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This empirical case study utilizes conjecture mapping to capture and systematically map conjectures about the support needed for K-12 teachers to incorporate computational thinking into teaching. The case analysis highlighted a teacher’s year-long professional development experience focused on integrating computational thinking. The evolving conjecture map provides a framework to trace and understand relationships between the learning designs, activities, and teacher outcomes. Using rich data from the teacher's experience, the study tests and refines the hypothesized connections laid out in the original conjecture map to build an understanding of effective computational thinking professional development design. 

Elementary grade teachers are often not fully prepared to teach a computing-rich curriculum, and the demand of the digital age to integrate Computational Thinking (CT) into their classrooms has put them at a challenge. Under the larger umbrella, abstraction lies at the heart of CT. Abstraction allows moving between various information levels while targeting complex problems and creating rich design solutions. This study focuses on how one pair of elementary-grade teachers collaborated, using abstraction to solve a maze challenge, helping each other move between different layers of information. The videotaped data of one day of teachers' professional development was analyzed through three dimensions of Community of Practice (CoP). Results suggest that through mutual engagement in pursuing a joint enterprise and their shared repertoire, elementary-grade teachers moved their focus between different levels of abstraction simultaneously and effectively. 

In this paper, we explore how one-on-one coaching supported one teacher in implementing ideas about computational thinking in her classroom. We draw from existing literature on coaching strategies but recognize those tend to have been developed in large-group or small-group settings rather than one-on-one. Our findings consider two kinds of questions that seemed to support the teacher in engaging with discourse practices that have been shown effective for coaching (Lefstein et al, 2020). Our findings suggest that coaching made the instruction and activity from PL workshops more relevant and tangible for the teacher. 

This exploratory research analyzes the video-recorded data of four elementary-grade teachers debugging a school tour activity while utilizing a programable robot, Photon. This summer’s professional development session on computational thinking (CT) integration was four hours long and was focused on debugging as a key CT component. The results indicate that teachers worked collaboratively to debug their way through errors using different strategies, such as step-by-step execution or incremental code development. 

Although the professional learning opportunities for teachers to introduce computational thinking (CT) into K-12 education are increasing, it remains challenging to support teachers in integrating CT into their everyday classroom practices. In this study, we have identified six elementary teachers who showed evident eagerness or reluctance in a CT integration professional learning experience. We further analyzed the emerging verbal and non-verbal participation patterns of eagerness and reluctance and the challenges teachers have encountered in the professional learning experience. The results shed light on how to better understand and address the challenges in creating sustainable and effective professional learning. 

Science learning is not limited to knowledge and skills. This research draws on the expansive theories of learning, which recognize students’ identities and their cultural and epistemic agencies as critical resources for learning. To this end, we examine how positioning students as cultural and epistemic agents helps them to recruit their diverse cultural, epistemic, and linguistic resources and in turn support students’ developing identities.