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1. Infusing computational thinking instruction into elementary mathematics and science: Patterns of teacher implementation

   Rich, K. ( April 2019 , Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference)

   In this brief paper, we will share preliminary results of a study of how elementary-school teachers take up computational thinking (CT) ideas and incorporate them into their mathematics and science teaching. We describe the teachers’ school contexts, the professional development experiences in which they engaged, and our preliminary analyses of how they used computational thinking within their enacted lessons. In brief, the seven teachers in this study exhibited three patterns of implementation: (1) using computational thinking to guide their own planning and thinking; (2) using computational thinking to structure their lessons; and (3) presenting computational thinking concepts to students as general problem solving strategies.
2. Teachers’ Beliefs in Enacting an Interdisciplinary Engineering Project in Inclusive and General Classroom Contexts

   Lilly, Sarah ; McAlister, Anne M. ; Chiu, Jennifer ( January 2022 , Annual meeting of the American Society for Engineering Education.)

   In this study, we examine the reported beliefs of two elementary science teachers who co-taught a four-week engineering project in which students used a computational model to design engineering solutions to reduce water runoff at their school (Lilly et al., 2020). Specifically, we explore the beliefs that elementary science teachers report while enacting an engineering project in two different classroom contexts and how they report that their beliefs may have affected instructional decisions. Classroom contexts included one general class with a larger proportion of students in advanced mathematics and one inclusive class with a larger proportion of students with individualized educational programs. During project implementation, we collected daily surveys and weekly interviews to consider teachers’ beliefs of the class sections, classroom activities, and curriculum. Two researchers performed a thematic analysis of the surveys and interviews to code reflections on teachers’ perceived differences between students in the class sections and their experiences teaching engineering in the class sections. Results suggest that teachers’ beliefs about students in these two different classroom contexts may have influenced opportunities that students had to understand and engage in disciplinary practices. The teachers reported making changes to activities based on their perceptions of student understanding and engagementmore »and to save time which led to different experiences for students in each class section, specifically a more teacher-centered implementation for the inclusive class. Teachers also suggested specific professional development and educative supports to help teachers to support all students to engage in engineering tasks. Thus, it is important to understand teachers’ beliefs to build support for teachers in their implementation of engineering projects that meet the needs of their students and ensure that students have access and support to engage in engineering practices.« less
3. Supporting Elementary Teacher's Reflections on Equity in CS Education: A Case Study Approach

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3291279.3341208  

   Sullivan, Florence ; Tulungen, Catherine ; Veeragoudar, Sneha ; Pektas, Emrah ( August 2019 , Proceedings of the 2019 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research)

   The dearth of women and people of color in the field of computer science is a well-documented phenomenon. Following Obama's 2016 declaration of the need for a nationwide CS for All movement in the US, educators, school districts, states and the US-based National Science Foundation have responded with an explosion of activity directed at developing computer science learning opportunities in K-12 settings. A major component of this effort is the creation of equitable CS learning opportunities for underrepresented populations. As a result, there exists a strong need for educational research on the development of equity-based theory and practice in CS education. This poster session reports on a work-in-progress study that uses a case study approach to engage twenty in-service elementary school teachers in reflecting on issues of equity in CS education as part of a three-day CS professional development workshop. Our work is unfolding in the context of a four-year university/district research practice partnership in a mid-sized city in the Northeastern United States. Teachers in our project are working to co-design integrated CS curriculum units for K-5 classrooms. We developed four case studies, drawn from the first year of our project, that highlight equity challenges teachers faced in the classroommore »when implementing the CS lessons. The case studies follow the "Teacher Moments" template created by the Teaching Systems Lab in Open Learning at MIT. The case study activity is meant to deepen reflection and discussion on how to create equitable learning opportunities for elementary school students. We present preliminary findings.« less
4. Computational thinking, mathematics, and science: Elementary teachers’ perspectives on integration.

   Rich, K. M. ; Yadav, A. ; Schwarz, C. V ( April 2019 , Journal of technology and teacher education)

   In order to create professional development experiences, curriculum materials, and policies that support elementary school teachers to embed computational thinking (CT) in their teaching, researchers and teacher educators must under- stand ways teachers see CT as connecting to their classroom practices. Taking the viewpoint that teachers’ initial ideas about CT can serve as useful resources on which to build ed- ucational experiences, we interviewed 12 elementary school teachers to probe their understanding of six components of CT (abstraction, algorithmic thinking, automation, debug- ging, decomposition, and generalization) and how those com- ponents relate to their math and science teaching. Results suggested that teachers saw stronger connections between CT and their mathematics instruction than between CT and their science instruction. We also found that teachers draw upon their existing knowledge of CT-related terminology to make connections to their math and science instruction that could be leveraged in professional development. Teachers were, however, concerned about bringing CT into teaching due to limited class time and the difficulties of addressing high level CT in developmentally appropriate ways. We discuss these results and their implications future research and the design of professional development, sharing examples of how we used teachers’ initial ideas as the foundationmore »of a workshop introducing them to computational thinking.« less
5. Computational thinking in elementary classrooms: Using classroom dialogue to measure equitable participation

   Larimore, R. ( May 2021 , Proceedings of the Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering (RESPECT))

   The increased push for access to computer science (CS) at the K-12 level has been argued as a way to broaden participation in computing. At the elementary level, computational thinking (CT) has been used as a framework for bringing CS ideas into the classroom and educating teachers about how they can integrate CT into their daily instruction. A number of these projects have made equity a central goal of their work by working in schools with diverse racial, linguistic, and economic diversity. However, we know little about whether and how teachers equitably engage students in CT during their classroom instruction– particularly during science and math lessons. In this paper, we present an approach to analyzing classroom instructional videos using the EQUIP tool (https://www.equip.ninja/). The purpose of this tool is to examine the quantity and quality of students’ contributions during CT-integrated math and science lessons and how it differs based on demographic markers. We highlight this approach using classroom video observation from four teachers and discuss future work in this area.