As school districts implement initiatives that bring computer science (CS) to academically diverse K-12 schools, they face heightened demands for supporting teachers in meeting the needs of a broad range of learners. However, limited knowledge exists about pedagogical approaches to teaching CS, especially to students with disabilities. This paper reports findings from a qualitative study of two CS instructional coaching models meant to support teachers in meeting the needs of diverse learners, including those with disabilities. One model involved a school-embedded coach and the other model involved a district-wide coach that traveled among multiple schools. Findings revealed that within both coaching models, co-planning and co-teaching played an integral role in supporting teachers in meeting the needs of students with disabilities. Instructional pedagogies that coaches promoted included scaffolded project planning, student collaboration, and immediate feedback to students. Within both coaching models, there was a focus on trust building and increasing teachers’ instructional skills. Differences between coaching models included a stronger level of familiarity between the coach and teachers in the school-embedded coaching. There were also different approaches to accountability and co-planning logistics.
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Equity and Inclusion through UDL in K-6 Computer Science Education: Perspectives of Teachers and Instructional Coaches
Through a mixed-methods approach that utilized teacher surveys and a focus group with computer science (CS) instructional coaches, this study examined elementary teachers’ confidence in meeting the needs of students with disabilities, the extent to which the teachers could use the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework in CS education, and the strategies that their CS instructional coaches used with them to help meet the needs of all learners, including those with disabilities. Findings from a Wilcoxon signed-rank test and a general linear regression of the teacher surveys revealed that teachers’ confidence in teaching CS and in meeting the needs of students with disabilities increased over the 5 month coaching study, but their understanding of UDL remained low throughout the study. A qualitative thematic analysis of open-response survey questions revealed that the teachers could identify instructional strategies that support the inclusion of students with disabilities in CS instruction. These strategies aligned with high leverage practices (HLPs) and included modeling, the use of explicit instruction, and opportunities for repeated instruction. When asked to identify UDL approaches, however, they had more difficulty. The focus group with coaches revealed that the coaches’ primary aim related broadly to equity and specifically to access to and the quality of CS instruction. However, although they introduced UDL-based strategies, they struggled to systematically incorporate UDL into coaching activities and did not explicitly label these strategies as part of the UDL framework on a consistent basis. This finding explains, to a large extent, the teachers’ limited understanding of UDL in the context of CS education.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2031233
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10389308
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ACM Transactions on Computing Education
- Volume:
- 22
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 1946-6226
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1 to 22
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Introduction Elementary teachers face many challenges when including reform-based science instruction in their classrooms, and some teachers have chosen to enhance their science instruction by introducing students to citizen science (CS) projects. When CS projects are incorporated in formal school settings, students have an opportunity to engage in real-world projects as they collect and make sense of data, yet relatively few CS projects offer substantial guidance for teachers seeking to implement the projects, placing a heavy burden on teacher learning.
Methods Framed in theory on teacher relationships with curricula, we prepared science standards-aligned educative support materials for two CS projects. We present convergent mixed methods research that examines two teachers’ contrasting approaches to including school-based citizen science (SBCS) in their fifth-grade classrooms, each using support materials for one of the two CS projects. Both are veteran teachers at under-resourced Title 1 (an indicator of the high percentage of the students identified as economically disadvantaged) rural schools in the southeastern United States. We document the teachers’ interpretations and use of SBCS materials for the CS projects with data from classroom observations, instructional logs, teacher interviews, and student focus groups.
Results One teacher adapted the materials to include scaffolding to position students for success in data collection and analysis. In contrast, the second teacher adapted the SBCS support materials to maintain a teacher-centered approach to instruction, identifying perceptions of students’ limited abilities and limited instructional time as constraining factors.
Discussion We discuss the intersection of CS projects in formal education and opportunities for engaging students in authentic science data collection, analysis, and sense-making. The two teachers’ stories identify the influences of school context and the need for teacher support to encourage elementary teachers’ use of SBCS instruction to supplement their science instruction.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1145/3513138
