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1. Culturally Responsive Storytelling Across Content Areas Using American Indian Ledger Art and Physical Computing

   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. 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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3. Maximizing BPC Through Maryland's Annual State Summits

   https://doi.org/10.1109/RESPECT49803.2020.9272416  

   Garvin, Megean; Zarch, Rebecca; Xavier, Jeff; Dunton, Sarah (April 2020, Proceedings Article published 10 Mar 2020 in 2020 Research on Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT))

   null (Ed.)

   Computer Science (CS) education advocates have worked within states to change K-12 education policies in order to broaden participation in computing (BPC) and grow CS as a content discipline within K-12 classrooms. Statewide summits, which convene a variety of stakeholders across levels of education, are pivotal events that build momentum for change. Maryland has utilized annual summits to leverage statewide advocacy in order to continue CS K-12 education growth. Summit evaluations provided valuable data to strategically plan additional events and advocacy activities. Data from the past four annual summits are analyzed and discussed. State advocacy outcomes include: 1) increased statewide CS education awareness, 2) the establishment of the Maryland Center for Computing Education, 3) seven million dollars of state funds dedicated to K-12 CS education professional development and pre-service teacher preparation program reform, and 4) the enactment of Securing the Future: Computer Science for All law. This law requires all Maryland public high schools to offer CS, make efforts at the middle and elementary levels to include CS, and broaden participation in computing in K-12 classrooms. Valuable insights are provided for other states to consider as they build BPC advocacy efforts through statewide summits in their own states. 

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4. Examining instructional planning and implementation in the context of an integrated computer science professional development for elementary teachers [Poster presentation]

   Nolte, A.; Mead, H.; Mouza, C.; Rolón-Dow, R.; Pollock, L. (January 2023, American Educational Research Association,)

   Elementary schools provide a natural entry point to computer science (CS) education, yet elementary teachers spend most of their instructional time in literacy and math. One way to bring CS in elementary schools is through integrated approaches. In this work we present a professional development (PD) program that helps elementary teachers integrate CS with content and culturally relevant pedagogy to create accessible CS instruction. Qualitative data were collected from five teachers who attended the year-long program. Findings indicate that all teachers fully integrated CS with content and culturally-relevant pedagogy; however, such integration focused mostly on literacy and closely paralleled what was presented in PD. Implications are drawn regarding the design of PD programs that help teachers integrate CS in elementary classrooms. 

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5. 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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