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Computing education (CEd), or computer science education (CSEd), research has the potential to affect not only what and how we teach, but also who is taught and where. While CEd has grown as a discipline over the past two decades, many institutions still lack formal departments or programs. Given that it is a specialized and interdisciplinary area of research, we wanted to assess the values of collaboration and access. To develop a better understanding of the researchers and institutions working in CEd, we manually collected publication data from the Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) and the ACM International Computing Education Research (ICER) conferences, and the ACM Transactions on Computing Education journal, between 2015 and 2020. Using a collective total of 1099 publications, we analyzed affiliation information about the authors and their institutions. Although we hoped to uncover a global presence and collaborative relationships demonstrating a “CSEd for all” mindset, instead we found that North America and Europe were over-represented relative to other continents. Additionally, collaborations remained a national or regional affair, for the most part. While many factors may contribute, from language barriers to financial obstacles, communication across country lines needs to improve to truly develop a more equitable international presence in the field. Through this research, we hope to raise awareness of where CEd research is being conducted and what level of collaboration occurs between institutions and countries. Moreover, we want to encourage researchers to seek alternative perspectives and to expand their collaborations to ensure CEd work truly encompasses a broader worldview. 

Although computer science education (CSEd) is growing rapidly as a discipline, presently there are a limited number of formal programs available for students to pursue graduate degrees. To explore what options exist, we sought to develop a better understanding of the researchers and institutions currently working in CSEd. We collected publication data between 2015 and 2020 from the Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITiCSE) and ACM International Computing Education Research (ICER) conferences, and from the ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE) journal. Using a total of 1,099 publications, we analyzed the authorship blocks and their affiliations. We created a comprehensive database, used for analysis on recent contributions to CSEd research. Among other findings, we observed that 2,068 distinct authors contributed, spanning 578 global institutions. From these, 963 of the authors came from 236 distinct universities in the United States. Moreover, we found that most often, new growth from international contributions resulted from the participation of additional universities, whereas in the United States most growth was the result of new contributors from the same universities. The results of this research are intended to encourage global collaborations, to provide an informative guide about recent publications in the field, and also to serve as a guidepost for graduate recruitment and further exploration into CSEd research and programs. 

Opportunities for training CS K-12 pre-service and in-service teachers, research in CS Education, and career pathways for PhDs/EdDs in CS education are happening, but often in an uncoordinated way. We advocate that now is the right time for CS and Education to collaborate on developing new joint degree programs in Computer Science Education and to explore joint faculty appointments. High undergraduate enrollment in computing programs and the increasing interest in CS courses from non-majors represent a unique opportunity for starting successful programs. As more of CS undergraduates are undergraduate TAs and see teaching and learning from a non-learner perspective, their interest in education has also increased. The growing interest in CS education, including the need for effecting CS teaching at both K-12 and the undergraduate level, provide interesting job opportunities for CS education researchers. As CS departments develop new undergraduate degree programs and scale class sizes, research on questions like How do we teach effectively computing to different audiences? How can we assess CS learning? What are culturally responsive pedagogies? is important. To answer many of these and related questions, CS departments should be actively engaged in CS Education research, from training graduate students in interdisciplinary programs to research programs. This BOF will provide a platform for the discussion on what such graduate programs – from certificate to a PhD – can and should look like, what challenges exist to creating them, and how students with different backgrounds should get trained in the relevant foundations of CS and Education.