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1. “Design for Co-Design” in a Computer Science Curriculum Research-Practice Partnership

   Victor R. Lee Jody Clarke-Midura Jessica Shumway Mimi Recker ( July 2022 , Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2022)

   Clark Chinn Edna Tan Carol Chan Yael Kali (Ed.)

   This paper reports on a study of the dynamics of a Research-Practice Partnership (RPP) oriented around design, specifically the co-design model. The RPP is focused on supporting elementary school computer science (CS) instruction by involving paraprofessional educators and teachers in curricular co-design. A problem of practice addressed is that few elementary educators have backgrounds in teaching CS and have limited available instructional time and budget for CS. The co-design strategy entailed highlighting CS concepts in the mathematics curriculum during classroom instruction and designing computer lab lessons that explored related ideas through programming. Analyses focused on tensions within RPP interaction dynamics and how they were accommodated when RPP partners were designing for co-design activities, a critical component that leads to curricular co-design itself. We illustrate these tensions with examples of clusters of activity that appeared repeatedly among the research and practice team members when" designing for co-design". 

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2. Exploring Elementary Teachers’ Perceptions of Data Science and Curriculum Design through Professional Development

   Herro, D. ( October 2022 , Journal of technology and teacher education)

   Hartshorne, Richard (Ed.)

   Data science and computational thinking (CT) skills are important STEM literacies necessary to make informed daily decisions. In elementary schools, particularly in rural areas, there is little instruction and limited research towards understanding and developing these literacies. Using a Research-Practice Partnership model (RPP; Coburn & Penuel, 2016) we conducted multimethod research investigating nine elementary teachers’ perceptions of data science and related curriculum design during professional development (PD). Connected Learning theory, enhanced with Universal Design for Learning, guided ways we assisted teachers in designing the data science curriculum. Findings suggest teachers maintained high levels of interest in data science instruction and CT before and after the PD and increased their self-efficacy towards teaching data science. A thematic analysis revealed how a data science framework guided curriculum design and assisted teachers in defining, understanding, and co-creating the curriculum. During curriculum design, teachers shared the workload among partners, made collaborative design choices, integrated differentiation strategies, and felt confidence towards teaching data science. Identified challenges included locating data sets and the complexity of understanding data science and related software. This study addresses the research gap in data science education for elementary teachers and assists with successful strategies for data science PD and curricular design. 

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3. Developing Online Professional Development for High School Teachers to Teach Computer Science Online

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3502717.3532174  

   Martin, Florence ; Shanley, Nicole E. ; Hite, Nicole ; Pérez-Quiñones, Manuel A. ; Pugalee, David ; Hart, Ellen ( July 2022 , Proceedings of the 27th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education Vol. 2 (ITiCSE '22))

   Creating effective professional development is critical to support high school teachers who teach computer science (CS) online. The context of this study is based on a current Research to Practice Partnership (RPP) between the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in the United States and North Carolina Virtual Public School (NCVPS). Ten high school teachers from the NCVPS who teach CS online participated in a summer workshop and recommended design, facilitation, and evaluation strategies to be included in effective professional development (PD). The summer workshop was conducted synchronously via Zoom. It provided the opportunity to discuss teacher perceptions related to the research questions "What design, facilitation, and assessment strategies are helpful to include in an AP Computer Science Advanced course?" and "What recommendations do you have for designing an online professional development course for high school teachers to teach computer science online?" The questions were posed through an online collaborative Jamboard, and the affinity diagram method was used for data collection and document analysis was conducted. The teacher posts were qualitatively analyzed to identify common themes. Findings for professional development on content design included CS content, how to teach CS, and CS tools and activities. For assessment, they recommended content knowledge assessments, including lab assignments, single and pair programming, and coding assessments. They recommended tools for supplemental instruction, integration of discussion boards for interaction, and tools and strategies to provide feedback for professional development. 

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4. Seeds of (r)Evolution: Constructionism Co-Design with High School Science Teachers

   Kelter, J. ; Peel, A. ; Bain, C. ; Anton, G. ; Dabholkar, S. ; Aslan, U. ; Horn, M.S. ; Wilensky, U. ( June 2020 , Constructionism 2020)

   In the decades since Papert published Mindstorms (1980), computation has transformed nearly every branch of scientific practice. Accordingly, there is increasing recognition that computation and computational thinking (CT) must be a core part of STEM education in a broad range of subjects. Previous work has demonstrated the efficacy of incorporating computation into STEM courses and introduced a taxonomy of CT practices in STEM. However, this work rarely involved teachers as more than implementers of units designed by researchers. In The Children’s Machine, Papert asked “What can be done to mobilize the potential force for change inherent in the position of teachers?” (Papert, 1994, pg. 79). We argue that involving teachers as co-design partners supports them to be cultural change agents in education. We report here on the first phase of a research project in which we worked with STEM educators to co-design curricular science units that incorporate computational thinking and practices. Eight high school teachers and one university professor joined nine members of our research team for a month-long Computational Thinking Summer Institute (CTSI). The co-design process was a constructionist design and learning experience for both the teachers and researchers. We focus here on understanding the co-design process and its implications for teachers by asking: (1) How did teachers shift in their attitudes and confidence regarding CT? (2) What different co-design styles emerged and did any tensions arise? Generally, we found that teachers gained confidence and skills in CT and computational tools over the course of the summer. Only one teacher reported a decrease in confidence in one aspect of CT (computational modeling), but this seemed to result from gaining a broader and more nuanced understanding of this rich area. A range of co-design styles emerged over the summer. Some teachers chose to focus on designing the curriculum and advising on the computational tools to be used in it, while leaving the construction of those tools to their co-designers. Other teachers actively participated in constructing models and computational tools themselves. The pluralism of co-design styles allowed teachers of various comfort levels with computation to meaningfully contribute to a computationally enhanced constructionist curriculum. However, it also led to a tension for some teachers between working to finish their curriculum versus gaining experience with computational tools. In the time crunch to complete their unit during CTSI, some teachers chose to save time by working on the curriculum while their co-design partners (researchers) created the supporting computational tools. These teachers still grew in their computational sophistication, but they could not devote as much time as they wanted to their own computational learning. 

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5. One-on-one meetings as Boundary Practices: Managing RPP Computer Science Curriculum Co-design

   https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.13590.47683  

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

   CSforALL & SageFox Consulting Group (Ed.)

   Research-practitioner partnership (RPP) projects using approaches such as design-based implementation research (DBIR), seek to build organizational infrastructure to develop, implement, and sustain educational innovation [19]. Infrastructure consists of the practices and objects that support educational practice. Infrastructure constitutes human and material resources and structures that support joint work [18,29]. Although RPP literature has identified co-design as an infrastructure-building approach, to the best of our knowledge, specific techniques for managing co-design and other infrastructure building practices are still lacking [9,18,23]. Without such tools, RPP partners' varied backgrounds, workplace norms, and priorities can produce behaviors that may be normal in the context of a single organization but can impede communication, resource access, and innovation implementation in a collaborative context. The NSF-funded Computer Science Pathways RPP (CS Pathways) project's DBIR approach uses co-design of a culturally responsive middle school CS curriculum to develop infrastructure for providing high-quality CS education across three urban school districts. The curriculum focuses on developing mobile apps for social good and will be taught by teachers with varied CS experience in varied classroom contexts (e.g., civics, science). The purpose of this workshop paper is to demonstrate a technique, namely Manager Tools One-on-one meetings [15], adapted by CS Pathways partners to manage the co-design process. O3s have six features: they are frequent; scheduled; 15 to 30 minutes in duration; held with all participants working on a specified project; semi-structured; and documented by the manager or researcher. This workshop paper describes how to use O3s to engage teachers and researchers in developing collaborative infrastructure to promote shared exploration of feedback and build and sustain partnerships. 

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