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   Dangol, Aasyushi; Chipps, Jake; Fasy, Brittany Terese; Hancock, Stacey; Jiang, Mengying; Rogowski, Aubrey; Searle, Kristin; Tofel-Grehl, Colby (June 2022, ASEE Annual Meeting NSF Grantees Poster Session)

   In July 2021, Computer Science (CS) standards were officially added as a subject area within the K-12 Montana content standards. However, due to a lack of professional development and pre-service preparation in CS, schools and teachers in Montana are underprepared to implement these standards. Montana is also a unique state, since American Indian education is mandated by the state constitution in what is known as the Indian Education for All Act. We are developing elementary and middle school units and teacher training materials that simultaneously address CS, Indian Education, and other Montana content standards. In this paper, we present a unit for fourth through sixth grades using a participatory design approach. Through physical computing, students create a visual narrative of their own stories inspired by ledger art, an American Indian art medium for recording lived experiences. We discuss the affordances and challenges of an integrated approach to CS teaching and learning in elementary and middle schools in Montana. 

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2. Implementing Culturally Responsive Coding Projects with Indigenous Communities

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3545947.3576299  

   Rich, Kathryn M.; Bowdon, Jill; Spang, Marissa (March 2023, SIGCSE 2023: Proceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 2)

   Doyle, Maureen; Stephenson, Ben. (Ed.)

   This study took place in the context of a researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) between a research organization, the Wyoming Department of Education, and three school districts serving primarily Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho students on the Wind River Reservation. The goal of the RPP is to integrate instruction on the Indian Education for All Wyoming social studies standards with the Wyoming computer science standards in elementary school in ways that are culturally responsive [1]. The project team provided 12 hours of professional development across three sessions, three professional learning community sessions, lesson plans, and model projects. Teachers were expected to implement three coding projects across the school year. The study team collected data via teacher interviews, surveys, and observations of professional development and professional learning community sessions [2]. Three problems of practice that emerged from our preliminary qualitative analysis [3] include: (a) how to support student interest and engagement in computer science especially upon first introduction of a coding platform, (b) how to find time in the school day for computer science and to develop methods for integrating computer science with other subjects, and (c) how to build collaboration across classrooms and districts. The poster will discuss the adaptations teachers made to address the first two problems of practice and the RPP's strategy for addressing the third problem of practice in our next year of implementation. These findings will be of interest to researchers and practitioners working to implement culturally responsive computer science instruction in elementary schools in Indigenous communities. 

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3. Culturally responsive storytelling across content areas using American Indian ledger art and physical computing.

   Chipps, J.; Dangol, A.; Fasy, B.T.; Hancock, S.; Jiang, M.; Rogowski, A.; Searle, K.A.; Tofel-Grehl, C. (July 2022, American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference)

   In July 2021, Computer Science (CS) standards were officially added as a subject area within the K-12 Montana content standards. However, due to a lack of professional development and pre-service preparation in CS, schools and teachers in Montana are underprepared to implement these standards. Montana is also a unique state, since AmericanIndian education is mandated by the state constitution in what is known as the IndianEducation for All Act. We are developing elementary and middle school units and teacher training materials that simultaneously address CS, Indian Education, and other Montana content standards. In this paper, we present a unit for fourth through sixth grades using a participatory design approach. Through physical computing, students create a visual narrative of their own stories inspired by ledger art, an American Indian art medium for recording lived experiences. We discuss the affordances and challenges of an integrated approach to CS teaching and learning in elementary and middle schools in Montana. 

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4. Using an Evidence-Centered Design Approach to Examine the Alignment of Computer Science Curricula with Standards

   Rutstein, Daisy; Basu, Satabdi; Yang, Hui; Rachmatullah, Arif; Tate, Carol; McGee, Steven (June 2024, International Society of the learning Sciences, ICLS 2024 Proceedings)

   In the early stages of K-12 Computer Science (CS) curriculum development, standards were not yet established, and the primary objective, especially in younger grades, was to spark students' interest in CS. While this remains a vital goal, the development of the CS standards underscores the importance of standards-aligned curriculum, ensuring equitable, content rich CS education for all students. We show that standards alignment is most useful when it includes details about which aspects of the standards a curriculum aligns with. This paper describes our process of decomposing five middle school CS standards into granular learning targets using an evidence-centered design approach and mapping the learning targets onto individual lessons from one widely popular middle school CS curriculum. We discuss the potential implications of this work on curriculum design, curriculum selection, and teacher professional learning. 

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5. A Critical Computing Curriculum Design Case: Exploring Tribal Sovereignty for Middle School Students

   Searle, KA; Rogowski, A; Tofel-Grehl, C; Jiang, M (December 2023, Journal of computer science integration)

   Howard, N; Howard, K (Ed.)

   We report on our efforts to design an integrated computing curriculum for middle school students in Montana that is in line with the Kapor Center’s focus on culturally sustaining-revitalizing pedagogies. Montana provides a unique context for doing this work because a state constitutional mandate requires all K-12 students to learn about tribal histories and cultures through Indian Education For All (IEFA). IEFA centers around seven essential understandings about Indigenous peoples in Montana that are integrated across content areas. In addition, implementation of Montana’s CS standards began in the 2021–2022 school year. In the curricular design, we sought to bring together IEFA and CS standards with grades 6–8 social studies standards though a focus on food sovereignty, the right of a group of people “to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems” (https://nyeleni.org/IMG/pdf/DeclNyeleni-en.pdf). We are guided by the following research questions: (1) What are the design strategies and tactics necessary to make IEFA and CS content accessible to middle school students and their teachers? And (2) What are some of the challenges and limitations of designing culturally responsive-sustaining computer science curricula? To address these research questions, we provide an overview of the food sovereignty units we developed. We then share the strategies and tactics we employed to design the units. Finally, we critically reflect on the process of designing such a unit and our own limitations as designers. 

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