Pedagogical Pattern Languages

Joseph Bergin‘s pedagogical patterns for computer science education returned my attention to teaching methods I’ve searching for almost five years. Here is a phrase from a paper submitted to pedagogical pattern language project:

Most educators and trainers are not taught how to teach. Rather, they often find themselves teaching by accident. Typically, a person with a skill that is in demand, such as a particular programming language, will be asked to teach it. People assume that if the person is good in this programming language, she will be good at teaching it. But knowing the subject matter is very different from knowing how to teach it.
Effectively communicating complex technologies is often a struggle for information technology instructors. They may try various teaching strategies, but this trial and error process can be time-consuming and fraught with error. Advice is often sought from other “expert” instructors, but these individuals are not always readily available. This creates the need to find other ways to facilitate the sharing of teaching techniques between expert and novice teachers. 

Jutta Eckstein, Mary Lynn Manns, Helen Sharp, and Marianna Sipos, “Teaching from Different Perspectives”.

Full text is here. These words are completely true for today’s design computing education and workshopping culture of architecture. But, I’m not sure about if an approach of pedagogical patterns is only enough to solve above problems. Also, It’s quite interesting for me to find a theory or approach transferred to computer science from architecture (usually we experience the reverse), as this educational method is derived from Pattern Languages of Christopher Alexander.