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Amongst efforts to realize computer science (CS) for all, recent critiques of racially biased technologies have emerged (e.g., facial recognition software), revealing a need to critically examine the interaction between computing solutions and societal factors. Yet within efforts to introduce K-12 students to such topics, studies examining teachers' learning of critical computing are rare. To understand how teachers learn to integrate societal issues within computing education, we analyzed video of a teacher professional development (PD) session with experienced computing teachers. Highlighting three particular episodes of conversation during PD, our analysis revealed how personal and classroom experiences—from making a sensor-based project to drawing on family and teaching experiences—tethered teachers’ weaving of societal and technical aspects of CS and enabled reflections on their learning and pedagogy. We discuss the need for future PD efforts to build on teachers’ experiences, draw in diverse teacher voices, and develop politicized trust among teachers. 

Comprehending programs is key to learning programming. Previous studies highlight novices’ naive approaches to comprehend ing the structural, functional, and behavioral aspects of programs. And yet, with the majority of them examining on-screen program ming environments, we barely know about program comprehension within physical computing—a common K-12 programming context. In this study, we qualitatively analyzed think-aloud inter view videos of 22 high school students individually comprehending a given text-based Arduino program while interacting with its corresponding functional physical artifact to answer two questions: 1) How do novices comprehend the given text-based Arduino pro gram? And, 2) What role does the physical artifact play in program comprehension? We found that novices mostly approached the program bottom-up, initially comprehending structural and later functional aspects, along different granularities. The artifact provided two distinct modes of engagement, active and interactive, that supported the program’s structural and functional comprehension. However, behavioral comprehension i.e. understanding program execution leading to the observed outcome was inaccessible to many. Our findings extend program comprehension literature in two ways: (a) it provides one of the very few accounts of high school students’ code comprehension in a physical computing con text, and, (b) it highlights the mediating role of physical artifacts in program comprehension. Further, they point directions for future pedagogical and tool designs within physical computing to better support students’ distributed program comprehension. 

Mindsets play an important role in persevering in computer science: while some learners perceive bugs as opportunities for learning, others become frustrated with failure and see it as a challenge to their abilities. Yet few studies and interventions take into account the motivational and emotional aspects of debugging and how learning environments can actively promote growth mindsets. In this paper, we discuss growth mindset practices that students exhibited in “Debugging by Design,” an intervention created to empower students in debugging—by designing e-textiles projects with bugs for their peers to solve. Drawing on observations of four student groups in a high school classroom over a period of eight hours, we examine the practices students exhibited that demonstrate the development of growth mindset, and the contexts where these practices emerged. We discuss how our design-focused, practice-first approach may be particularly well suited for promoting growth mindset in domains such as computer science. 

A 1971 memo by Papert and Solomon introduced twenty things to do with a computer which became the foundation for constructionism. In this paper, we propose bringing constructionist activities into making with living materials. Significant developments in tools and methods have turned biology into a design science: it is now possible to make things with biology—or biodesign— rather than just observing processes and behaviours. Our list of twenty things to make with biology includes examples from making colours, toys, games, insulin, batteries, sensors and more. In the discussion, we review how making with biology addresses key affordances of constructionist learning: “tinkerability,” the ability to experiment; “perceptibility,” the immediacy of feedback on learning process; “expressivity,” the personal customization of products; and “usability,” the ability to use learning designs in everyday contexts. We conclude with an overview of accessible and affordable tools available to K-12 education. 

Biology as design is transforming how we live, work, and learn. K-12 science education must catch up 

Much attention has focused on designing tools and activities that support learners in designing fully finished and functional applications such as games, robots, or e-textiles to be shared with others. But helping students learn to debug their applications often takes on a surprisingly more instructionist stance by giving them checklists, teaching them strategies or providing them with test programs. The idea of designing bugs for learning—or debugging by design—makes learners again agents of their own learning and, more importantly, of making and solving mistakes. In this paper, we report on our first implementation of “debugging by design” activities in a classroom of 25 high school students over a period of eight hours as part of a longer e-textiles unit. Here students were asked to craft buggy circuits and code for their peers to solve. In this paper we introduce the design of the debugging by design unit and, drawing on observations and interviews with students and the teacher, address the following research questions: (1) What did students gain from designing and solving bugs for others? (2) How did this experience shape students’ completion of the e-textiles unit? In the discussion, we address how debugging by design contributes to students’ learning of debugging skills. 

Much attention has focused on designing tools and activities that support learners in designing fully finished and functional applications such as games, robots, or e-textiles to be shared with others. But helping students learn to debug their applications often takes on a surprisingly more instructionist stance by giving them checklists, teaching them strategies or providing them with test programs. The idea of designing bugs for learning—or debugging by design—makes learners again agents of their own learning and, more importantly, of making and solving mistakes. In this paper, we report on our first implementation of “debugging by design” activities in a classroom of 25 high school students over a period of eight hours as part of a longer e-textiles unit. Here students were asked to craft buggy circuits and code for their peers to solve. In this paper we introduce the design of the debugging by design unit and, drawing on observations and interviews with students and the teacher, address the following research questions: (1) What did students gain from designing and solving bugs for others? (2) How did this experience shape students’ completion of the e-textiles unit? In the discussion, we address how debugging by design contributes to students’ learning of debugging skills. 

Much attention has focused on student learning while making physical computational artifacts such as robots or electronic textiles, but little is known about how students engage with the hardware and software debugging issues that often arise. In order to better understand students’ debugging strategies and practices, we conducted and video-recorded eight think- aloud sessions (~45 minutes each) of high school student pairs debugging electronic textiles projects with researcher-designed programming and circuitry/crafting bugs. We analyzed each video to understand pairs’ debugging strategies and practices in navigating the multi- representational problem space. Our findings reveal the importance of employing system-level strategies while debugging physical computing systems, and of coordinating between various components of physical computing systems, for instance between the physical artifact, representations on paper, and the onscreen programming environment. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and designing instruction and tools for learning with and debugging physical computing systems. 

The design of most learning environments focuses on supporting students in making, constructing, and putting together projects on and off the screen, with much less attention paid to the many issues—problems, bugs, or traps—that students invariably encounter along the way. In this symposium, we present different theoretical and disciplinary perspectives on understanding how learners engage in debugging applications on and off screen, examine learners’ mindsets about debugging from middle school to college students and teachers, and present pedagogical approaches that promote strategies for debugging problems, even having learners themselves design problems for others. We contend that learning to identify and fix problems—debug, troubleshoot, or get unstuck—in completing projects provides a productive space in which to explore multiple theoretical perspectives that can contribute to our understanding of learning and teaching critical strategies for dealing with challenges in learning activities and environments.