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ObjectivesIn calls for excellent and equitable Computer Science (CS) education, the wordrigoroften appears, but it often goes undefined. The goal of this work is to understand how CS teachers, instructors, and students conceive of rigor. Research Questions:1) What do CS instructors think rigor is? and 2) What do students think rigor is? Methods:Using the principles of phenomenological research, we conducted a semi-structured interview study with 10 post-secondary CS students, 10 secondary CS teachers, and 9 post-secondary CS instructors, to understand their conceptions of rigor. Results:Analysis showed that no participants had the same understanding of rigor. We found that participants had abstractPrinciples of Rigorwhich included: Precision, Systematic Thought Process, Depth of Understanding, and Challenge. They also had concreteObservations of Rigorthat included Time and Effort, Intrinsic Drive, Productive Failure, Struggle, Outcomes, and Gatekeeping. Participants also sharedConditions for Rigorwhich included Expectations, Standards, Community Support, and Resources. Implications:Our data supports prior work that educators are using different definitions of rigor. This implies that each educator holds different expectations for students, without necessarily communicating these expectations to their students. In the best case, this might confuse students; in the worst case, it reinforces hegemonic norms which can lead to gatekeeping which prevents students from fully participating in the CS field. Based on these insights, we argue that to commit to the idea of quality CS learning, the community must discard the use of this concept of rigor to justify student learning and re-imagine alternate benchmarks. 

Paper presented as part of symposium. 

Background and Context: With the growing movement to adopt critical framings of computing, scholars have worked to reframe computing education from the narrow development of programming skills to skills in identifying and resisting oppressive structures in computing. However, we have little guidance on how these framings may manifest in classroom practice. Objectives: To better understand the processes and practice of critical pedagogy in a computing classrooms, we taught a critically conscious computing elective within a summer academic program at a northwest United States university targeted at secondary students (ages 14–18) from low-income backgrounds and would be the first in their families to pursue a post-secondary education (i.e., first-generation). We investigated: (1) our participants’ initial perceptions of and attitudes toward the benefits and perils of computing, and (2) potential tensions that might emerge when secondary students negotiate the integration of critical pedagogy in a computing classroom. Methods: We qualitatively coded participant work from a critically conscious computing course within a summer academic program in the United States focused on students from low-income backgrounds or would be the first in their family to pursue a post-secondary education. Findings: Our participants’ initial attitudes toward technology were mostly positive, but exhibited an awareness of its negative impacts on their lives and society. Throughout the course, while participants demonstrated a rich social consciousness around technology, they faced challenges in addressing hegemonic values embedded in their programs, designs, and other classwork. Implications: Our findings revealed tensions between our participants’ computing attitudes, knowledge, self-efficacy, and social consciousness, suggesting pathways for scaffolding the critical examination of technology in secondary education. This study provides insights into the pedagogical content knowledge necessary for critical computing education. 

Teachers are essential to equitably broadening participation in computing in schools, but the creation of CS teacher education pathways faces many challenges. In this experience report, we share the many political, administrative, institutional, and sustainability barriers our institution faced in creating a secondary CS pre-service pathway. Throughout, we discuss the particular design choices we made in order to center equity and justice, both in the content of the program, but also in its structure, policies, and resources, which were often in tension with state standards and policies. We also describe our experience teaching and supporting the inaugural cohort of graduates as well as the graduates' experiences, which revealed tension between utopian and dystopian futures of computing and their role in helping students navigate them. We end with a reflection on key factors that we believe led to its successful first year launch, including leadership, interdisciplinarity, capacity, timing, and funding, and on sustainability concerns, including tuition subsidy and instructional capacity.