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1. Developing inclusive youth: children’s moral reasoning predicts inclusive orientations

   https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-025-10117-6  

   Yee, Kathryn M; Raz, Kate Luken; Sims, Riley N; Killen, Melanie (December 2025, Social Psychology of Education)

   Abstract This study examined how children’s moral reasoning in response to intergroup exclusion scenarios relates to inclusive attitudes and behaviors. A sample of 528 students (M_age= 9.19,SD = 0.90; 264 girls) in third through fifth grade participated in theDeveloping Inclusive Youth(DIY) program, which provided structured opportunities for moral reasoning through varied intergroup scenarios and peer discussions. Results showed that more frequent use of moral reasoning predicted greater inclusivity across multiple measures. Children who engaged in higher levels of moral reasoning demonstrated more negative evaluations of exclusion, greater empathy toward peers from multiple racial groups, and a stronger desire to play with those peers. However, moral reasoning was not significantly associated with expectations for inclusion or with attitudes toward boys or girls. No significant interactions emerged between moral reasoning and participant demographics (race, gender, grade), suggesting broadly applicable effects. These findings highlight moral reasoning as a key mechanism for promoting inclusive orientations in childhood, particularly in contexts involving racial diversity. Future research should explore how moral reasoning interacts with other factors, such as empathy, perspective-taking, and group norms, to support inclusivity across social contexts. 

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2. Moral Sparks in Social Media Narratives

   https://doi.org/10.1145/3720553.3746669  

   Xi, Ruijie; Singh, Munindar P (September 2025, ACM)

   Online platforms offer forums with rich, real-world illustrations of moral reasoning. Among these, the r/AmITheAsshole (AITA) subreddit has become a prominent resource for computational research. In AITA, a user (author) describes an interpersonal moral scenario, and other users (commenters) provide moral judgments with reasons for who in the scenario is blameworthy. Prior work has focused on predicting moral judgments from AITA posts and comments. This study introduces the concept of moral sparks—key narrative excerpts that commenters highlight as pivotal to their judgments. Thus, sparks represent heightened moral attention, guiding readers to effective rationales. Through 24,676 posts and 175,988 comments, we demonstrate that research in social psychology on moral judgments extends to real-world scenarios. For example, negative traits (rude) amplify moral attention, whereas sympathetic traits (vulnerable) diminish it. Similarly, linguistic features, such as emotionally charged terms (e.g., anger), heighten moral attention, whereas positive or neutral terms (leisure and bio) attenuate it. Moreover, we find that incorporating moral sparks enhances pretrained language models’ performance on predicting moral judgment, achieving gains in F1 scores of up to 5.5%. These results demonstrate that moral sparks, derived directly from AITA narratives, capture key aspects of moral judgment and perform comparably to prior methods that depend on human annotation or large-scale generative modeling. 

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3. A Principled Approach to Designing Assessments That Integrate Science and Computational Thinking

   https://doi.org/10.22318/cscl2018.384  

   Basu, S.; McElhaney, K. W.; Grover, S.; Harris, C. J.; Biswas, G. (July 2018, 13th International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS))

   There is increasing interest in broadening participation in computational thinking (CT) by integrating CT into pre-college STEM curricula and instruction. Science, in particular, is emerging as an important discipline to support integrated learning. This highlights the need for carefully designed assessments targeting the integration of science and CT to help teachers and researchers gauge students’ proficiency with integrating the disciplines. We describe a principled design process to develop assessment tasks and rubrics that integrate concepts and practices across science, CT, and computational modeling. We conducted a pilot study with 10 high school students who responded to integrative assessment tasks as part of a physics-based computational modeling unit. Our findings indicate that the tasks and rubrics successfully elicit both Physics and CT constructs while distinguishing important aspects of proficiency related to the two disciplines. This work illustrates the promise of using such assessments formatively in integrated STEM and computing learning contexts. 

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4. Assessing Computational Thinking Skills in Early Elementary Students: A Focus on Sequencing Tasks

   Wafula, Z; Tank, K; Moore, T; Ottenbreit-Leftwich, A; Fagundes, B; Kim, J (March 2024, Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE))

   Cohen, J; Solano, G (Ed.)

   The integration of Computational Thinking (CT) into K-12 education has gained significance in recent years as the field of education experiences the need to equip students with essential skills for the 21st century. This case study focused on two sequencing activities, involving plugged and unplugged tasks, conducted with four children aged four to seven, spanning pre-kindergarten to second grade. The central research question guiding the study was: "What computational thinking (CT) skills were demonstrated by K-2 students as they engaged in two different sequencing tasks?" The study identified competencies in sequencing, reverse sequencing, debugging, pattern recognition, and problem decomposition. The findings suggest that both unplugged and plugged sequencing tasks provide age-appropriate entry points for young children to develop various CT competencies. Furthermore, the study highlights the potential for plugged and unplugged sequencing tasks to be integrated into early childhood classroom activities, offering a practical approach to promoting CT skills in young learners. 

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5. Examining the Role of Mentor Teacher Support in a Professional Learning Experience for Preservice Teachers on Integrating Computational Thinking into Elementary Science Education

   Ketelhut, D. J.; Hestness, E.; Cabrera, L.; Jeong, H.; Plane, J.; & McGinnis, J. R. (April 2019, Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference)

   Abstract. We investigated preservice teachers’ (PSTs) (N=13) experiences in a science teaching inquiry group professional learning experience on integrating computational thinking (CT) into elementary science. A subgroup of PSTs (n=6) participated alongside their mentor teachers. The others (n=7) participated independently. Our research question was: To what extent, if any, did participating in a professional learning experience on CT along with their mentor teachers appear to enhance PSTs’ learning and practice related to CT integration? We analyzed evaluation feedback, interviews, participant-developed lesson plans, surveys, and attendance data. Findings suggested that participants in both groups reacted positively to the learning experience’s content and approach, and expressed similar perceptions of their CT integration knowledge. PSTs participating with their mentor teachers felt slightly more successful in their CT integration efforts, and perceived CT integration as more feasible in their teaching contexts. However, differences between the groups were minimal. We also noted possible of influence of PSTs’ perceptions of the districts in which they were teaching. Our findings underscore the importance of PSTs’ perceptions of their teaching contexts when bringing a new innovation to the classroom - namely, perceptions of their mentors and curricula as supportive of the innovation. Through this ongoing work, we seek to identify empirically-supported strategies for preparing PSTs to integrate CT into their future classrooms. 

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