that while these expectations are being promoted as ground breaking and innovative, the skills and knowledge expected of educators are already lagging behind significant developments in what technology now is and the impact it is having. For example, AI tools now available to all have already changed what coding is and who can code. With the development of ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI, the relevance of teaching coding in the classroom has shifted. There is still a need for coding education, albeit with a shift towards teaching transferable skills and working with pre-existing machine learning models. Natural language coding is also becoming more prevalent, allowing programmers to write code in a way that is similar to how they would communicate with another person.
For additional reading on the expectations of teaching coding in K12, I would point those interested to this paper in Technology Review. This article provides a history of the emphasis on coding in K12 offering insights into what was taught, who benefited, and how the perceived importance of coding in the classroom has varied over time. Unlike the importance of technology in general that has grown linearly, the interest in coding waned after a peak in the 1980-90s which at the time emphasized vocational opportunities and now has been on an upward trajectory promoting benefits for all again with an expanded emphasis on computational thinking. The Technology Review article suggests that a technology emphasis was often justified as an equity issue encouraging women and minority students to learn the skills necessary to compete in lucrative areas of the economy, but educational efforts were typically disappointing in increasing more equitable access to more financially beneficial employment.
The applications of technology in society represent an aspect of education that presents serious challenges to the education establishment.
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