While the U.S. government tracks teacher certification, this tracking is limited to initial certification. However, many computer science (CS) teachers did not initially certify in CS but in another subject. As a result, there is a data gap involving pathways to CS teacher certification, pathway requirements, and the number and characteristics of teachers who pursue each pathway. This gap in the data landscape may be an impediment to the goal of expanding CS education: a lack of understanding of these pathways may inhibit recruitment, retention, and ensuring that the pathways adequately prepare educators to support student learning.

To address this gap, we have begun a project to map the pathways to CS teacher certification. This poster describes our initial phase of data collection. The dataset combines content analysis of state websites and other state documents with interviews. We have gathered data about each pathway to teaching CS and its requirements.

Our findings from this phase suggest some important implications for CS education. First, we explore possible adjustments to the extended CAPE codebook, which also serve as an enumeration of themes that emerged from our analysis that are not common in other CS education research. We also explore how the requirements for CS certification pathways have important implications for CS professional development and curriculum providers, CS education researchers, and certification pathway providers and state-level decision-makers. We briefly outline our future work, which includes expanding data collection to more states and to the count and demographics of teachers in each pathway.