6

Computing Experiences in Schools

Schools are potentially powerful settings for infusing authentic learning experiences in computing. Learners are required to attend school, which means schools are a setting that reach a broad swath of students. The compulsory nature of schooling, however, can also make it difficult to create opportunities that balance both professional and personal authenticity.

In this chapter, the committee considers computing education in schools in the United States. We begin with an overview of how computing fits into the landscape of the K–12 curriculum and identify concerns about equity and access. We then consider each level of schooling—elementary, middle, and high school—separately, discussing both the current status of computing education at each level and exploring how authentic experiences could be supported. As teachers are the lynchpin for successful computing education, the final sections of the chapter discuss teachers’ learning needs for supporting learning in computing.

In describing current trends in education for computing, the committee drew on the 2018 National Survey of Science and Mathematics Education (NSSME+). This survey is one of the few nationally representative, longitudinal surveys of science and mathematics education in the country. For the 2018 data collection, computer science (CS) was added as one of the subjects that representatives of school systems and teachers were asked about (Banilower et al., 2018).¹

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¹ For more information on the sampling methods and sample sizes, see Appendixes A and B of the Horizon report. The final sample for CS teachers consisted of 289 teachers.

OVERVIEW OF COMPUTING IN THE K–12 CURRICULUM

The past decade has seen expansion of access to instruction in computing in schools. The report State of the States Landscape Report: State-level Policies Supporting Equitable K–12 Computer Science Education (Stanton et al., 2017) tracks progress toward 10 policy priorities that are seen as central to broadening participation in computer science education. According to this report, in 2017 seven states had publicly accessible K–12 standards for CS content. Eight additional states were engaged in the standards development process. Nine states have dedicated state-level funding to K–12 CS education in fiscal 2016–2017. At least four states had also allocated funding to CS for fiscal 2018–2019. Four states required all public high school to offer at least one CS course. Twenty-three states and DC required that CS be allowed to fulfill a core graduation credit.

A more recent analysis (2019) of state policy in CS education suggests an increase in attention to CS. This analysis reports that 19 states require all high schools to offer CS, and 4 states require CS of all levels to be taught in all public schools. This report also highlights that 34 states have adopted CS learning standards, with another 5 states actively developing learning standards (Code.org, ECEP, and CSTA, 2019).

At all grade levels, instruction in computing can be offered both through stand-alone courses and by integrating computing experiences into courses in other subjects. Teachers’ reports suggest that integrating computing into mathematics and science classes is rare (see Table 6-1). At all grade levels, 70 percent or more of mathematics and science teachers report never integrating coding into their courses. While coding is just one aspect of computing, these results to do not provide strong evidence for the presence of computing in science and mathematics classes.

There are disparities in access to learning experiences in computing. Results of the NSSME+ reveal differences in learning opportunities by grade, rates of poverty at a school, and school size (Banilower et al., 2018). Specifically:

• 26 percent of elementary schools offer instruction in computer programming,
• 38 percent of middle schools offer instruction in computer programming,
• 53 percent of high schools offer one or more courses in CS,
• High-poverty high schools (26%) were less likely to offer instruction in CS than low-poverty high schools (46%) (by quartiles), and
• Large high schools (43%) were more likely to offer instruction in CS than small high schools (23%).

TABLE 6-1 Mathematics and Science Classes in Which Teachers Report Incorporating Coding into Mathematics Instruction, by Grade Range

SOURCE: Banilower et al. (2018).

Recent shifts in state approaches to computing education might increase the number of schools that are offering computing education for all learners as part of the core educational curriculum (see Box 6-1).

Knowing whether instruction and courses are available does not provide information about the nature of the students’ learning experiences. Course names and descriptions do not always reflect the content of school coursework in computing or the skills of the professional discipline (Margolis et al., 2008). Further, there is variation in the pedagogical preparation of classroom teachers to teach computing and to connect learners to computing in engaging, culturally relevant, and personally meaningful ways. This makes it difficult to know the extent to which students’ learning experiences in computing reflect professional and personal authenticity as described by the committee.

The conditions of school facilities, as well as whether learners have access to technical resources at home, also impact CS learning and instruction independently of the particular course or learning experience. One major obstacle in supporting teaching and learning in CS concerns the technology, including devices and connectivity, needed to support learners learning CS. Though 94 percent of school districts meet a minimum speed of Internet access, 6.5 million students, primarily in rural schools, are without access (Mathewson, 2017). Data from the Federal Communications Commission (2015) show that rural areas are less likely to be wired for broadband service

and tend to have slower connectivity compared to other areas of the country. Given that computing education often depends on digital devices, disruptions in access to using the Internet or other technology tools and supports has a profound impact on the instruction for learners. In fact, high school CS teachers reports that lack of reliable access to the Internet (19% of teachers), lack of support to maintain technology (34% of teachers), and lack of functioning computing devices (27% of teachers) have a negative impact on their instruction (Banilower et al., 2018). Further, teachers also report that security measures, such as school restrictions on the Internet, also inhibit their instruction of CS (37% of teachers). Given the remote learning challenges that were starkly exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, having access to devices and steady Internet, in any learning setting, is essential for student learning.

In addition to instruction and courses that are part of the curriculum, schools offer a range of activities during the school day and after school to engage students in computing. Results of the NSSME+ offer a window into the kinds of activities available and how their availability varies by grade level (see Table 6-2). These activities are another setting for providing access to authentic learning experiences in computing. They also offer opportunities to foster connections between students’ computer learning experiences in and out of school.

COMPUTING IN ELEMENTARY AND MIDDLE SCHOOL

In both elementary and middle school, learning experiences in computing can be offered through both stand-alone classes and integration of computing in classes in other subjects. That said, as indicated in the previous section, integrating computing into mathematics and science appears to be relatively rare. However, there are projects at both the elementary and middle school levels that show the promise of integration.

Elementary School

As noted in the previous section, only 26 percent of elementary schools report offering instruction in computing (Banilower et al., 2018), suggesting that most learners in the United States do not encounter computing education in elementary schools. In fact, widespread efforts to provide computing experiences in the elementary grades are relatively recent. As a result, there is limited research on students’ learning experiences in computing in K–5 classrooms. But the research and reports that do include elementary school teachers shed important light on the features and availability of computing education for younger children in schools.

A school-wide study of computing education at a high-poverty elementary school shows the potential of an integrated approach. The school com-

TABLE 6-2 School Programs and Practices to Enhance Students’ Interest and/or Achievement in Computer Science, by Grade Range (percentage of schools)

SOURCE: Banilower et al. (2018).

mitted to integrating computational thinking into instruction school-wide. Seven teachers and two administrators were chosen as focal cases for the study; four were classroom teachers and three taught special subjects (i.e., art, technology, library/media). All four participating elementary classroom teachers in the study chose to integrate computing lessons into science and mathematics curriculum (Israel et al., 2015a). The teachers suggested that the primary reason they successfully integrated computing education in their classrooms was because integration did not require additional instructional time already designated for other subjects. In contrast, the instructional specialists focused more on discrete computing skills, using CS unplugged activities, Code.org resources, and Scratch tutorials.

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach to teaching computing can encourage teachers to draw upon their existing content knowledge to make connections to computing-related concepts and skills. In fact, teachers are eager to know more about effective ways to integrate computing into other

K–5 subjects (Roberts, Prottsman, and Gray, 2018). While teachers might be able to begin imagining these interdisciplinary connections, however, a qualitative study of teachers from one school district reveals teachers’ concerns about integrating computing into their teaching due to limited class time and having difficulty identifying instances in which connections could be made between computing and science and computing and mathematics (Rich, Yadav, and Schwartz, 2019). Another potential obstacle is the perceived mismatch between the accepted best practices across disciplines.

Even with these impediments, elementary teachers point to benefits they appreciate for their learners as a result of teaching CS, including their learners’ interest in computing, capacity in problem-solving, improvements in learners’ attitudes and confidence, and an increased resilience to stick with problems, even after missteps or iterative failures (Rich et al., 2019). Similarly, a study probing elementary computing education paired together preservice teachers and undergraduate CS learners to collaborate with elementary classroom teachers to design and deliver 10 hours of instruction, over 10 weeks, in two districts chosen due to their “suburban and rural settings with participants from culturally diverse and economically disadvantaged backgrounds” (Tran, 2018, p. 8). The research revealed learning gains in specific CS concepts related to algorithm, loops, and debugging, as well as increased interest in computing, and positive dispositions around perseverance.

Middle School

As noted above, only 38 percent of middle schools offer instruction in computing. Greater than 80 percent of middle school mathematics and science teachers report never integrating coding into their classes (see Table 7.1; Banilower et al, 2018).

There are promising examples, however, for integrating computing into other subjects (Basu et al., 2016; Grover, 2011; Sengupta et al., 2013; Weintrop et al., 2016). Bootstrap, a curriculum that supports learners in programming a video game of their own design, integrates programming concepts into algebra, physics, and data science instruction (Schanzer et al., 2015). With the focus on algebra, Bootstrap has been used at both the middle school and high school levels. This curriculum has goals in terms of increasing learners’ interest and knowledge about CS, but also has goals that facilitate the improvement of problem-solving around algebra word problems (Schanzer et al., 2015; Schanzer, Fisler, and Krishnamurthi, 2018). Schanzer and colleagues (2015) reported that learners exhibited some evidence of transfer of learning when provided with the opportunity to take Bootstrap as compared to a control group (that had not taken Bootstrap). Similarly, Project GUTS approaches computing education through the inte-

gration of week-long curricular units on agent-based modeling in middle school science classrooms (Lee et al., 2011). Both of these middle-school oriented computing curriculum offer professional development (PD) to support teacher integration of these learning resources; however a limitation of this work is the degree to which transfer of learning can occur between computing and other content areas (Schanzer et al., 2015).

There are potentially some organizational advantages to integrating computing into other courses instead of creating a stand-alone course. For example, an integrated approach does not require making space in the schedule or hiring additional staff. Indeed, one study of Utah’s middle school teachers noted that teachers have difficulty “fitting” CS into their teaching schedules and into the selection of learners’ elective choices (Rich and Hu, 2019). However, these teachers also noted they felt under-prepared and under-supported to teach computing.

Computing in Elementary and Middle School Summary

In sum, less than half of schools across the country are providing robust opportunities to learn computing at the elementary and middle school levels. Integrating computing into other courses, such as mathematics and science, seems like a promising approach. However, teachers need opportunities to develop the knowledge and skill to support this integration.

Further, little is known about the nature of the learning experiences themselves in elementary and middle school. This makes it difficult to assess whether they incorporate features that the committee might consider to be either professionally or personally authentic. It does appear, however, that there may be missed opportunities to incorporate authentic experiences for computing at the elementary and middle school levels.

COMPUTING IN HIGH SCHOOL

High schools have a long history of including computing education in the curriculum, mainly as stand-alone computing or CS courses. Recent years have seen a shift from computing-related courses being offered only in advanced, enrichment spaces toward computing being offered as a core part of a well-rounded school curriculum for all learners.

Making space for CS within an already-crowded secondary school curriculum has been variable across U.S. public schools (Banilower et al., 2018; Nager and Atkinson, 2016). State and district policies diverge in their requirements and awarding of academic credit toward graduation for learners who complete high school CS courses. According to survey responses from NSSME+, in three-quarters of high schools, even when CS courses are offered, they are considered “elective” in that they are not

required for graduation and only a small percentage allow CS to count toward graduation requirements in other subjects (Banilower et al., 2018). Only 1 percent of schools require 2–4 years of coursework in CS for graduation, 17 percent of schools require 1 year of coursework, and 8 percent of schools require a semester of coursework (Banilower et al., 2018). Further, some schools apply academic coursework in CS toward other disciplinary graduation requirements. The NSSME+ study notes that CS counts toward a mathematics graduation requirement in 15 percent of schools, as a science graduation requirement in 12 percent of schools, and as a foreign language requirement in 7 percent of schools.

High schools offer a variety of courses in computing or CS (see Table 6-3). These include courses for which students may receive college credit (AP, IB, and dual enrollment) as well as those that do not qualify for college credit. As noted in the overview section of the chapter, the availability of learning opportunities in computing are not proportionately distributed across high schools. Instead, these opportunities are more prevalent in schools enrolling learners from high-income communities as well as schools in which the majority are White, especially for advanced high school courses (Banilower et al., 2018).

Advanced Placement Courses in Computer Science

In general, AP courses, including CS courses, are offered by the College Board to provide advanced learning opportunities at the secondary school level. Learners who score particular grades on an end-of-course exam might have the opportunity to earn college credit, depending on the college they go on to attend. For CS there are two courses offered: Computer Science A

TABLE 6-3 High Schools Offering Computer Science and Technology Courses

SOURCE: Banilower et al. (2018).

(CSA) and Computer Science Principles (CSP). Nager and Atkinson (2016) have shown that there is a lack of women and minorities not only taking these courses, but also taking the exam.

Though these advanced courses are important in many computing education high school pathways, the distribution of AP courses across school sites is uneven, privileging large, suburban and urban, and more affluent schools. Specifically, studies have demonstrated the following inequities in course availability (Banilower et al., 2018; Scott et al., 2019):

• Large schools are more likely to have AP CS than small schools;
• Rural schools are less likely than suburban or urban schools to offer AP CS; and
• High-poverty schools are less likely than low-poverty schools to offer AP CS.

Computer Science A

CSA, first introduced in 1984, aims to give learners a comparable experience to a first-semester undergraduate CS course. The course focuses on object-oriented programming and data structures, with Java as the primary emphasis and designated programming language of the course (College Board, 2014). Though the AP CSA course has been offered for decades, until recently the number of test takers was relatively low compared to other AP mathematics and science courses, with only 15,000 learners taking the test a decade ago (College Board, 2008). Since then, participation in the AP CSA exam has surged with a student participation growth rate of between 9 percent and 26 percent each year through 2017. In 2017, 60,519 learners completed the AP CSA exam (College Board, 2017), with 5,040 schools across the United States offering the exam.

Within the AP program, of all the AP course offerings across STEM areas, CSA has historically sustained the lowest rates of participation for minoritized populations (Sax et al., 2020). Of test takers in 2017, girls represent 24 percent of participants; Native Americans 0.2 percent of participants, African Americans 4 percent of participants, Latinx learners 12 percent of participants, and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders just 0.1 percent of participants (Sax et al., 2020). Lim and Lewis (2020) recently proposed three metrics for evaluating the impact of state-level initiatives aimed to broaden participation in computing at the high school level.

Enrollment in CSA in high school has been shown to better predict interest and persistence in technology and computing for college women (Weston, Dubow, and Kaminsky, 2019), compared to technology internships or participation in other computing-related activities before college. In fact, a large sample of surveyed college freshman revealed that 28 percent

of learners who take AP CSA planned on majoring in computer science (Sax et al., 2020).

Computer Science Principles

In a concerted effort to broaden participation in computing, the College Board and the National Science Foundation joined together in 2008 to design, develop, and implement CSP, described as a more accessible, college-level CS course (Cuny, 2015; Sax et al., 2020). CSP aims to be equivalent to a non-CS major’s introduction to computing course.

After 8 years of development and piloting, the course was launched in 2016 (Kamenetz, 2017). In 2017, the first year of the course, more than 44,000 students at 2,625 schools took the exam (College Board, 2017). In 2018, 70,000 students at 4,022 schools took the exam (College Board, 2018).

The focus of the course is on appreciating the big ideas of computer science. The CSP course includes seven core computing concepts (creativity, abstraction, data and information, algorithms, programming, the Internet, and global impact) and six computational practices (connecting computing, creating computational artifacts, abstracting, analyzing problems and artifacts, communicating, and collaborating) (College Board, 2020). In an effort to focus more on the principles and interdisciplinary nature of CS, the course and exam are programming-language agnostic (Nager and Atkinson, 2016), allowing for instructors to select the programming language they deem most appropriate for student success in their own classrooms. Also unique to CSP, in comparison to other AP courses, is a through-course, teacher-supervised, task-based performance assessment (the Create Performance Task: Application to Ideas) that is a portion of a learner’s final AP score.

While preliminary evidence suggests that students who enroll in CSP are more diverse with respect to gender, race, and ethnicity (although no differences were observed for some groups) than CSA learners, students who took CSP are less inclined to indicate their intent to pursue CS majors and careers than students who complete CSA (Howard and Havard, 2019; Sax et al., 2020). Even in the specifically-designed-to-broaden-participation AP CSP course, the course has not attracted a heterogenous and representative population of learners that reflects the demographics of learners in public schools. Among the inaugural group of CSP exam-takers in 2017, girls comprised 30 percent of test takers, and only 28 percent of learners were Black, Latinx or Indigenous (College Board, 2017).

Equity in AP Computer Science Courses

Both CSA and CSP are taken predominantly by men, and the number of enrollees is lower in contrast to other AP courses in mathematics and science. In 2019, CSP test takers consisted of 32 percent women with CSA test takers consisting of 24 percent women. In contrast, AP Biology was 62.6 percent women and AP Calculus AB was 49 percent women. Table 6-4 presents the number of test takers in the CS AP exams as compared to other STEM exams, such as Biology and Calculus AB. Overall, the percentages of Black and Latinx learners completing the AP CSA exam were lower, with fairly comparable percentages observed for AP CSP as compared to AP Biology and AP Calculus AB. These patterns in test taking reinforce the known patterns of underrepresentation by race and ethnicity in STEM fields (see Chapter 2).

The Exploring Computer Science Course

The Exploring Computer Science (ECS) course, developed in 2008 with National Science Foundation support, provides a foundational approach to introducing CS to learners with no assumption of prior knowledge or experience in computing. The introductory ECS course’s primary goal is to introduce CS at a level that is highly accessible for all high school learners. The goal is to promote equity by engaging a broad range of learners in an inclusive approach to CS to build foundational knowledge about CS. Currently offered in schools across 34 states and Puerto Rico, ECS enrolls about 55,000 learners each year.² The ECS course originated in Los Angeles and demographic data from Los Angeles suggests that the ethnic and racial representation matches that of Los Angeles learners more generally, and 43 percent of ECS learners in Los Angeles are girls.³ These numbers, along with evidence in growth of student efficacy, increased interest in computing, and sense of belonging gains, suggest that this course may successfully engage girls and Black and Latinx learners in CS (Dettori et al., 2016; Goode and Margolis, 2011).

The course includes a complete year-long curriculum with the following possible instructional units: human computer interaction, problem-solving, web design, programming, data and analysis, robotics, electronic textiles, and artificial intelligence. Importantly, the ECS course also includes a 2-year PD program for teachers that focuses on inquiry-based teaching and anti-racist instruction (Goode, Chapman, and Margolis, 2012; Goode, Johnson, and Sundstrom, 2020), as well as a validated and open-ended assessment tool to gauge student learning.

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² For more information, see http://www.exploringcs.org/about/about-ecs.

³ Additional data and information can be found at https://www.exploringcs.org/for-researcherspolicymakers/reports/ecs-enrollment-data.

TABLE 6-4 Contrasting Participation in the 2019 AP CSP and CSA Exams versus AP Biology and AP Calculus AB

NOTE: During this reporting period, 4,930,147 exams were administered. However, it is not known how many individual learners this translates to as a learner can take multiple exams. AP = Advanced Placement, CSA = Computer Science A, CSP = Computer Science Principles.

SOURCE: College Board (2019). Data are available at https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/misc/ap/national-summary-2019.xlsx.

Learners who took ECS as their introductory computing course, as compared to more traditional programming-centric computing courses, were twice as likely to go on and take more advanced coursework (McGee et al., 2018). Learners who completed ECS before taking the AP CSA course also out-scored their peers by 1/3 point on the 5-point AP CS A exam (McGee et al., 2019).

The inclusion of e-textiles as part of the ECS curriculum has been a recent (2018) and novel addition as a supplemental unit (Unit 6: Electronic Textiles), done in an effort to incorporate makerspaces in schools, and in particular, to offer tactile approaches to learning that combine computing, circuitry, and crafting. A study that accompanied the introduction of e-textiles unit in 17 ECS classrooms in Los Angeles detailed how teachers adjusted their pedagogical practices to support creativity, connection, and culturally responsive student learning. The study mapped out how rich and equitable teaching practices in computing and making can move learners from initial engagement into more complex projects that deepened their learning experiences. As the study concludes, this approach in placing e-textiles in a project-based computing curriculum with extensive PD for teachers “addresses a piece of the puzzle that has been missing in connecting informal and formal implementations of making activities” (Fields et al., 2018, p. 16).

ECS seems to be a potential context for incorporating authentic experiences in computing that focus more on personal authenticity. The ECS course is designed around project-based learning, engaging learners in learning activities that apply conceptual knowledge and allowing learners to craft original computational creations. The course is aligned with foundational K–12 computing standards; its goal is to reach the general student population through inclusive, equity-based instruction that counters the dominant practices in professionally authentic technology settings.

Career and Technical Education Courses

Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses provide a direct connection with careers and pathways to industry. These high school courses, funded in part by federal Perkins funding, vary greatly between states and schools, yet often have an applied focus to computing curriculum. Examples of these types of courses include professional certification on specific technical competencies that transfer directly to professional work settings such as Networking, Software Engineering, or Cybersecurity. The applied courses in these programs are geared toward learners already interested in technical careers and seek to closely mirror existing workplace tools, knowledge, and skills.

The typical course composition of STEM-related CTE courses suggest they are not gender-inclusive (Lufkin et al., 2007), with girls composing 32 percent of learners nationally in the IT concentration of CTE pathways in (Perkins Data Explorer, 2020). It is worth acknowledging that there was a history of placing learners into a CTE track (Goode, Flapan, and Margolis, 2018); however, both ECS and CSP are also taught as CTE courses.⁴

High School Experiences Summary

Although computing education has had a longer history within high schools as compared to elementary and middle school spaces, primarily as stand-alone courses, CS is typically considered as an elective and not a requirement toward graduation. Moreover, despite efforts to design AP CS courses to address known inequities in learner participation, underrepresentation of women and learners of color persist. The ECS course was designed to introduce learners to computing with no assumption of prior knowledge or experience in computing. This course has shown some promise in promoting equity as findings suggest that learners who complete this course are more likely to go on and take more advanced coursework.

EQUITY AND ACCESS IN COMPUTING IN SCHOOLS

While there have been ongoing efforts to expand learning opportunities for computing in schools, there are still disparities in access and participation. There are multiple factors contributing to these trends.

In secondary schools, classroom teachers are the primary instructors of stand-alone CS classes. The characteristics of high school CS teachers are similar to those of high school science and mathematics teachers in some

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⁴ For more information, see: https://ecepalliance.org/sites/default/files/RethinkingPerkins_Paper.pdf.

areas and markedly different in others (Banilower et al., 2018). Similar to science and mathematics teachers, nearly all high school CS teachers characterize themselves as White (94%), and most are older than 40. In contrast with most K–12 teachers, the majority of CS teachers (60%) are men. The dramatically low numbers of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx teachers represent a missed opportunity in terms of providing learners exposure to role models and pedagogies informed by minoritized perspectives and experiences in computing. In particular, women teachers of color bring important commitments to computing education in terms of serving learners from minoritized communities, connecting to community knowledge, and serving as a role model to their learners (Johnson et al., 2020).

In addition to the problem of lack of diversity among teachers, structural inequalities and bias also play a role. In Stuck in the Shallow End: Education, Race, and Computing, Margolis et al. (2008; 2017) detail an ethnographic study examining student access and participation in computing learning across three demographically diverse high schools: an overcrowded urban high school, a math and science magnet school, and a well-funded school in an affluent neighborhood. The study revealed that systemic racism—which impacted learners’ access to course offerings, qualified teachers, and school resources, accompanied by educator belief systems about which learners belong in computing classrooms—perpetuated race and gender differences in participation that were reproduced across each of the school sites. Research in this area highlights the importance of examining equity in school settings in terms of access to computing courses, necessary resources, and qualified teachers; as well as examining equity in terms of the quality of learning environments for learners that are characterized by inclusion, encouragement, effective pedagogy, and culturally relevant and responsive curriculum.

Belief systems among educators play an important part in ensuring, or constricting, opportunities for learners. Educators’ biased beliefs about who belongs in CS and who might be interested in studying CS often are enacted in ways that reinforce and reify those ideas by guiding White and Asian boys toward—and Black and Latinx learners and girls away from—classroom learning experiences (Goode, Estrella, and Margolis, 2006; Margolis et al., 2017). One response, in this case aimed specifically at school counselors, comes out of the National Center for Women in Technology, which has developed a Counselors for Computing (C4C) program that provides immersive professional development and set of resources to encourage school counselors to understand and advocate for increased CS learning opportunities for learners at their schools (Hug and Krauss, 2016).

Inside high school CS classrooms, multiple features have been identified that signal and support an inclusive learning ecosystem for learners. As first noted in Chapter 2, classroom learning spaces that support collaboration

and avoid “geeky” stereotypical signifiers, such as posters or exclusionary discourse patterns, are important for creating a positive learning atmosphere for girls (Goode, Estrella, and Margolis, 2006; Master, Cheryan, and Meltzoff, 2016). When teachers connect computing curriculum to the lived experiences and values of learners (a tenet of culturally responsive teaching), there is strong student engagement, particularly among learners from minoritized groups (Madkins et al., 2019; Ryoo et al., 2013; 2019).

Further, though there is only nascent research, scholars point to the visual nature of programming languages, and also to the tactile nature of creating e-textiles, in supporting the computing learning for English language learners in CS classrooms (Jacob et al., 2018); however, simply relying upon the modality of the activity (i.e., visual and/or tactile) may make these activities inaccessible to some learners (because of impairments). In their study of learners learning computing in a bilingual middle school classroom, Vogel et al. (2019) note that the development of learners’ computational literacies are entwined with learners’ repertoire of other linguistic and discourse literacies. Their findings suggest that educators should not treat CS education as a fixed learning progression of concepts alongside “remediation” or “differentiation” for emergent bilinguals. Rather, they encourage educators to build upon the varied literacies learners bring to the classroom with potential computational literacies, for both bilingual and monolingual learners (Vogel et al., 2019).

Professional and personal authenticity in learning experiences for computing provide other lenses for understanding the problems of equity in computing. In particular, authenticity has traditionally been considered to be discipline-driven, with experiences designed to reflect the practices of the discipline. As illustrated in Chapter 2, some learners may have stereotypes about the culture of CS—including the kind of people, the work involved, and the values of the field—and the emphasis on the professional practices may steer learners from underrepresented groups from engaging in authentic computing experiences (Cheryan, Master, and Meltzoff, 2015). However, curriculum that leverages learners’ interests, identities, and backgrounds (personal authenticity) may encourage increased participation of women, learners of colors, and those with differences in perceived ability (Eglash et al., 2006; Goode, Johnson, and Sundstrom, 2020; Israel et al., 2015a; Ryoo et al., 2020).

PREPARING TEACHERS FOR K–12 COMPUTING CLASSROOMS

The previous section helped to identify spaces in K–12 education where authentic learning experiences in computing could be situated. However, a key piece of doing this successfully is providing teachers with opportunities to develop the necessary knowledge and skills. In fact, the expertise of

teachers is a key limiting factor in expanding computing in K–12 more generally, regardless of whether the learning opportunities are authentic in the way the committee has described. In this section we consider the knowledge and experience of the current cadre of computing teachers and describe professional development practices for supporting teachers of computing.

Teachers’ Knowledge and Experience in Computing

There are few direct measures of teachers’ knowledge of computing. Instead courses taken during preservice preparation, undergraduate degree, area of certification, and previous teaching experiences are all used as proxies for knowledge. In the NSSME+ there are also measures of teachers’ confidence in teaching computing.

Elementary and Middle School Teachers

In the United States, fewer than 1 in 4 elementary teachers reported having experience or just a “crash course” in computing before they began teaching computing to their learners. Not surprisingly, this lack of sufficient preparation can leave teachers apprehensive about their own knowledge and skills as they begin to teach computing to learners (Israel et al., 2015a; Rich, Yadav, and Schwarz, 2019). A study of elementary teachers demonstrated that those who participated in continuous professional development around computing and engineering had statistically significant greater confidence in computing after a year than their elementary teacher colleagues who did not have access to this preparation, highlighting the importance of professional development experiences (Rich et al., 2017).

High School Teachers

Scholarship on teacher knowledge in CS suggests that effective computing teachers are able to join together content, engaging pedagogy, knowledge of their learners’ identities and backgrounds, and understanding of the school context to support learners in meaningful learning opportunities (Goode and Ryoo, 2019). Yet a recent large-scale survey of STEM teachers (Banilower et al., 2018) indicates that the current cadre of high school CS teachers have variable degrees of experience, knowledge, and capacity in these areas.

Many CS teachers might have significant experience teaching high school but are new to teaching CS. Though nearly half of CS teachers have more than 10 years of experience teaching at the K–12 level, many are novice teachers of CS, with 35 percent of teachers having 0–2 years of experience and 28 percent of teachers having 3–5 years of experience teach-

ing the subject (Banilower et al., 2018). In addition to being new to teaching CS, CS teachers are also teaching outside of their primary areas and/or are teaching CS in addition to other subjects (CSTA, 2015; Yadav et al., 2016).

In terms of content knowledge, only 25 percent of high school computing teachers have degrees in CS. Still, most teachers have participated in CS college courses. In fact, 87 percent of high school teachers had completed at least one class in computing, and two out of three teachers reported completing two or more college courses related to CS. Additionally, 35 percent of responding high school CS teachers reported prior job experience in the field of computing before they became teachers. However, the recency of the courses or job experiences before teaching is unknown.

This experience with content-focused computing courses does not seem to translate to teachers’ sense of preparation in teaching CS. In fact, less than 50 percent of high school teachers feel confident in teaching any of the topics⁵ associated with high school computing courses, and compared with other STEM teachers, they generally feel less prepared to teach their subject-area content (Banilower et al., 2018).

In terms of pedagogical preparation, of the 84 percent of CS teachers who hold teaching certifications, 44 percent have a CS teacher certification, 34 percent in mathematics, 28 percent in business, 10 percent in engineering, and 9 percent in science (Banilower et al., 2018). Yet, the survey also revealed that fewer than half of high school CS teachers feel prepared to encourage learners or develop capacity in a number of ways, such as encouraging learners’ interests in computing (49%), encouraging participation of all learners (45%), developing learners’ awareness of STEM careers (36%), or incorporating learners’ cultural backgrounds into CS instruction (16%). Given how few states award primary teaching endorsements in CS (see Box 6-2), the majority of preparatory learning opportunities for computing teachers occur in professional development settings for in-service teachers, as will be discussed in further detail below.

Professional Development in Computing for In-Service Teachers

Because most teacher education programs do not offer computing methods courses (Yadav, Stephenson, and Hong, 2014), the primary place for teachers to learn about teaching computing takes place in curriculum-specific professional development sessions. Research on teacher preparation for teaching CS courses highlights the importance of sustained, long-term professional learning experiences that support the emerging content-related and pedagogical needs of teachers (Goode, Margolis, and Chapman, 2014;

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⁵ These topics include algorithms and programming, impacts of computing, computing systems, data and analysis, and networks and the Internet.

Menekse, 2015). This research for CS teachers aligns with earlier research about necessary length and duration of effective professional learning programs for STEM teachers (Loucks-Horsley et al., 2009).

Yet for most schools, professional development opportunities for CS teachers are not plentiful, with only 19 percent of high school teachers noting that they had access to local professional development opportunities in their school or district (see Table 6-5; Banilower et al., 2018). Instead, teachers took advantage of regional or national professional development opportunities and online opportunities to learn about computing education. When computing teachers did participate in professional workshops, they reported that the most common emphases related to understanding and doing CS: deepening their CS content knowledge, including programming (70%); learning how to use programming activities that require a computer (64%); and deepening understanding of how CS is done (63%). Half of CS teachers’ professional development has had a substantial focus on implementing the CS curricular materials to be used in their classroom. But only about a quarter of high school computing teachers have participated in professional learning that addresses meeting the needs of learners who are underrepresented based on gender, race, ethnicity, or perceived ability or incorporating learners’ cultural backgrounds into CS instruction, despite the known diversity issues in computing education (Banilower et al., 2018). Moreover, there is a lack of professional development that specifically relates to CS pedagogical content knowledge (Yadav and Berges, 2019; Yadav et al., 2016).

In another professional learning structure, instructional coaches who work with teachers within the context of their own classrooms have been shown to be particularly effective in supporting the needs of novice CS teachers as they begin to teach new high school courses in schools (Dettori et al., 2018; Margolis, Ryoo, and Goode, 2017). In fact, in high schools that offer CS, about one in five offer instructional coaches to CS teachers (Banilower et al., 2018).

The dynamic nature of computing can also provide ongoing opportunities for more seasoned computing educators to augment their knowledge and learn to incorporate new technologies. Promising approaches have been demonstrated to recharge (as self-reported by teachers as a renewal in excitement through reflection) the teaching practices of experienced teachers in CS classrooms (Nakajima and Goode, 2019) as they learn to incorporate e-textiles in their classrooms.

In addition to individual professional development around content, pedagogy, and engaging diverse groups of learners, teachers also report deeply valuing their membership in sustained face-to-face and online CS teacher learning communities as a way of learning from peers and breaking the school-level isolation they experience at their schools as the sole com-

TABLE 6-5 Computer Science-Focused PD Activities Offered in the Past 3 Years

NOTE: PD = professional development.

SOURCE: Banilower et al. (2018).

puting teacher (Goode, Johnson, and Sundstrom, 2020; Ni, 2011; Ryoo, Goode, and Margolis, 2015).

SUMMARY

Formal educational experiences are important settings for engaging learners in authentic computing experiences that have the potential to influence interest and competencies for computing. But, as for any context, the conditions have to be right. Schools have the opportunity to provide experiences that may allow for sustained engagement, which is important for developing learners’ individual interests in computing. However, just as with out-of-school-time settings, formal educational environments may not be able to provide experiences due to lack of resources and adequate teacher preparation, or learners may find that the options are not engaging. Moreover, the opportunities in formal educational context are inequitably

distributed. Not only are there more opportunities available in high school as compared to middle and elementary schools, but also large schools, low-poverty schools, and suburban/urban schools are more likely to offer AP CS courses (Banilower et al., 2018). Additionally, women and learners of color continue to be underrepresented in AP CS courses.

Overall, this chapter has considered how professionally and personally authentic experiences with computing have been offered in United States schools across K–12 settings. The review highlighted that although course offerings are variable and inequitably distributed across schools, there are also promising practices and approaches that support more foundational approaches to bring computing education to all learners.