Critical Incidents in K-12 Computer Science Classrooms - Towards Vignettes for Computer Science Teacher Training

The use of vignettes has been shown to be an effective method both in teacher training and in the assessment of teachers' understanding of instructional strategies. In this paper, we report on a study in which we sought to identify real-world classroom situation that can be used as vignettes for K-12 Computer Science teacher education and professional development. Using semi-structured interviews with five expert teachers involved in in-service teacher training, we elicited a collection of twelve domain-specific critical incidents that can occur in K-12 Computer Science classrooms. These critical incidents were ranked by the experts with respect to their relevance using a Delphi process. As part of the semi-structured interviews, we also collected reactions to each of the critical incidents. We discuss the resulting critical incidents and the experts' comments in the light of the Computing Education Research literature.