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1. 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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2. Developing Empathy and Persistence through Professional Development in New to CSA Teachers

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3446871.3469793  

   Broneak, Cassandra ; Rosato, Jennifer ( August 2021 , ICER 2021: Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research)

   null (Ed.)

   To meet the rising demand for computer science (CS) courses, K-12 educators need to be prepared to teach introductory concepts and skills in courses such as Computer Science Principles (CSP), which takes a breadth-first approach to CS and includes topics beyond programming such as data, impacts of computing, and networks. Educators are now also being asked to teach more advanced concepts in courses such as the College Board's Advanced Placement Computer Science A (CSA) course, which focuses on advanced programming using Java and includes topics such as objects, inheritance, arrays, and recursion. Traditional CSA curricula have not used content or pedagogy designed to engage a broad range of learners and support their success. Unlike CSP, which is attracting more underrepresented students to computing as it was designed, CSA continues to enroll mostly male, white, and Asian students [College Board 2019, Ericson 2020, Sax 2020]. In order to expand CS education opportunities, it is crucial that students have an engaging experience in CSA similar to CSP. Well-designed differentiated professional development (PD) that focuses on content and pedagogy is necessary to meet individual teacher needs, to successfully build teacher skills and confidence to teach CSA, and to improve engagement with students [Darling-Hammond 2017]. It is critical that as more CS opportunities and courses are developed, teachers remain engaged with their own learning in order to build their content knowledge and refine their teaching practice [CSTA 2020]. CSAwesome, developed and piloted in 2019, offers a College Board endorsed AP CSA curriculum and PD focused on supporting the transition of teachers and students from CSP to CSA. This poster presents preliminary findings aimed at exploring the supports and challenges new-to-CSA high school level educators face when transitioning from teaching an introductory, breadth-first course such as CSP to teaching the more challenging, programming-focused CSA course. Five teachers who completed the online CSAwesome summer 2020 PD completed interviews in spring 2021. The project employed an inductive coding scheme to analyze interview transcriptions and qualitative notes from teachers about their experiences learning, teaching, and implementing CSP and CSA curricula. Initial findings suggest that teachers’ experience in the CSAwesome PD may improve their confidence in teaching CSA, ability to effectively use inclusive teaching practices, ability to empathize with their students, problem-solving skills, and motivation to persist when faced with challenges and difficulties. Teachers noted how the CSAwesome PD provided them with a student perspective and increased feelings of empathy. Participants spoke about the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on their own learning, student learning, and teaching style. Teachers enter the PD with many different backgrounds, CS experience levels, and strengths, however, new-to-CSA teachers require further PD on content and pedagogy to transition between CSP and CSA. Initial results suggest that the CSAwesome PD may have an impact on long-term teacher development as new-to-CSA teachers who participated indicated a positive impact on their teaching practices, ideologies, and pedagogies. 

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3. Translating and Scaling a Face-to-Face, Video-Based Elementary Science PD Program to an Online Environment

   Kowalski, S. ; Belcastro, A. ; Hvidsten, C. ; Constantine, A. ; Faruqi, F. ; Askinas, K. ; De Vaul, R. ; Roehrig, G. ( April 2021 , Annual Meeting of the NARST International Conference)

   Objective Over the past decade, we developed and studied a face-to-face video-based analysis-of-practice professional development (PD) model. In a cluster randomized trial, we found that the face-to-face model enhanced elementary science teacher knowledge and practice and resulted in important improvements to student science achievement (student treatment effect, d = 0.52; Taylor et al, 2017; Roth et al, 2018). The face-to-face PD model is expensive and difficult to scale. In this paper, we present the results of a two-year design-based research study to translate the face-to-face PD into a facilitated online PD experience. The purpose is to create an effective, flexible, and cost-efficient PD model that will reach a broader audience of teachers. Perspective/Theoretical Framework The face-to-face PD model is grounded in situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship frameworks. Teachers engage in learning science content and effective science teaching practices in the context in which they will be teaching. There are scaffolded opportunities for teachers to learn from analysis of model videos by experienced teachers, to try teaching model units, to analyze video of their own teaching efforts, and ultimately to develop their own unit, with guidance. The PD model attends to the key features of effective PD as described by Desimone (2009) and others. We adhered closely to the design principles of the face-to-face model as described by Authors, 2019. Methods We followed a design-based research approach (DBR; Cobb et al., 2003; Shavelson et al., 2003) to examine the online program components and how they promoted or interfered with the development of teachers’ knowledge and reflective practice. Of central interest was the examination of mechanisms for facilitating teacher learning (Confrey, 2006). To accomplish this goal, design researchers engaged in iterative cycles of problem analysis, design, implementation, examination, and redesign (Wang & Hannafin, 2005) in phase one of the project before studying its effect. Data Three small pilot groups of teachers engaged in both synchronous and asynchronous components of the larger online course which began implementation with a 10-week summer course that leads into study groups of participants meeting through one academic year. We iteratively designed, tested, and revised 17 modules across three pilot versions. On average, pilot groups completed one module every two weeks. Pilot 1 began the work in May 2019; Pilot 2 began in August 2019, and Pilot 3 began in October 2019. Pilot teachers responded to surveys and took part in interviews related to the PD. The PD facilitators took extensive notes after each iteration. The development team met weekly to discuss revisions. We revised all modules between each pilot group and used what we learned to inform our development of later modules within each pilot. For example, we applied what we learned from testing Module 3 with Pilot 1 to the development of Module 3 for Pilots 2, and also applied what we learned from Module 3 with Pilot 1 to the development of Module 7 for Pilot 1. Results We found that community building required the same incremental trust-building activities that occur in face-to-face PD. Teachers began with low-risk activities and gradually engaged in activities that required greater vulnerability (sharing a video of themselves teaching a model unit for analysis and critique by the group). We also identified how to contextualize technical tools with instructional prompts to allow teachers to productively interact with one another about science ideas asynchronously. As part of that effort, we crafted crux questions to surface teachers’ confusions or challenges related to content or pedagogy. We called them crux questions because they revealed teachers’ uncertainty and deepened learning during the discussion. Facilitators leveraged asynchronous responses to crux questions in the synchronous sessions to push teacher thinking further than would have otherwise been possible in a 2-hour synchronous video-conference. Significance Supporting teachers with effective, flexible, and cost-efficient PD is difficult under the best of circumstances. In the era of covid-19, online PD has taken on new urgency. NARST members will gain insight into the translation of an effective face-to-face PD model to an online environment. 

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4. Changes in Teacher Self-efficacy Through Engagement in an Engineering Professional Development Partnership

   https://doi.org/10.18260/1-2--34272  

   Schilling, Malle ; Paradise, Tawni ; Grohs, Jacob ; Matusovich, Holly ; Carrico, Cheryl ; Lesko, Holly ; Kirk, Gary ( June 2020 , ASEE Annual Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   K-12 teachers serve a critical role in their students’ development of interest in engineering, especially as engineering content is emphasized in curriculum standards. However, teachers may not be comfortable teaching engineering in their classrooms as it can require a different set of skills from which they are trained. Professional development activities focused on engineering content can help teachers feel more comfortable teaching the subject in their classrooms and can increase their knowledge of engineering and thus their engineering teaching self-efficacy. There are many different types of professional development activities teachers might experience, each one with a set of established best practices. VT PEERS (Virginia Tech Partnering with Educators and Engineers in Rural Communities) is a program designed to provide recurrent hands-on engineering activities to middle school students in or near rural Appalachia. The project partners middle school teachers, university affiliates, and local industry partners throughout the state region to develop and implement engineering activities that align with state defined standards of learning (SOLs). Throughout this partnership, teachers co-facilitate engineering activities in their classrooms throughout the year with the other partners, and teachers have the opportunity to participate in a two-day collaborative workshop every year. VT PEERS held a workshop during the summer of 2019, after the second year of the partnership, to discuss the successes and challenges experienced throughout the program. Three focus groups, one for each grade level involved (grades 6-8), were held during the summit for teachers and industry partners to discuss their experiences. None of the teachers involved in the partnership have formal training in engineering. The transcripts of these focus groups were the focus of the exploratory qualitative data analyses to answer the following research question: How do middle-school teachers develop teaching engineering self-efficacy through professional development activities? Deductive coding of the focus group transcripts was completed using the four sources of self-efficacy: mastery experience, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion and physiological states. The analysis revealed that vicarious experiences can be particularly valuable to increasing teachers’ teaching engineering self-efficacy. For example, teachers valued the ability to play the role of a student in an engineering lesson and being able to share ideas about teaching engineering lessons with other teachers. This information can be useful to develop engineering-focused professional development activities for teachers. Additionally, as teachers gather information from their teaching engineering vicarious experiences, they can inform their own teaching practices and practice reflective teaching as they teach lessons. 

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5. Understanding the ‘us all’ in Engineering 4 Us All through the Experiences of High School Teachers

   Berhane, B. ; Dalal, M. ; Klein-Gardner, S. ; Carberry, A. ; Reid, K. ; Beauchamp, C. ; Kouo, J. ; Pines, D. ( January 2021 , 3rd annual CoNECD – The Collaborative Network for Engineering and Computing Diversity Conference)

   null (Ed.)

   As our nation’s need for engineering professionals grows, a sharp rise in P-12 engineering education programs and related research has taken place (Brophy, Klein, Portsmore, & Rogers, 2008; Purzer, Strobel, & Cardella, 2014). The associated research has focused primarily on students’ perceptions and motivations, teachers’ beliefs and knowledge, and curricula and program success. The existing research has expanded our understanding of new K-12 engineering curriculum development and teacher professional development efforts, but empirical data remain scarce on how racial and ethnic diversity of student population influences teaching methods, course content, and overall teachers’ experiences. In particular, Hynes et al. (2017) note in their systematic review of P-12 research that little attention has been paid to teachers’ experiences with respect to racially and ethnically diverse engineering classrooms. The growing attention and resources being committed to diversity and inclusion issues (Lichtenstein, Chen, Smith, & Maldonado, 2014; McKenna, Dalal, Anderson, & Ta, 2018; NRC, 2009) underscore the importance of understanding teachers’ experiences with complementary research-based recommendations for how to implement engineering curricula in racially diverse schools to engage all students. Our work examines the experiences of three high school teachers as they teach an introductory engineering course in geographically and distinctly different racially diverse schools across the nation. The study is situated in the context of a new high school level engineering education initiative called Engineering for Us All (E4USA). The National Science Foundation (NSF) funded initiative was launched in 2018 as a partnership among five universities across the nation to ‘demystify’ engineering for high school students and teachers. The program aims to create an all-inclusive high school level engineering course(s), a professional development platform, and a learning community to support student pathways to higher education institutions. An introductory engineering course was developed and professional development was provided to nine high school teachers to instruct and assess engineering learning during the first year of the project. This study investigates participating teachers’ implementation of the course in high schools across the nation to understand the extent to which their experiences vary as a function of student demographic (race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status) and resource level of the school itself. Analysis of these experiences was undertaken using a collective case-study approach (Creswell, 2013) involving in-depth analysis of a limited number of cases “to focus on fewer "subjects," but more "variables" within each subject” (Campbell & Ahrens, 1998, p. 541). This study will document distinct experiences of high school teachers as they teach the E4USA curriculum. Participants were purposively sampled for the cases in order to gather an information-rich data set (Creswell, 2013). The study focuses on three of the nine teachers participating in the first cohort to implement the E4USA curriculum. Teachers were purposefully selected because of the demographic makeup of their students. The participating teachers teach in Arizona, Maryland and Tennessee with predominantly Hispanic, African-American, and Caucasian student bodies, respectively. To better understand similarities and differences among teaching experiences of these teachers, a rich data set is collected consisting of: 1) semi-structured interviews with teachers at multiple stages during the academic year, 2) reflective journal entries shared by the teachers, and 3) multiple observations of classrooms. The interview data will be analyzed with an inductive approach outlined by Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2014). All teachers’ interview transcripts will be coded together to identify common themes across participants. Participants’ reflections will be analyzed similarly, seeking to characterize their experiences. Observation notes will be used to triangulate the findings. Descriptions for each case will be written emphasizing the aspects that relate to the identified themes. Finally, we will look for commonalities and differences across cases. The results section will describe the cases at the individual participant level followed by a cross-case analysis. This study takes into consideration how high school teachers’ experiences could be an important tool to gain insight into engineering education problems at the P-12 level. Each case will provide insights into how student body diversity impacts teachers’ pedagogy and experiences. The cases illustrate “multiple truths” (Arghode, 2012) with regard to high school level engineering teaching and embody diversity from the perspective of high school teachers. We will highlight themes across cases in the context of frameworks that represent teacher experience conceptualizing race, ethnicity, and diversity of students. We will also present salient features from each case that connect to potential recommendations for advancing P-12 engineering education efforts. These findings will impact how diversity support is practiced at the high school level and will demonstrate specific novel curricular and pedagogical approaches in engineering education to advance P-12 mentoring efforts. 

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