K-12 Computing Teachers' Topics for Inquiry

While teacher inquiry has been known for decades to be an effective way of improving practice, teachers often do not have the time or confidence to undertake their own research. This paper describes the research questions that computing teachers chose to investigate when participating in a teacher inquiry project. Results show that teachers are most focused on cognitive outcomes, are concerned with students’ lack of understanding, and are mostly focused on either programming or computing topics in general. While some teachers planned to change their pedagogy, others introduced cross-curricular opportunities to increase interest and understanding. Teachers’ choice of questions can support researchers in developing a research agenda for K-12 computing education.