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Project, District and Teacher Levels: Insights from Professional Learning in a CS RPP Collaboration

Published: 05 March 2021 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents an experience report from an NSF-funded researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) project. Based on a collaboration among two public research universities and three urban school districts in the Northeast USA, the goal of the project is to establish an institutionalized middle school computer science curriculum in the districts. The CS curriculum incorporates digital literacy skills as an integral aspect of learning computer science, and is based on students developing mobile apps that provide social and community good. Here, we share our professional learning process during the project's first year, which had been developed iteratively and dynamically adjusted to a remote format in response to exigencies of Spring 2020. The paper includes analysis of three data sets from teacher-participants: (1) their questions about the nature of the project, which we categorized into three levels: project, district and teacher levels. These questions bridge the visions and knowledge among different groups of the project partners; (2) analysis of semi-structured interview conversations with more than half of the teacher-participants; and (3) teacher survey responses. Our findings include two recommendations: that RPP projects elicit teacher questions to illuminate the three levels identified, and use strategies that engage teachers in designing a professional learning process for teaching computer science.

References

[1]
Brasiel, S. & Ruby, A. (2020, August 17). National Center for Educational Research. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncer/projects/program.asp?ProgID=81.
[2]
Coburn, C. E., & Penuel, W. R. (2016). Research-Practice Partnerships in Education: Outcomes, Dynamics, and Open Questions. Educational Researcher, 45(1), 48--54.
[3]
Gifford, B. R. (1986). The Evolution of the School-university Partnership for Educational Renewal. Education and Urban Society, 19(1), 77--106.
[4]
Lee, J., Swan, K., Grant, S. G., Rothstein, D., & Santana, L. (2015). Questions, Frameworks, and Classrooms. C3 Briefs.
[5]
LeMahieu, P.G., Nordstrum, L.E., Potvin, A.S. (2017). Design-based Implementation Research, Quality Assurance in Education, 25 (1), 26--42.
[6]
Martin, F. & Ni, L. (2017). Middle School Pathways in Computer Science, chapter in Massachusetts K-12 Computer Science Curriculum Guide, Stanton, J. and Harunani, F., eds. EDC, Waltham, MA. Distributed at www.edc.org/massachusetts-k-12-computer-science-curriculum-guide.
[7]
Ni, L., & Martin, F. (2017). Creating Socially Relevant Mobile Apps: Infusing Computing into Middle School Curricula in Two School Districts. Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning. Philadelphia, PA: International Society of the Learning Sciences.
[8]
NSF (2017). Computer Science for All (CS for All: RPP) Researcher Practitioner Partnerships. Retrieved from https://nsf.gov/pubs/2017/nsf17525/nsf17525.htm.
[9]
Santo, R., Vogel, S., & Ching, D. (2019). CS for What? Diverse Visions of Computer Science Education in Practice. New York, NY: CSforALL.

Cited By

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  • (2024)Creating Apps for Community and Social Good: Preliminary Learning Outcomes from a Middle School Computer Science CurriculumACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/365867424:3(1-26)Online publication date: 24-May-2024
  • (2024)A Longitudinal Case Study of Middle School Teachers' Concept Development of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Teaching Computer ScienceProceedings of the 2024 on RESPECT Annual Conference10.1145/3653666.3656069(265-269)Online publication date: 16-May-2024
  • (2023)Equipping Middle School Teachers with Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Teaching Computer Science Through Professional LearningProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 210.1145/3568812.3603464(116-119)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
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  1. Project, District and Teacher Levels: Insights from Professional Learning in a CS RPP Collaboration

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    SIGCSE '21: Proceedings of the 52nd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education
    March 2021
    1454 pages
    ISBN:9781450380621
    DOI:10.1145/3408877
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 05 March 2021

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    Author Tags

    1. community
    2. computer science
    3. confidence
    4. cs rpp
    5. digital literacy
    6. middle school
    7. teachers

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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2024)Creating Apps for Community and Social Good: Preliminary Learning Outcomes from a Middle School Computer Science CurriculumACM Transactions on Computing Education10.1145/365867424:3(1-26)Online publication date: 24-May-2024
    • (2024)A Longitudinal Case Study of Middle School Teachers' Concept Development of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Teaching Computer ScienceProceedings of the 2024 on RESPECT Annual Conference10.1145/3653666.3656069(265-269)Online publication date: 16-May-2024
    • (2023)Equipping Middle School Teachers with Culturally Responsive Pedagogy in Teaching Computer Science Through Professional LearningProceedings of the 2023 ACM Conference on International Computing Education Research - Volume 210.1145/3568812.3603464(116-119)Online publication date: 7-Aug-2023
    • (2023)micro-PDProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3545947.3576319(1375-1375)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2023
    • (2023)Creating Apps for Community and Social GoodProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569781(73-79)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
    • (2022)Supporting Teacher Professional Learning and Curriculum Implementation Through Collaborative Curriculum DesignProceedings of the 53rd ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 210.1145/3478432.3499118(1166-1166)Online publication date: 3-Mar-2022
    • (2022)Teachers as Curriculum Co-designers: Supporting Professional Learning and Curriculum Implementation in a CSforAll RPP Project2022 Conference on Research in Equitable and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology (RESPECT)10.1109/RESPECT55273.2022.00010(1-8)Online publication date: 23-May-2022

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