Integrating & Implementing K-12 Computing Pathways across Six School Districts-Challenges & Opportunities

This SIGCSE poster presents a landscape study of six school districts across six different states in terms of their individual teachers' and administrators' capacity to integrate and implement computational thinking (CT) into their own schools and classrooms. This landscape evaluation represents the baseline start of a wider, four-year national study around district capacity to collaboratively develop consistent and comprehensive K-12 computing pathways for their students and schools. The early landscape work we present here not only represents a starting point for comparing district educators' comprehension of CT (and computer science [CS]), but also acts as an early indicator as to what extent K-12 computing is a school and district-based priority, and to what degree teachers feel they have the capacity to meaningfully implement it. This poster relies on two data sources in a mixed-methods design: Districtwide surveys of teachers and administrators on their familiarity and prioritization of CT, coupled with subsequent hour-long focus group discussions with educators to expand upon their respective district landscape survey responses. Results point to all districts perceiving the broad applicability of CT as a skill set and its integrative potential in a range of subjects. Yet in terms of classroom implementation, teachers find such CT integration decidedly less clear, recognizing it to be a priority but also reporting as less confident about creating their own curricular materials, where CT situates with their district's ongoing initiatives, and where they can find curricular resources and tools specific to their own areas of curricular integration.