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1. Evaluating Computer Science Professional Development for Teachers in the United States

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3488042.3488054  

   McGill, Monica M; Zarch, Rebecca; Sexton, Stacey; Smith, Julie M.; Ong, Christine; Rasberry, Melissa; Hollis, Shelly (November 2021, Koli Calling International Conference on Computing Education Research)

   Teacher professional development (PD) is a key factor in enabling teachers to develop mindsets and skills that positively impact students. It is also a key step in building capacity for computer science (CS) education in K-12 schools. Successful CS PD meets primary learning goals and enable teachers to grow their self-efficacy, asset and equity mindset, and interest in teaching CS. As part of a larger study, we conducted a secondary analysis of CS PD evaluation instruments (). We found that instruments across providers were highly dissimilar with limited data collected for measures related to teacher learning, which has implications for future K-12 CS education. Likewise, the instruments were limited in being connected to student learning and academic growth. As a way to enable PD providers to construct measures that align with known impacting factors, we offer recommendations for collecting demographic data and measuring program satisfaction, content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, growth and equity mindset, and self-efficacy. We also highlight questions for PD providers to consider when constructing their evaluation, including reflecting community values, the goals of the PD, and how the data collected will be used to continually improve CS programs. 

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2. Middle School Teachers' Self-efficacy in Teaching Computer Science and Digital Literacy

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3408877.3439592  

   Bausch, Gillian; Ni, Lijun; Martin, Fred; Hsu, Hsien-Yuan; Feliciano, Bernardo (March 2021, SIGCSE '21: Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)

   null (Ed.)

   This pilot study explores the impact of the CS Pathways professional development (PD) program on the teachers' self-efficacy in teaching a middle school computer science and digital literacy (CSDL) curriculum. The main goal of the study is to investigate the attributes that describe the teachers' self-efficacy after their first-year participation in the PD. A total of 19 middle school teachers from two states, NY and MA, attended the CS Pathway PD program and completed the end-of-year survey pertaining to self-efficacy in CSDL; more than half accepted the interview to help further understand their perceptions (n=10). Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to study the attributes of the teachers' self-efficacy. The preliminary results capture teachers' self-efficacy patterns, which inform the PD and indicate its effectiveness and challenges. 

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3. The Changing Profile of ECS Teachers

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3328778.3372679  

   McGee, Steven; Dettori, Lucia; Greenberg, Ronald I.; Rasmussen, Andrew M.; Reed, Dale F.; Yanek, Don (March 2020, Proceedings of the 51st SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education)

   This study compares the characteristics and professional development (PD) experiences between teachers who began teaching Exploring Computer Science before and after the enactment of a CS graduation requirement in the Chicago Public Schools. The post-requirement teachers were less likely to have a CS background, but their experience in the ECS PD and their level of confidence at the end of the PD were equivalent to the early adopters. 

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4. Teachers’ Engagement and Self-Efficacy in a PK–12 Computer Science Teacher Virtual Community of Practice

   https://doi.org/10.26716/jcsi.2021.10.8.34  

   Schwarzhaupt, Robert; Wilson, Joseph; Lee, Fanny; Raspberry, Melissa (January 2021, Journal of Computer Science Integration)

   null (Ed.)

   Prekindergarten to 12th-grade teachers of computer science (CS) face many challenges, including isolation, limited CS professional development resources, and low levels of CS teaching self-efficacy that could be mitigated through communities of practice (CoPs). This study used survey data from 420 PK–12 CS teacher members of a virtual CoP, CS for All Teachers, to examine the needs of these teachers and how CS teaching self-efficacy, community engagement, and sharing behaviors vary by teachers’ instructional experiences and school levels taught. Results show that CS teachers primarily join the CoP to gain high-quality pedagogical, assessment, and instructional resources. The study also found that teachers with more CS teaching experience have higher levels of self-efficacy and are more likely to share resources than teachers with less CS teaching experience. Moreover, teachers who instruct students at higher grade levels (middle and high school) have higher levels of CS teaching self-efficacy than do teachers who instruct lower grade levels (elementary school). These results suggest that CoPs can help CS teachers expand their professional networks, gain more professional development resources, and increase CS teaching self-efficacy by creating personalized experiences that consider teaching experience and grade levels taught when guiding teachers to relevant content. This study lays the foundation for future explorations of how CS education–focused CoPs could support the expansion of CS education in PK–12 schools. 

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5. Middle school teachers’ self-efficacy in teaching computer science and digital literacy: Impact of the CS Pathways RPP professional development program

   https://doi.org/DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.31416.26887  

   Bausch, G.; Ni, L.; Martin, F.; Hsu, H.; Feliciano, B (October 2021, The intersection of RPPs and BPC in CS education: A culmination of papers from the RPPforCS Community)

   Background: Researcher-practitioner partnerships (RPPs) have gained increasing prominence within education, since they are crucial for identifying partners’ problems of practice and seeking solutions for improving district (or school) problems. The CS Pathways RPP project brought together researchers and practitioners, including middle school teachers and administrators from three urban school districts, to build teachers’ capacity to implement an inclusive computer science and digital literacy (CSDL) curriculum for all students in their middle schools. Objective: This study explored the teachers’ self-efficacy development in teaching a middle school CSDL curriculum under the project’s RPP framework. The ultimate goal was to gain insights into how the project’s RPP framework and its professional development (PD) program supported teachers’ self-efficacy development, in particular its challenges and success of the partnership. Method: Teacher participants attended the first-year PD program and were surveyed and/or interviewed about their self-efficacy in teaching CSDL curriculum, spanning topics ranging from digital literacy skills to app creation ability and curriculum implementation. Both survey and interview data were collected and analyzed using mixed methods 1) to examine the reach of the RPP PD program in terms of teachers’ self-efficacy; 2) to produce insightful understandings of the PD program impact on the project’s goal of building teachers’ self-efficacy. Results and Discussion: We reported the teachers’ self-efficacy profiles based on the survey data. A post-survey indicated that a majority of the teachers have high self-efficacy in teaching the CSDL curriculum addressed by the RPP PD program. Our analysis identified five critical benefits the project’s RPP PD program provided, namely collaborative efforts on resource and infrastructure building, content and pedagogical knowledge growth, collaboration and communication, and building teacher identity. All five features have shown direct impacts on teachers' self-efficacy. The study also reported teachers’ perceptions on the challenges they faced and potential areas for improvements. These findings indicate some important features of an effective PD program, informing the primary design of an RPP CS PD program. 

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