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There is a need for more K-12 computer science (CS) teachers. The need to scale teacher professional development (PD) points the CS education community towards virtual learning, and prior work shows that in-person PD with a diffuse schedule is more successful than condensed schedules. There is currently little research about virtual K-12 CS PD with a diffuse schedule. The pandemic served as a forced opportunity to explore the design and implementation of a diffuse-scheduled virtual PD for two small, equally-sized cohorts of middle school (grades 5-8) teachers; one from a metropolitan school district and another from across the United States. Our findings reveal several important post-pandemic design implications for future CS PD programs. First, the teachers’ CS knowledge and attitudes significantly increased in both cohorts. Second, there were no significant differences in attitudes or achievement between the cohorts. Third, the teachers in the virtual PD showed as good changes or better in attitude than those in a prior in-person PD. Finally, both cohorts were largely positive about the change from a few intensive PD days to a few hours a week for several weeks, even as they joined from vacations. 

With computational thinking (CT) emerging as a prominent component of 21st century science education, equipping teachers with the necessary tools to integrate CT into science lessons becomes increasingly important. One of these tools is confidence in their ability to carry out the integration of CT. This confidence is conceptualized as self-efficacy: the belief in one’s ability to perform a specific task in a specific context. Self-reported self-efficacy in teaching has shown promise as a measure of future behavior and is linked to teacher performance. Current measures of teacher self-efficacy to integrate CT are limited, however, by narrow conceptualizations of CT, oversight of survey design research, and limited evidence of instrument validity. We designed a valid and reliable measure of Teacher Self-Efficacy for integrating Computational Thinking in Science (T-SelECTS) that fits a single latent factor structure. To demonstrate the instrument’s value, we collected data from 58 pre-service teachers who participated in a CT module within their science methods course at a large Mid-Atlantic university. We found evidence of significant development in pre-service teachers’ self-efficacy for integrating CT into science instruction. We discuss how the T-SelECTS instrument could be used in teacher education courses and professional development to measure change in self-efficacy. 

Iteratively building and testing machine learning models can help children develop creativity, flexibility, and comfort with machine learning and artificial intelligence. We explore how children use machine teaching interfaces with a team of 14 children (aged 7–13 years) and adult co-designers. Children trained image classifiers and tested each other's models for robustness. Our study illuminates how children reason about ML concepts, offering these insights for designing machine teaching experiences for children: (i) ML metrics (e.g. confidence scores) should be visible for experimentation; (ii) ML activities should enable children to exchange models for promoting reflection and pattern recognition; and (iii) the interface should allow quick data inspection (e.g. images vs. gestures). 

Given the importance of broadening participation in the field of computing, goals of supporting personal expression and developing a sense of belonging must live alongside the goals of conceptual knowledge and developing disciplinary expertise. Integrating opportunities for students to be creative in how they enact computing ideas plays an important role when designing curricula. We examine how student creativity, as expressed through theme and the use of costumes, backdrops, and narrative in Scratch projects, is affected by using a themed starter project. Starter projects are Scratch projects that include a set of sprites and backdrops aligned to a theme (e.g. baseball), but no code. Using within-group and between- group comparisons, we establish a baseline of what students do when they are given a starter project and explore how their projects differ in the absence of a starter project. This work contributes to our understanding of the impacts of structured elements within open-ended learning tasks and how we can design computer science learning experiences for students that promote opportunities for self-expression while engaging them in computing. 

Background and Context: Educators make consequential curricu- lar decisions, often with little support, particularly as it relates to equity and how to support all students. Objective: This paper investigates the use of a rubric to support educators evaluating computer science curricula, especially with regards to equity. Method: Seventeen in-service elementary teachers evaluated a computer science curriculum with and without the Teacher Accessibility, Equity, and Content (TEC) Rubric. We examine tea- chers’ responses to prompts and completed TEC Rubrics to under- stand if and how the rubric supported their evaluations. Findings: The TEC Rubric helped teachers attend not only to curri- cular factors related to instructional design but also to issues of equity and accessibility and to identify opportunities to draw on the cultural resources of students and their communities. Implications: We contribute evidence supporting curricular evalua- tion instruments, specifically the TEC Rubric, and their use to direct teachers’ attention to attributes of equitable computing instruction. 

As computer science instruction gets offered to more young learn- ers, transitioning from elective to requirement, it is important to explore the relationship between pedagogical approach and student behavior. While different pedagogical approaches have particular motivations and intended goals, little is known about to what degree they satisfy those goals. In this paper, we present analysis of 536 students’ (age 9-14, grades 4-8) work within a Scratch-based, Use-Modify-Create (UMC) curriculum, Scratch Encore. We investigate to what degree the UMC progression encourages students to engage with the content of the lesson while providing the flexibility for creativity and exploration. Our findings show that this approach does balance structure with flexibility and creativity, allowing teachers wide variation in the degree to which they adhere to the structured tasks. Many students utilized recently-learned blocks in open-ended activities, yet they also explored blocks not formally taught. In addition, they took advantage of open-ended projects to change sprites, backgrounds, and integrate narratives into their projects. 

While several introductory computer science curricula exist for children in K-8, there are few options that go beyond sequence, loops, and basic conditionals. The goal of this project is to not only fill this gap with a high-quality curriculum supported by complete instructional materials, but to also do so with an equity-balanced curriculum. That is, a curriculum that values advancing equity equally with student learning outcomes. In this paper, we intro- duce barriers to equity in public school classrooms, pedagogical approaches to culturally-relevant curricula, and how our Scratch Encore curriculum is designed to support equity-balanced learn- ing. Finally, we present results of our pilot year, including early evidence of students taking advantage of the culturally-relevant design aspects.