Supporting Information Technology Teachers through Programming Professional Development: A South African Case Study Desmond Wesley Govender, Irene Govender, Betty Breed, Marietjie Havenga, Elsa Mentz, Frank Dignum and Virginia Dignum University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, 4001 North West University, Potchefstroom, South Africa, 2520 University of Utrecht, Netherlands Delft University of Technology, Netherlands KEYWORDS Pair Programming. Problem Solving. Meta-cognition. Intervention Programme. Teaching Programming ABSTRACT Currently, there are many challenges of preparing and supporting secondary school Information Technology (IT) teachers. In addition to increasing the number of IT teachers, there is a need of supporting those teachers to grow and to retain them as committed, quality teachers. This paper focuses on ways of supporting IT teachers through an intervention programme that supports and enriches teachers specifically in an area that poses most difficulties – programming. A case study of six teachers was used to explore the programme of intervention and determine the viability for future expansion to include more teachers in this form of professional development. Results indicate that teachers gained confidence in teaching programming and were willing to continue with the strategies in the future. Address for correspondence: Desmond Wesley Govender, Private Bag X03, Ashwood, 3605, South Africa, Telephone: 27 031 4018977/2603428, Fax: 0865176317, E-mail: govenderd50@ukzn.ac.za INTRODUCTION Few schools offer Information Technology (IT) in previously disadvantaged areas in the South African context (Downes and Looker 2011). Furthermore, those that do offer IT lack professional development (PD) specifically in IT. Educational reform places high demands on stu- dent learning and the schools are held account- able for student performance. Because teachers are in a crucial place for facilitating good learn- ing and teaching, professional development is central to accomplish the intentions of improved student performance. Several studies (for ex- ample, Marrongelle et al. 2013; Harris et al. 2012; Horsley et al. 2010; Desimone 2009; Smith 2009) have demonstrated that PD can enrich teachers’ knowledge and skills and improve their attitudes towards preparation for teaching and their over- all self-efficacy (Govender and Govender 2012). While some efforts (Hasni and Lodhi 2011) are being made to prepare IT teachers in train- ing, few are being made to support IT teachers who are already in practice to help them improve and grow. Some of the challenges facing the IT teacher-profession are: teacher retention –many teachers leave the profession within a few years inevitably causing a high turnover of IT teach- ers, some teachers are resistant to change and some do not have the necessary skill to teach IT effectively, amongst other challenges (Mentz et al. 2012). The researchers challenge was how do we support these teachers, in these circumstances. The Department of Education (Department of Education 2007) recognizes the need for profes- sional teacher development, specifically in scarce areas such as Mathematics, Science and ICT (ICT in this paper refers to IT). The researchers there- fore developed an intervention programme to support six teachers in previously disadvantaged schools. Because IT covers a wide range of as- pects, the programme specifically targeted one niche area of most concern to IT teachers that is programming. Programming requires a high level of cognitive ability and therefore poses difficul- ties in finding effective ways of teaching high school learners (Ismail et al. 2010). Literature Review There is a tendency to cloud the study of IT as a scientific discipline with other uses of ICT particularly within education, such as computer literacy (the mastery of basic computer skills), keyboarding, or educational technology and Technology education (Gal-Ezer and Stephenson © Kamla-Raj 2013 J Communication, 4(2): 153-160 (2013)