Hi DelLene,

The most profound part of this project was seeing students build their computer science identities and how leveraging their out of school resources contributed to their CS learning. Students took their projects home and practiced computer science with their immediate families, extended families, peers, and community. Their parents also enrolled them in extra curricular opportunities, which helped level the playing field with students who already have access to these opportunities. Students also fund the ability to express themselves and their ideas to be really empowering, and thereby became active shapers of the discipline.

Hi Allison,

In order to better address the gender gap in computer science, we examined the gender similarities and differences in regard to how children feel about computer science, how they approach it, and how they connect with it.  Semi-structured interviews of 18 student participants provided us with insight into their experiences with learning computer science. Our results indicate that positive feelings about computer science did not vary by gender. A variance was observed, however, in regard to self efficacy and identification with the discipline, with the girls displaying lower confidence and connection to computer science. Social influence and the early construction of gender norms shape how girls perceive both themselves and computer science. The observation of an equal level of interest and enjoyment found in programming, however, highlights the importance of early intervention programs that leverage the strengths and cater to the needs of the participating girls.

Hi DeLene! This is a great question. The trends in the schools overall are slightly different than the trends in our program. This year we have 11 teachers, and all are women. But, we've had teachers who are men in the past, though always a minority. It's an interesting situation to be in since it's the opposite of computer science! I think we can definitely dig more into this question in future research. Thanks!

We have provided a summer PD for four years to introduce teachers to Scratch and to the curriculum. In the past, we have held face-to-face, one-week intensive PDs. Last summer, we held a virtual PD over 2 weeks and met 6 days for 90 minutes and we build our community with the Google Classroom and Slack environments. This year, we will create asynchronous 3-5 minute videos to cover essential professional development information and will schedule time for small groups to meet in real time to discuss projects that are being worked on. Myriam, perhaps you were asking about the content of the PDs, not the logistics, but it is interesting to look at various methods of providing support for elementary school classroom teachers who are new to Scratch and CT instruction. 

We also meet with teachers once a month to create a community of support as implementation experiences and questions are shared. 

Thank you, Dana. Your PD is comprehensive. Offering both face-to-face  and virtual asynchronous opportunities sounds great. While doing both, we had resisted the online, yet found that there were many affordances of the asynchronous online PD. For one, they were able to watch the videos we shared again and again (as opposed to one time in f2f); we also 'heard' from many more in the discussion forums than we were able to hear in f2f. I imagine that for teachers new to Scratch and CT instruction, being able to see and engage repeatedly online and also have the community of support, are great.

Hi, 

In our project, the Maker Partnership, we mostly held f2f PD, but also had videos and lessons posted to an online portal. The teachers loved having access to the videos for their own learning, as well as for the students. We had hoped that they would use the online portal to share more practices and have discussions with each other, but that didn't happen much. Dana and Myriam, did either of your projects find successful strategies to foster that type of interaction?

Hi Cheri - We created a Slack line last summer as a means for teachers to communicate with each other. Slack is a communication platform that can be viewed as an app or on a website and is a common way for some companies to communicate in teams; teachers did not seem interested in spending time in chats or discussion boards about the curriculum after the summer PD.  Teachers did interact, respond, and ask questions on Slack during the PD, however, once school began, the Slack channel went silent. We meet with our teachers each month to share practices and discuss issues. That has been most successful for us. As we scale and the number of teachers teaching the curriculum increases, though, we will need to think of a different solution. For sure an FAQ page would be helpful, and perhaps a well-organized discussion board? Thanks for the question, Cheri.

Hi Shad! You have brought up one of the most prevalent curriculum tensions that I have found as I observe teachers implementing the curriculum. Some stick strictly to the 50-minute lessons, in which student projects all strongly resemble each other as they do not have much time to look around, edit sprites and backgrounds and experiment. Other teachers stretch the lessons, and, in turn, may not finish the curriculum by the end of the year, but projects are much more diverse and reflective of student individuality and creativity.  So, to answer your question, if teachers have the flexibility to provide students with extra tinker time to build their projects and to finish the curriculum, there is balance.  

Hi Taryn! Thanks for your comments! We don't currently track them into 5th grade or beyond. But! We are currently planning on expanding the project and will be piloting the next stage of this curriculum in 5th grade next year. We're also hoping to expand the program to K-3, to really make it "elementary" computing for all. This will help us track the progression of our students over time, but I think tracking their progress into middle school and beyond will be really interesting in the coming years, too! I'll see what we can do for that :)

Hi Jessica! I read about the BRBytes project that you are working on and, similar to your 7-12 curriculum, we also face the challenge of creating effective CS/CT curriculum for teachers who do not have experience with computer science and computational thinking. One recommendation is for you to look at our curriculum and to use it and/or adapt it to meet your needs! :) As the core of our curriculum is the Creative Computing curriculum from MIT, it teaches important CT concepts. Our partners at the Canon Lab at the U of Chicago have developed strong scaffolding to support student understanding of the concepts. Our contribution at UC Irvine is to find ways to make the curriculum easier for teachers to teach and to make the content more accessible and engaging for multi-lingual students. Currently we are developing a 5th grade curriculum that will hopefully be ready to use next summer. As far as k-2 curriculum, Marina Bers has developed and shared accessible and straight-forward curriculum for Scratch Jr.  Let's keep in touch!

Hi Josie! Super interesting question! So we give all students pre- and post- tests in computational thinking knowledge and computer science identity and attitudes, and we interview some students pre- and post- in those areas as well. From these data sources, we did see a significant increase in their positive perception of CS (such as with increased agreement with statements like, "I think I could be a good computer scientist one day.") We've recently changed our data collection tools, including using the Elementary School Coding Attitude Survey from Mason & Rich 2020 so we look forward to seeing how looking at identity and attitudes through this different lens will give us different perspectives of how the students are changing over time! I'll let some of my teammates chime in about what they've seen in their interviews, too.

This sounds very interesting - it sems like shifting student attitudes about who can do CS may be another positive outcome of your program.  Thanks for sharing!

Thank you Dana!  

Hi Chloe! Thanks for your comments and question! Currently, the curriculum is only for 4th grade students. However, we're piloting a 5th grade curriculum in the fall and have plans to work on a K-2 curriculum starting the following year. We want to build up and on students' understanding of computer science and computational thinking in a sustainable way; we think this is one of the best ways to support and encourage our students long term!

Hi Maia! Great question! I think this has changed somewhat between in-person classes and virtual learning. When students were in the classroom, our lessons were the time that they got to be on the computer! It was fun and exciting! Now, with virtual learning and being on the computer all the time for school, our lesson is just another thing to do on the computer. But, beyond those structural elements, our team has worked to build the curriculum to appeal to students in multiple ways. We allow the students creativity in their projects, with limitless opportunities to personalize and go beyond what is required. We provide role models that look like our students and topics that might be familiar to many of them, including a project on Dia de los Muertos. And, of course, there's always that sense of "I made this!" which draws them in and makes them want to make more fun things on Scratch :) As for areas of development, we're currently gathering data with our school district partners to analyze what effect this might have on standardized math or English scores. The pandemic has definitely pushed those analyses back, but we're certainly interested in seeing what we find when we dig into that data!