Computational thinking is identified as one of the “essential skills for 21st-Century students.” [1] Studies of CT in school programs are being funded by many organizations, including the United States National Science Foundation. In this paper, we describe “lessons learned” over the first two years of a research program (PREDICTS: Principles and Resources for Educators to Infuse Computational Thinking in the Sciences) with the goal of developing knowledge of how to integrate CT into introductory high school biology and chemistry classes for all students. Using curricular modules developed by program staff, two in biology and two in chemistry, teachers piloting the program engaged students in CT with computational evidence from authentic tools in order to develop understanding of science concepts. Each module, representing about a week of instruction, addresses science ideas in the prescribed course of study for high school programs. Project researchers have collected survey data on teachers’: (1) beliefs about effective science teaching; (2) beliefs about their effectiveness as a science teacher and their students’ ability to learn science, and; (3) content preparedness. In addition, we observed module implementation, collected and analyzed student artifacts, and interviewed teachers at the conclusion of module implementation. Preliminary results indicated some challenges (access to technology, varying levels of experience among students) and cause for optimism (student and teacher engagement in CT and the computational tools used in the modules). Continuing research efforts are described in this paper, along with descriptions of the curricular modules and the use of observations and “CT check-ins” to assess student engagement in, application of, and learning of CT.
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FIRST Principles to Design for Online, Synchronous High School CS Teacher Training and Curriculum Co-Design
The Covid-19 pandemic has offered new challenges and opportunities for teaching and research. It has forced constraints on in-person gathering of researchers, teachers, and students, and conversely, has also opened doors to creative instructional design. This paper describes a novel approach to designing an online, synchronous teacher professional development (PD) and curriculum co-design experience. It shares our work in bringing together high school teachers and researchers in four US states. The teachers participated in a 3-week summer PD on ideas of Distributed Computing and how to teach this advanced topic to high school students using NetsBlox, an extension of the Snap! block-based programming environment.
The goal of the PD was to prepare teachers to engage in collaborative co-design of a 9-week curricular module for use in classrooms and schools. Between their own training and the co-design process, teachers co-taught a group of high school students enrolled in a remote summer internship at a university in North Carolina to pilot the learned units and leverage ideas from their teaching experience for subsequent curricular co-design. Formative and summative feedback from teachers suggest that this PD model was successful in meeting desired outcomes. Our generalizable FIRST principles—Flexibility, Innovativeness, Responsiveness (and Respect), Supports, and Teamwork (collaboration)—that helped make this unique PD successful, can help guide future CS teacher PD designs.
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- PAR ID:
- 10222352
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 5
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3428029.3428059
