skip to main content

Explore Research Products in the NSF-PAR

Title: Reimagining Professional Development for K-8 CS Teachers: Evaluating a Virtual, Diffuse Model
There is a need for more K-12 computer science (CS) teachers. The need to scale teacher professional development (PD) points the CS education community towards virtual learning, and prior work shows that in-person PD with a diffuse schedule is more successful than condensed schedules. There is currently little research about virtual K-12 CS PD with a diffuse schedule. The pandemic served as a forced opportunity to explore the design and implementation of a diffuse-scheduled virtual PD for two small, equally-sized cohorts of middle school (grades 5-8) teachers; one from a metropolitan school district and another from across the United States. Our findings reveal several important post-pandemic design implications for future CS PD programs. First, the teachers’ CS knowledge and attitudes significantly increased in both cohorts. Second, there were no significant differences in attitudes or achievement between the cohorts. Third, the teachers in the virtual PD showed as good changes or better in attitude than those in a prior in-person PD. Finally, both cohorts were largely positive about the change from a few intensive PD days to a few hours a week for several weeks, even as they joined from vacations.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1738758
NSF-PAR ID:
10382312
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
The 53Rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE ’21)
Volume:
1
Page Range / eLocation ID:
530 to 536
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; ( , Annual meeting program American Educational Research Association)
    The need to expand computer science learning for all students has led to an increase in publicly and privately funded professional development (PD) opportunities for teachers. Our research team has been involved in the design of equity-focused PD opportunities for teachers in computing since 2012 by building partnerships with K-12 systems. The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated changes in our approach and a shift to a virtual PD institute. In this work, we describe our transition to a virtual PD institute, including the topics and design principles guiding the institute. We also examine how the virtual PD influenced teacher outcomes. Findings suggest an increase in teachers’ knowledge and self-efficacy while highlighting the affordances of virtual platforms most valued by teachers. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ( , Journal of Research on Technology in Education)
    This article reports results from the implementation of a model of professional development (PD) to help K-5 teachers develop the knowledge and skills to teach Computer Science (CS) in classrooms of diverse students, including students with high-incidence disabilities. This article describes our Inclusive CS model of PD, how we made the PD model available to teachers during a pandemic and presents quantitative and qualitative results about the impact of the PD on teachers’ knowledge, comfort, and beliefs related to teaching computer science to students. Results indicate that the teachers’ knowledge, comfort, beliefs and perceptions about teaching CS to students with disabilities significantly improved. Teachers’ knowledge and understanding of Universal Design for Learning for supporting students in learning about CS also improved. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ( , Techtrend)
    The need to expand computer science learning for all students has led to an increase in professional development (PD) opportunities for teachers. The Covid-19 pandemic, however, necessitated changes in well-established PD programs and a shift to virtual delivery. In this work, we describe our transition to a virtual PD institute, including the topics and design principles guiding the institute. We also examine how participation in the virtual PD institute infuenced teacher outcomes. Data were collected from two cohorts of teachers. Data sources included surveys (N=30), lesson plans (N=22), and interviews (N=17) from a purposeful sample of participants. Findings gleaned from quantitative and qualitative analysis suggest an increase in teachers’ knowledge and self-efcacy while highlighting the afordances of virtual PD most valued by teachers. Findings have implications for research and practice. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; ( , International Educational Data Mining Society)
    Benjamin, Paaßen ; Carrie, Demmans Epp (Ed.)
    K-12 Computer Science (CS) education has seen remarkable growth recently, driven by the increasing focus on CS and Computational Thinking (CT) integration. Despite the abundance of Professional development (PD) programs designed to prepare future CS teachers with the required knowledge and skills, there is a lack of research on how teachers' perceptions and attitudes of CS and CT evolve before and after participating in these programs. To address this gap, our exploratory study aims to study the dynamics of pre-and in-service teachers' experiences, attitudes, and perceptions towards CS and CT through their participation in a K-12 CS education micro-credential program. In this study, we employed topic modeling to identify topics that emerged from teachers' written pre- and post-CS autobiographies, conducted statistical analysis to explore how these topics evolve over time and applied regression analysis to investigate the factors influencing these dynamics. We observed a shift in teachers' initial feelings of fear, intimidation, and stress towards confidence, fun, and feeling competent in basic CS, reflecting a positive transformation. Regression analysis revealed that features, such as experienced teacher status and CT conceptual understanding, correlate with participants' evolving views. These observed relationships highlight the micro-credential's role in not only enhancing technical competency but also fostering an adaptive, integrative pedagogical mindset, providing new insights for course design. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; ; ( , ASEE Conferences)
    The Adapt, Implement, and Research at Nebraska (AIR@NE) project, funded by the NSF CSforAll Researcher-Practitioner Partnership (RPP) program, examines the adaptation of a validated K-8 Computer Science (CS) curriculum in diverse school districts statewide. Our Research-Practitioner Partnership is primarily between the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, the Lincoln Public Schools, and other diverse school districts across Nebraska. Our primary goal is to study and document how different districts, including rural, predominantly minority, and Native American reservation, adopt the curriculum and broaden participation in CS. In addition, the project is developing instructional capacity for K-8 CS education with diverse learners. Our research also adapts and develops teacher and student CS assessments, and documents case studies using design-based research methodology to show how an adaptive curriculum broadens CS participation. Our Professional Development (PD) program for K-8 CS teachers is comprehensive. It consists of three summer courses for each cohort and a series of workshops during the academic year. Of the three summer courses, two are administered in the first year for a cohort: (1) an introduction to computer science course where teachers learn fundamental CS topics and programming in a high-level programming language (e.g., Python), and engage in problem solving and practice computational thinking, and (2) a course in pedagogy for teachers to learn how to teach K-8 CS, including lesson designs, use of instructional resources such as dot-and-dash robots, and assessments. Then, the following academic year after the summer, the PD program holds a series of workshops on five separate Saturdays to support teacher implementation of their lesson modules during the academic year, reflect and improve on their lessons, reinforce on CS concepts and pedagogy techniques, review and adopt alternative instructional resources, and share insights. These Saturday workshops also facilitate further community building and resource sharing. The third course occurs in the second year for a cohort, involving dissemination of research results from the team to the teachers, opportunities to discuss new resources and approaches on teaching CS concepts and computational thinking, and sharing of experiences and insights after teachers have completed one academic year of teaching CS. Unlike the first two courses that are required of teachers, this third course is an opt-in course that combines more in- depth pedagogy and elements of leadership. Thus far, we have had two cohorts and used the design methodology to revise our PD program, making our design more robust based on the lessons learned over the two years. The course materials, assessment, and survey instruments have also been improved. While the project is on-going we have data to that indicates the impact of the work so far. There were significant pre-post gains for both cohorts in teachers’ knowledge of computer science concepts and computational thinking. Scores on the computational thinking assessment were higher than those for CS concepts, which was to be expected given their CS teaching experience. Moreover, in both cohorts, the teachers’ confidence in teaching CS improved significantly. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email