8: Putting computing into schools

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.

Weekly update

This video covers logistics (changes to the schedule, the new Week 13 topic, and the teaching statement assignment), gives an overview of the last twenty years of efforts to put computer science into schools, and then introduces this week's readings.

Summary

• Schedule changes. Weeks 9 and 10 have moved forward one week, and the fieldnotes presentations (originally Week 8) have moved to Week 10, so fieldnotes are now due a couple of weeks later. Since this week's readings changed late, decide with your group how to use this week's meeting: discuss the readings, return to the CS autobiographies or earlier topics, or set your own agenda. Please keep sending discussion reports.
• Week 13: Democracy and computing. The title plays on Dewey's Democracy and Education: if our schools are not working, our democracy is not working. Engagement with computing and AI is an essential part of education that should invite young people into democratic participation during their schooling, not just prepare them for it. Related questions include digital civics, the relationship between reading and democratic participation, and whether we are moving into a post-literate society. Suggestions are welcome, especially with the midterm elections approaching.
• Teaching statement. The final assignment is flexible and should have a practical purpose for you while drawing on ideas from across the course. It could be a statement of who you are as a teacher and what you value (useful for job applications), a proposal for change in a school (such as starting a CS department or a new course), or a design proposal for new media supporting computational literacies. Reach out if you would like to talk through ideas.
• Putting computing into schools. Schools are resistant to change, and the theoretical questions from the first two units are tightly intertwined with practical ones like bell schedules, teacher preparation, and standards. Twenty years of work by CSTA, ISTE, the K-12 CS Framework, and the CS for All movement built standards and state alliances. New York's Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards are required but unenforced, so well-resourced schools tend to offer computer science while underfunded schools do not, widening the equity gap.
• Proctor and Blikstein (2019). A three-year study of a district committee designing K-12 computer science education, which became divisive and fell apart. Theoretical questions of what CS is, what it is for, and who it is for surfaced in community-specific ways, so design processes need to be community-specific rather than expert-driven. The stereotypes that pervade CS learning environments also excluded people from the design process itself.
• Ryoo et al. (2020). How students use computer science classes to disrupt and resist marginalization in schools.
• Research Lab High School proposal. A proposal from a committee working to bring Buffalo Public Schools and UB together as democratic anchor institutions, through a high school jointly run by both, with computing as an interdisciplinary nexus connecting subjects and students' participation in university research. It is also a model of what a teaching statement could be. A current BPS proposal to close schools, including the partner school, leaves its future uncertain.

Readings

Proctor, C., Bigman, M., & Blikstein, P. (2019). Defining and designing computer science education in a K12 public school district. Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (pp. 314–320). Association for Computing Machinery. doi:10.1145/3287324.3287440

Ryoo, J. J., Tanksley, T., Estrada, C., & Margolis, J. (2020 , July). Take space, make space: how students use computer science to disrupt and resist marginalization in schools. Computer Science Education, 30(3), 337–361. doi:10.1080/08993408.2020.1805284

Research Lab High School. A proposal for a UB+BPS university-assisted community school.