Exploring Math plus CS in a Secondary Education Methods Course

There is wide-spread agreement that K-12 students need opportunities to explore computer science (CS) concepts and computational thinking within a wide array of disciplines for advancing, broadening, and diversifying the participation in CS. Programs such as "Computer Science for All" were created by the US government to motivate and help students of all ages to engage with CS, which was described as the "new basic skill for economic opportunity and social mobility". However, what is less understood is how to prepare teachers to engage with CS concepts and computational thinking, expanding their specialized and pedagogical content knowledge on these concepts. This study explores this gap in the context of a graduate-level secondary math education methods course in a university environment. To reduce the cognitive load for the teacher candidates as well as their students, we utilize the secondary mathematics curriculum to explore CS concepts infused into mathematics, avoiding at the same time an increase to the teaching hours to the extent that it is detrimental to the existing K-12 curriculum. Our study uses hybrid block-text programming-based teaching modules specifically designed to expose the similarities and the differences between mathematics and CS. We utilize the concept of variable and operations around it to explore how the teacher candidates' conceptions and misconceptions about CS make the understanding of those concepts easy or challenging, and how that affects their ability to incorporate them into their teaching.