Search for: All records

The computer science education (CSEd) community de- mands researchers, curriculum developers, schools of education, and districts take action to meet the needs of all students. This experience report from the CSforALL Broadening Participation in Computing Alliance (BPC- A) describes a Field Catalyst approach to systems change at scale. We further describe how the alliance will cat- alyze the field toward action supporting girls and Black and Hispanic students. By strengthening a shared iden- tity, establishing standards of practice, disseminating a knowledge base, supporting leadership and grassroots efforts and offering frameworks to support policy for equity, the field will catalyze efforts to implement state policies for CSEd 

The demand to enact state-level computer science (CS) policies rapidly increased across the United States in response to advances in emerging technologies (e.g. Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, etc). The authors of this paper present the implications of K-12 CS education policies in the state of Tennessee, and recommendations to move towards justice-centered approaches after districts received Strategic CSforALL Resource Implementation Planning Tool (SCRIPT) workshops to help set goals and prioritize CS implementation. Evidence connected to the CS education literature accompanied by the authors, who are partners supporting local education agencies (LEAs), and qualitative findings from workshops provided further reasoning for policy recommendations. 

The demand to provide high-quality computer science (CS) education to K-12 students across the United States continues to grow due to societal transformations driven by AI and cybersecurity. However, the impact of state initiatives and mandates on district leaders’ decision making remains an under-explored area in the literature. In 2022, CSforALL began work in Tennessee, a state poised to enact CS education policy, as part of a Research Practice Partnership (RPP). This study investigates the first eight school districts who participated in the Strategic CSforALL Resource and Implementation Planning Tool (SCRIPT) workshops in 2022 and 2023, setting goals based on the SCRIPT rubric. The study takes a general qualitative approach underpinned by the Capacity, Access, Participation, and Experience (CAPE) Framework [14] to develop a coding scheme analyzing the districts’ related rubric scores and goals, and to investigate the impacts on equity indicators. The districts participated in three SCRIPT workshops held in 2022 and 2023, and this study dives deeply into the initial goals as well as analyzing the ways the SCRIPT rubric aligned to the CAPE Framework to investigate how district leaders make decisions which impact teacher and student outcomes which lead to equitable high-quality CS education. 

While computational thinking has gained popularity in K-12 schools to increase access to computing tools and practices, there is still limited understanding on how to broaden participation of students with disabilities in computational thinking (CT). One approach to increasing access to computing to students with disabilities is to educate future special education teachers to bring CT into their instruction. This study examined the influence of integrating CT into assistive technology course for special education pre-service teachers. Our results suggest that integrating CT into special educa- tion teacher preparation coursework can have a positive impact on how pre-service teachers see the value of bringing computational practices to students with disabilities.