Barriers Regarding K-12 Cyber Security Education in the United States

Cyber security is experiencing a workforce crisis. However, access to cyber security education for K-12 students remains alarmingly low. To better understand this phenomenon, we conducted a survey of teachers based in the United States. We asked teachers questions intended to understand their background, school, and local community and the things that prevent them from offering, growing, or expanding cyber security education. To enrich the data set, we conducted follow-up semi-structured interviews (n=14) so we could get more comprehensive data about teachers’ perceptions and insights. This thesis highlights several extrinsic barriers related to student attitude, funding, and administrative support. In addition, there are second order barriers related to perceived student maturity, lack of confidence, and others. The results of this thesis have implications for the strategies curriculum designers, administrators, teachers, industry players, and government entities may wish to use to incentivize and grow K-12 cyber security education in the United States. Furthermore, the results can potentially be applied in other countries that can use lessons learned from the US experience.