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Recent efforts to integrate computer science (CS) into classrooms have led to an increase in professional development (PD) programs aimed at improving educators' readiness. This study seeks to identify the factors influencing educators' choices of CS tools for lesson planning after participating in a PD program. 

This study investigates the coding attitudes of elementary students’ (K-5) following their participation in lessons that integrated computational thinking (CT) and culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP) in content area instruction. Their teachers attended a professional development program in the summer to develop these integrated lessons for the school year. A total of 149 upper elementary students (grades 3-5) completed the Elementary Students Coding Attitudes survey (Mason & Rich, 2020) both before and after the lessons, while a subset of 58 students spread across K-5 classrooms were interviewed after the lesson implementation. Survey results find a decline in students’ coding interest and perception of coding from pretest to posttest. Conversely, qualitative analysis of interview data, conducted through abductive coding, summary development, and peer debriefing, demonstrated that most students enjoyed the lessons and expressed interest in pursuing coding in the future. The mixed results from this study highlight critical considerations for supporting elementary educators in successfully integrating CT and culturally responsive practices. Additionally, the findings point to opportunities for strengthening professional development and refining our research methods to better capture data within elementary classrooms, particularly in the lower grades. 

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on education is a topic gaining attention due to the opportunities and challenges it presents for K-12 classrooms. While educators are crucial in integrating AI technology into instruction, empirical evidence documenting elementary educators’ perceptions of AI and its integration in classroom instruction is scarce. This study explores elementary educators’ perceptions of AI during and after participation in a professional development (PD) program which incorporated AI-focused sessions. Analyzing data from interviews, exit tickets, and group discussions, findings indicate that perceptions are shaped by factors such as the perceived usefulness of AI tools, ethical considerations, risks for younger students, and pedagogical concerns. Further, findings indicate that educators responded positively to the AI concepts and associated resources introduced in the PD. These findings offer important insights for research, practice, and policy to better support educators’ AI integration into classroom instruction. 

Abstract While there is increased interest in using movement and embodiment to support learning due to the rise in theories of embodied cognition and learning, additional work needs to be done to explore how we can make sense of students collectively developing their understanding within a mixed-reality environment. In this paper, we explore embodied communication’s individual and collective functions as a way of seeing students’ learning through embodiment. We analyze data from a mixed-reality (MR) environment: Science through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP) (Danish et al., International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning 15:49–87, 2020), using descriptive statistics and interaction analysis to explore the role of gesture and movement in student classroom activities and their pre-and post-interviews. The results reveal that students appear to develop gestures for representing challenging concepts within the classroom and then use these gestures to help clarify their understanding within the interview context. We further explore how students collectively develop these gestures in the classroom, with a focus on their communicative acts, then provide a list of individual and collective functions that are supported by student gestures and embodiment within the STEP MR environment, and discuss the functions of each act. Finally, we illustrate the value of attending to these gestures for educators and designers interested in supporting embodied learning.