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At a time when computing continues to gain importance in society, it is more crucial than ever to ensure that computer science education meets the needs of all students. To this end, the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) is updating its K-12 computer science (CS) standards. As a prelude to the standards revision, CSTA – working with many partners – has launched a project, Reimagining CS Pathways: High School and Beyond, to articulate what CS content is essential for all high school graduates to know and to establish pathways for continued study of CS beyond that foundational content. The Reimagining project drew on the expertise and experiences of dozens of participants – including high school CS teachers, college CS faculty, state and local education leaders, CS education researchers, and those working for nonprofits and in the tech industry. These participants reflected diversity across many dimensions, including demographics, role, and expertise. They participated in focus groups, interviews, and in-person convenings, and they provided substantial asynchronous feedback. The result of these extensive efforts is contained in this report, which articulates the foundational CS content and resulting pathways. The foundational CS content is organized into Topic Areas, Pillars, and Dispositions. The Topic Areas, which reflect the content that is essential for all high school graduates, are 1) Algorithms, 2), Programming, 3) Data and Analysis, 4) Computing Systems and Security, and 5) Preparation for the Future. The Pillars, which reflect essential ideas and practices that cut across all of the Topic Areas, are 1) Impacts and Ethics, 2) Inclusive Collaboration, 3) Computational Thinking, and 4) Human-Centered Design. While they are not explicitly taught, the goal is to develop a set of specific dispositions in CS. These Dispositions are persistence, reflectiveness, creativity, curiosity, critical thinking, and sense of belonging in CS. There are many possible pathways stemming from this foundational content, ranging from Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence to X + CS (where another subject, such as Journalism or Biology, is integrated with the study of computing). Implementation of these pathways will vary significantly depending on community priorities and contexts. We recognize that schools will need to be selective in their implementation of CS pathways due to limited resources, and we make recommendations for how to select which options to implement. Woven throughout this work is a commitment to improving equity in CS education. This commitment to equity is embedded throughout both the process and the outcome of the Reimagining project. It manifests in an effort to reimagine CS to ensure opportunities for all students and to prepare them for a world increasingly powered by computing.
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Literacy and STEM Teachers Adapt AI Ethics Curriculum
This article examines the ways secondary computer science and English Language Arts teachers in urban, suburban, and semi-rural schools adapted a project-based AI ethics curriculum to make it better fit their local contexts. AI ethics is an urgent topic with tangible consequences for youths’ current and future lives, but one that is rarely taught in schools. Few teachers have formal training in this area as it is an emerging field even at the university level. Exploring AI ethics involves examining biases related to race, gender, and social class, a challenging task for all teachers, and an unfamiliar one for most computer science teachers. It also requires teaching technical content which falls outside the comfort zone of most humanities teachers. Although none of our partner teachers had previously taught an AI ethics project, this study demonstrates that their expertise and experience in other domains played an essential role in providing high quality instruction. Teachers designed and redesigned tasks and incorporated texts and apps to ensure the AI ethics project would adhere to district and department level requirements; they led equity-focused inquiry in a way that both protected vulnerable students and accounted for local cultures and politics; and they adjusted technical content and developed hands-on computer science experiences to better challenge and engage their students. We use Mishra and Kohler’s TPACK framework to highlight the ways teachers leveraged their own expertise in some areas, while relying on materials and support from our research team in others, to create stronger learning experiences.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1934151
- PAR ID:
- 10488548
- Publisher / Repository:
- AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
- Volume:
- 37
- Issue:
- 13
- ISSN:
- 2159-5399
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 16048 to 16055
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1609/aaai.v37i13.26906
