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. 

Research Problem. Computer science (CS) education researchers conducting studies that target high school students have likely seen their studies impacted by COVID-19. Interpreting research findings impacted by COVID-19 presents unique challenges that will require a deeper understanding as to how the pandemic has affected underserved and underrepresented students studying or unable to study computing. Research Question. Our research question for this study was: In what ways has the high school computer science educational ecosystem for students been impacted by COVID-19, particularly when comparing schools based on relative socioeconomic status of a majority of students? Methodology. We used an exploratory sequential mixed methods study to understand the types of impacts high school CS educators have seen in their practice over the past year using the CAPE theoretical dissaggregation framework to measure schools’ Capacity to offer CS, student Access to CS education, student Participation in CS, and Experiences of students taking CS. Data Collection Procedure. We developed an instrument to collect qualitative data from open-ended questions, then collected data from CS high school educators (n = 21) and coded them across CAPE. We used the codes to create a quantitative instrument. We collected data from a wider set of CS high school educators ( n = 185), analyzed the data, and considered how these findings shape research conducted over the last year. Findings. Overall, practitioner perspectives revealed that capacity for CS Funding, Policy & Curriculum in both types of schools grew during the pandemic, while the capacity to offer physical and human resources decreased. While access to extracurricular activities decreased, there was still a significant increase in the number of CS courses offered. Fewer girls took CS courses and attendance decreased. Student learning and engagement in CS courses were significantly impacted, while other noncognitive factors like interest in CS and relevance of technology saw increases. Practitioner perspectives also indicated that schools serving students from lower-income families had 1) a greater decrease in the number of students who received information about CS/CTE pathways; 2) a greater decrease in the number of girls enrolled in CS classes; 3) a greater decrease in the number of students receiving college credit for dual-credit CS courses; 4) a greater decrease in student attendance; and 5) a greater decrease in the number of students interested in taking additional CS courses. On the flip-side, schools serving students from higher income families had significantly higher increases in the number of students interested in taking additional CS courses. 

In 2017 a project was started to form a connected community of practice (CCOP) of projects funded to conduct computer science education research through a research practice partnership methodology. In this poster, organizers from that CCOP detail strategies to encourage ongoing exchange and collaboration in the community of researchers. Strategies began with offering resources broadly useful to all projects in an early phase of their RPP work. Over time, through surveying participants, a more theme-based strategy to appeal to subsets of the community was employed. The poster explores the themes used in the third year of the project and share attendance and engagement data. Generalizable recommendations for encouraging shared data gathering goals and resource curation are offered for similar communities of practice devoted to researching computer science education, and ideas on how organizers can measure the success of such communities are shared. 

Equity is arguably an agreed upon value within the Computer Science education (CSed) community, and perhaps even more so within efforts to universalize access to CSed within K12 settings through emerging `CS for All' initiatives. However, stakeholders often mean different things when referring to equity, with important implications for what CS teaching and learning looks like in schools. In this paper, we explore the question of how K12 school district actors' conceptualizations of equity manifest within their planning and implementation of district-wide CSed initiatives. Based on a research-practice partnership aimed at supporting and researching district-wide CSed initiatives, data presented - interviews with district faculty, district planning documents, meeting transcripts and field observations - were drawn from five participating school districts as they made decisions and enacted activities over 11 months in areas including vision-setting, curriculum, professional development, leadership efforts and use of formative data about implementation. Analyzing these data through equity frameworks found in CSed literature, we highlight three distinct but interconnected ways that district actors conceptualized equity within their CSed initiatives: (1) equity in who Computer Science is for, (2) equity in how Computer Science is taught, and (3) equity in what Computer Science is taught. Data show that these varied conceptualizations resulted in different kinds of decisions about CSed in districts. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of their relevance to equity-oriented CS education researchers, and what lessons they hold for policy-makers and education leaders engaged in their own efforts to support equitable computer science education.