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This guide presents the "MENTORS in CS" program, a comprehensive model for providing sustained support to K-12 computer science (CS) teachers, particularly those new to the field. It details the program's foundational structures, including mentor-mentee partnerships, a community of practice, and continuous research and refinement through design-based implementation research (DBIR). The guide offers actionable insights and reproducible resources, such as program timelines, recruitment materials, and a mentor toolkit, to facilitate the replication and scaling of similar equity-driven mentoring initiatives. Key learnings regarding participant outcomes, mentor training, and adapting the program for diverse educational contexts are shared to aid widespread dissemination and impact. 

This toolkit offers a structured, year-long framework to support peer mentoring partnerships in computer science education. It provides (1) a program calendar outlining monthly activities, scheduled mentor–mentee meetings, and three mentorship cycles aligned with key CS teacher standards; (2) guided self-reflection tools to help teachers identify professional strengths and areas for growth; (3) a partnership agreement to establish norms for communication and collaboration; (4) goal-setting templates with illustrative examples to scaffold targeted professional learning; and (5) mentoring logs to document bimonthly meetings and track progress across three 2.5-month cycles. 

Background and Context.  Computing is considered a fundamental skill for civic engagement, self-expression, and employment opportunity. Despite this, there exist significant equity gaps in post-secondary computing enrollment and retention. Specifically, in the California State University (CSU) system, which serves close to half a million undergraduate students, students identifying as Hispanic/Latino make up a smaller percentage of CS majors than expected from the state’s overall population; and, once enrolled, tend to leave the CS major at higher rates than other students. Purpose.  We report on the impacts of a curricular intervention aimed at strengthening the sense of belonging of Hispanic/Latino students in computing, with the eventual goal of improving retention in computing majors for those students. Methods.  Working in an alliance of six universities within the CSU (five of which are designated as Hispanic-Serving Institutions), we have incorporated socially responsible computing across early CS courses. We aim for alignment between our curriculum and students’ communal goal orientations, and for coursework that attends to students’ interests, values, and cultural assets. Over a two-year-long study, we collected survey data to learn about the impact of our curricular intervention on students’ sense of belonging and perceived learning and agency. Findings.  We found that students generally reported high communal goal orientations and, at the campuseswithoutcompetitive enrollment policies, our intervention had a significant positive impact on students’ senses of belonging. This effect was observed between control and treatment terms as well as within treatment terms. We also note that Hispanic/Latino students were more likely than other students to report that non-curricular factors like work and family obligations interfered with their learning, and appeared to experience slightly stronger benefits from the intervention. Implications.  Our data suggest positive outcomes for integrating socially responsible computing into early CS courses, especially for Hispanic/Latino students at certain Primarily Undergraduate Institutions (PUIs). Unlike much prior research, we found that conducting studies outside of Primarily White Institutions (PWIs) can provide new insights into the impact of curricular interventions on student experience and retention. Our varying results by campus suggest that factors such as campus population, acceptance rate, and departmental enrollment policies ought to also be taken into account in studies that aim to broaden participation in computing. Would results from prior research on recruitment and retention of Hispanic/Latino students or other underrepresented students look different if such studies were replicated at institutions with different demographics and enrollment policies? 

Recent years have seen growing awareness of the potential digital storytelling brings to creating engaging K-12 learning experiences. By fostering students’ interdisciplinary knowledge and skills, digital storytelling holds great promise for realizing positive impacts on student learning in language arts as well as STEM subjects. In parallel, researchers and practitioners increasingly acknowledge the importance of computational thinking in supporting K-12 students’ problem solving across subjects and grade levels, including science and elementary school. Integrating the unique affordances of digital storytelling and computational thinking offers significant potential; however, careful attention must be given to ensure students and teachers are properly supported and not overwhelmed. In this paper, we present our work on a narrative-centered learning environment that engages upper elementary students (ages 9 to 11) in computational thinking and physical science through the creation of interactive science narratives. Leveraging log data from a pilot study with 28 students using the learning environment, we analyze the narrative programs students created across multiple dimensions to better understand the nature of the resulting narratives. Furthermore, we examine automating this analysis using artificial intelligence techniques to support real-time adaptive feedback. Results indicate that the learning environment enabled students to create interactive digital stories demonstrating their understanding of physical science, computational thinking, and narrative concepts, while the automated assessment techniques showed promise for enabling real-time feedback and support. 

Digital storytelling in combination with makerspace activities holds significant potential to engage students and support their learning. When students play, such as through makerspace activities, they engage in critical thinking and problem solving. In our work, we are joining storytelling with computational thinking (CT) practices, physical science exploration, and makerspace activities through a digital narrative-centered learning environment for elementary school. Learning within the environment is undergirded by makerspace play that centers on finding solutions to an open problem—how can stranded scientists on a remote island power up their village using found materials? The learning environment supports students’ CT practices and science content learning as they use and problem solve with physical energy conversion kits, culminating in their creation of an interactive story. We present here a brief case study of the ways students’ experiences with makerspace play support their problem solving and storytelling.