Dear Student

Welcome to the PGCE Computing course at Sheffield Hallam University, we look forward to supporting you on your journey to become an outstanding “Hallam Teacher” of Computing. This course prepares you to teach secondary Computing with the inclusion of experience in post 16 and primary education. Secondary Education was recently awarded an Outstanding classification ‘Hallam Teacher’ identity is one that is recognised and understood. The sense of pride that is felt in being part of this institution and sharing this identity came across in all aspects of the inspection. (Ofsted 2024)

This course is intensive, but it will equip you with the skills to becoming an outstanding teacher in a world where Computing teachers are in extremely high demand.  You will participate in two school placements where you will be in school 4 days a week and will be fully involved in all aspects of a teacher’s role. Our placements are thoughtfully planned to provide you with the practical experience required and a mentor who will work closely with you. Ofsted (2024) reported that “high-quality mentoring supports the effective development of trainees as expert practitioners, trainees are overwhelmingly positive about their relationships with mentors.”

One day a week you will attend university to receive pedagogical training, this will provide a mixture of specific subject studies and more general professional studies sessions training to meet the Teachers’ Standards and gain Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) by the end of the programme. Delivered sessions will help develop your planning and delivery of lessons along with reflective and evaluative practice, this will give you the opportunity to discover your own personal qualities and strengths as a teacher of Computing. This day is also an invaluable opportunity to build professional relationships with your peers and share experiences of good practice and classroom management.

You will investigate pedagogical approaches that allow students to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding of computing, this will ensure that pupils become digitally literate, able to use and express themselves and develop their ideas through technology. You will help students to develop skills and knowledge required to become active participants in a digital world and equipped to pursue the future careers available to them, allowing this to be integrated into the context of the learning.

To enrich your professional practice and develop your expertise you will complete 2 PGCE assignments, which will contribute 60 credits towards a master’s degree. These will be based on your practice and support sessions will be held during university days.

The National Curriculum advocates that computing lessons should be planned to support trainees in gaining a broad understanding of a range of fundamental computing topics taught across secondary education, as a PGCE student you can consider the varying and best applications available to your classroom practice. You will learn how to use different approaches, applications and activities in a structured and inclusive curriculum allowing all learners to access and progress as computational thinkers.

Throughout the programme, you will be supported by experts in both university and schools to ensure that you have opportunities to learn about current classroom practice and develop deep subject knowledge. This is achieved through a range of learning, teaching and assessment strategies. Our programme also encourages you to engage critically with educational issues to ensure you become a reflective practitioner with the ability to evaluate and adapt your practice to meet the diverse needs of pupils.

The Ofsted inspection (2024), highlighted comments by inspectors that SHU Sheffield Institute of Education (SoIE) was “outstanding”, they wrote that both university and placement staff “put the well-being of trainees first. Trainees benefit from highly effective communication and support from the university and placement providers” and that “Course leaders carefully sequence the curriculum so that trainees learn, review and remember important concepts.”

In preparation for joining the PGCE course in September, I would strongly recommend that you start to read up on generic teaching issues. I would suggest a couple of books here, Understanding Learning and Teaching in Secondary Schools by Alison Hramaik and Terry Hudson and Preparing to Teach in Secondary Schools by Ian Abbott, Prue Huddleston and David Middlewood, these are both informative and relevant.

In terms of Subject specific literature, I would recommend that you look at two books, Computer Science Education, Perspectives on Teaching and Learning in School by Sue Sentence, Erik Barendsen and Carsten Schulte, and Teaching Computing in Secondary Schools by William Lau. I would also advise you to look at the Raspberry Pi foundation website regarding computing technologies and teaching young people. There are also a range of software’s which you could research in preparation, such as Scratch, Small Basic and Python, all of these are freely available on the internet. It would also be helpful to gain knowledge of the PRIMM method used in programming.

You may wish to bolster your ideas by looking at the Department for Education’s and the TES websites, both of which have lots of information about teaching and learning in the secondary area. I would also suggest that you join the National Centre for Computing Education which you can find at https://teachcomputing.org/ . It is the main area for the discussion on the new computing agenda and has several ideas/lesson plans and resources on the delivery of computing in the classroom.

Finally remember that you are going to need a break and a rest before starting the course, so have a good summer and I look forward to working with you in September.

Bernadette Edge, Course Leader Computing and Business Secondary Education b.edge@shu.ac.uk