We open the course with an overview of the major themes of the course. We examine several case studies of how computers currently shape learning and schooling. We will conclude by reflecting on how our discussion of computers and schooling challenges our assumptions (e.g. where is a school? what are its boundaries?) and surfaces essential questions about education.

Our schools are organized around standards and learning objectives: if we are going to teach computing, we need to explain what it is, and what makes it different from other things we are teaching.

Building on Week 2, Week 3 focuses on the recent turn toward computational literacies as a framework for thinking about how and why we might teach computing. We will use the critical computational literacies framework to interpret several current K-12 CS education initiatives.

We will draw parallels between the disciplinary conversation within English/Language Arts and current debates within K-12 CS education in order to center questions of inclusion, representation, and power. We will identify several specific senses of "critical" education and make connections between the readings and our own experiences as students and teachers.

For Benjamin (2019), please read the introduction (pp. 1-48).

Week 5 introduces the second major theme of the course, identity. We will review several ways in which the construct of "identity" is used in educational research. This week we will consider a diverse array of computer-mediated cultures and identities, including your own.

CS Autobiography due.

Whereas Week 5 considered the ways in which computer science intersects broader identity categories in producing subject positions, Week 6 considers computing as a medium for literacy and identity practices. We will consider how computing mediates literacy practices at scales ranging from individual cognition to social and cultural processes.

Disciplinary identities are one way of thinking about learning in terms of identity. This week we focus on disciplinary identities within formal learning environments such as K-12 classrooms.

Student presentations of fieldnotes and analyses of communities of computational literacy practice.

Fieldnotes due.

Now that we have spent some time thinking about literacy and identity, it is clear that the question of what K12 computing education ought to be involves much more than content knowledge. In pursuit of this question we turn to the third theme of the course, schooling. This week we examine several efforts to integrate computing education into schools, and the roles they envision schools playing within society. This is an opportunity to introduce the summative assessment of the class, the teaching statement.

This week we zoom out.

This week we take up the final theme of the course, AI. We will explore how AI is conceptualized from within computing education, and how AI education might learn from the successes and failures of CS education.

How do the arguments for moving from computational thinking to computational literacies map onto AI?

Draft teaching statement due.

Based on student interest.

No class this week -- Thanksgiving break.

We will conclude the class by sharing our teaching statements and intentions for our future work.

Teaching statement due.