Workshop on The State of High School Cybersecurity Education for Preparing a Cybersecurity Workforce

The cybersecurity workforce shortage is a critical, immediate, and growing problem in the United States. Increasing the number of youth pursuing cybersecurity degrees and careers will require a multilayered strategy. Some of the steps needed to achieve this goal include: making cybersecurity teaching and learning in secondary schools rigorous, engaging and relevant; providing opportunities for youth to learn about cybersecurity as a field of study and career options, and smoothing the transition to postsecondary success by including additional studies or workforce placement. Some states have begun integrating cybersecurity content into their K-12 computer science and/or Career Technical Education (CTE) standards and are offering curriculum in cybersecurity; however, the breadth, depth, and implementation varies from one state to another. In many states, integrating cybersecurity into the K-12 curriculum still emphasizes students’ online safety, e.g. secure passwords, cyberbullying and identity protection. This project will implement a workshop to analyze the current state of cybersecurity education in high schools. The results will advance knowledge and understanding about the state of K-12 cybersecurity education in the United States at a crucial time. This project aims to implement a workshop to analyze the state of the art of cybersecurity education in the U.S. high schools. Approximately 30 participants (educators, policymakers, and industry leaders) from six states — which have made good progress in implementing cybersecurity education standards and creating career pathways in high schools — will attend the workshop and produce a report on the state of high school cybersecurity education for preparing a cybersecurity workforce. The goals of the workshop are to: 1) understand the prospective effectiveness of these standards, and their consequent curricula and pathways, for generating meaningful cybersecurity learning and meeting workforce demands; 2) identify factors that enable or thwart the implementation of cybersecurity standards across school districts with a specific focus on factors involving different socioeconomic and racial/ethnic profiles; 3) Understand the developmental support needed to effectively teach cybersecurity in high schools; and 4) summarize challenges and provide recommendations for advancing cybersecurity in high school education in the context of addressing the cybersecurity workforce shortage. The workshop will produce timely and useful information about the efficacy of various educational standards to fill the cybersecurity workforce gap and provide a blueprint for states that are looking for creating their own cybersecurity strands and pathways.This project is partially supported by NSF's Discovery Research PreK-12 (DRK-12) program, in the Directorate for Education & Human Resources. DRK-12 seeks to significantly enhance the learning and teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by preK-12 students and teachers through research and development of innovative resources, models and tools. Projects in the DRK-12 program build on fundamental research in STEM education and prior research and development efforts that provide theoretical and empirical justification for proposed projects.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.