This full research to practice paper reports on early perspectives from K-12 leaders regarding AI use in schools. With the advent of generative AI applications, K-12 leaders have a key role in providing (or precluding) access to students and teachers' uses of AI tools - as superintendents, principals and other district and school-level administrators will continue to be making (or at the very least informing) decisions about what AI tools will be made available as well as policies governing their use. These decisions will be informed by what K-12 leaders perceive are the potential risks and benefits of AI - as a key charge for K-12 leaders considering any innovation is to evaluate its potential to support student learning while reducing potentially harmful consequences. It is important to understand these current perceptions, especially for anyone designing applications of AI for K-12 education. While previous work has reported on teachers' views of AI, the perspectives of K-12 leaders, who serve as thought-leaders and decision makers, remain largely unexplored. U sing a semi-structured interview protocol, in late 2023, researchers interviewed 36 K-12 leaders across 23 districts in western New York state in order to gather their early perspectives regarding AI and to answer the research question: How do K-12 leaders perceive the risks and opportunities associated with using artificial intelligence in their school environments? Participants included superintendents, principals and various district and school-level administrators as well as some teacher leaders. These K-12 leaders articulated risks that can be categorized by four themes: (a) concerns regarding the ethical use of AI by both students and teachers (including cheating), (b) concerns around privacy and cybersecurity, (c) concerns around the accuracy or legitimacy of the output from AI systems and (d) concerns about replacing people/jobs. At the same time, these K-12 leaders recognized several important opportunities presented by AI, which should also be taken into consideration when making decisions, including (a) preparing students for the future, (b) improving potential for learning and instructional development and (c) supporting K-12 educators. Collectively, these risks and opportunities can be characterized with the idea that K-12 leaders were aware of the need to balance the risks in order to not “sink the boat” while also using care to not delay actions and potentially “miss the boat,” and which represents a more nuanced view of risk, consistent with what has been identified in the entrepreneurship literature. This work has implications for deliberate and informed decision-making regarding policies for and use of AI in the K-12 domain, and the supports needed for their adoption and effective use. The findings also provide valuable insights for developers of domain specific AI systems for K-12 schools. As computer scientists and engineers continue to train models, develop and select algorithms to serve schools, learners and educators, considering the risks and opportunities articulated by K-12 thought leaders and decision makers can support their work in advancing the technologies and potentially improving adoption.

This innovative practice full paper examines mindset understandings of three cohorts of first-year student scholars in a College of Computing at a private technical Carnegie-classified Doctoral University in the northeastern United States. Grounded in theories of intelligence, a growth mindset posits that intelligence and skills can be developed through continued practice and learning, while a fixed mindset situates one with the skills they have at birth, never to evolve or grow. Thirty-two undergraduate students across three years (10 students in year one, cohort one; 10 students in year two, cohort two; and 12 students in year three, cohort three) participated in a holistic growth mindset program that included three pillars: (a) faculty-student mentoring infused with growth mindset, (b) growth-mindset augmentations to the introductory programming course and (c) a growth mindset-scholar seminar - a series of meetings where each cohort met as a group to discuss and practice activating a growth mindset. Previous work with students has focused on more limited growth mindset interventions rather than a holistic approach. Prior to the scholars arriving on campus, the faculty involved in each of the pillars were part of a Community of Practice to learn about and activate their own growth mindset. At the end of their first semester in the project, each of the student cohorts participated in a focus group to learn about their understanding and application of growth and fixed mindset. We report findings from the student scholar data after one semester of participating in the three programmatic pillars in the context of growth mindset: mentoring, programming instruction, and the scholar seminar. Summary findings from the student perspectives are described including the use of illustrative quotes, in the students' own words, serving as a powerful reminder of the importance of growth mindset and relationship building. This has implications for addressing mindset in the future by considering how the innovative practice of embedding a growth mindset holistically into mentoring, instruction and a student seminar can provide support for students that standalone interventions cannot.

A growth mindset posits that our skills and intelligence are malleable, or that, with practice and perseverance, our skills can be developed. Challenges are considered useful in learning and moving forward toward a goal. This lies in contrast with a fixed mindset where challenges are viewed as roadblocks and insurmountable events, stifling our progress. With a fixed mindset, skills and intelligence are considered to be fixed, or set at birth, with little or no chance for development. While a growth mindset is important for each of us in persevering through our own work, it is also critical for enabling an environment where students are able to succeed because they are able to see themselves succeeding through challenges and struggles. In this session, we will discuss some of the primary aspects of each mindset, identify examples of both in our own language and others' language, and practice shifting ourselves toward a growth mindset with a goal of supporting student success both in and outside of the classroom.

Both growth mindset and mentoring have been recognized as contributing toward student success. Grounded in theories of intelligence, a growth mindset asserts that intelligence is malleable and failures and struggles contribute to developing our skills and abilities, serving as stepping stones toward success. This contrasts with a fixed mindset where intelligence and abilities are considered to be set at birth, limiting success as challenges and hurdles become insurmountable experiences. While growth mindset has been addressed in the context of student and faculty activities in the classroom, this work is novel in that it examines the purposeful integration of growth mindset into faculty mentoring for computing students at the post-secondary level. In this innovative practice paper, we describe the growth mindset and mentoring experiences that faculty members participated in throughout the 2021 calendar year as well as how they prepared for the experience by developing and embracing their own growth mindset. Using qualitative data from semi-structured interviews, we share faculty members' perspectives on the novel endeavor of mentoring computing student scholars utilizing a growth mindset. Faculty mentors embraced the growth mindset mentoring and also revealed a variety of challenges in applying growth mindset to mentoring, along with how they tailored their growth mindset approaches throughout the semesters. Particular challenges centered around issues of race and other marginalized positions of the students. Faculty also described how the growth mindset mentoring experience positively shaped their work outside of the mentoring relationship, specifically in the classroom and other educational situations in addition to their family lives. As such, positive impacts of the interventions, which included the mentoring preparation, structure and implementation, may be seen beyond the set of student scholars who were being mentored. In the true spirit of embracing a growth mindset and continuously improving and building our own skillsets, both areas of success and areas for improvement are considered, particularly around using growth mindset mentoring to address issues students face regarding their race and marginalized positions. This work has implications for an overarching positive impact of establishing growth mindset mentoring ecosystems that may extend to a broader academic environment including many different programs as well as all faculty who impact and support (e.g. during instruction, office hours) a diverse student population.

This Innovative Practice Full Paper chronicles and reports on the innovative use of a Growth Mindset Faculty Community of Practice (GM-FCoP) to promote student success in a college of computing at a large private university in the northeast United States. Faculty communities of practice bring together faculty as a peer group to engage in learning about a specific topic. The experience is typically a structured approach where members with varying levels of knowledge and expertise about a topic provide encouragement and support to each other as they develop their knowledge and collaboratively generate shared resources. The community members in this GM-FCoP were experienced faculty specializing in computer programming, networking, web technologies, and computing career services, gathering to learn about embracing and developing a growth mindset to apply and promote in the courses they teach and in their interactions with computing students.Situated in theories of intelligence, growth mindset posits that intelligence is malleable and can be developed over time. A growth mindset views failures as a springboard for future success. This contrasts with a fixed mindset that views intelligence and talent as fixed, or in other words, if you are not good at something you will never be good at it. This encourages the notion that talent alone is responsible for success. While many faculty, including computing faculty, may innately and informally embrace and encourage growth mindset approaches in their classrooms and interactions with students, the integration of growth mindset approaches is not broadly recognized or mindfully applied in day-to-day computing education curriculum. As such, the GM-FCoP provided an innovative opportunity to develop faculty understandings of growth and fixed mindset with a goal of planning for more intentional growth mindset interactions with students. Using communities of practice as a framework for examination, this paper details the innovative practice of a semester-long GM-FCoP, including the planning of weekly meetings and activities. Lessons learned from initial evaluative reporting alongside faculty leadership reflections are examined with an eye toward presenting opportunities for faculty who may also be looking to instill a growth mindset in colleagues and students. This has potential implications for both faculty and student success in numerous domains.

According to the 2016 National Association of Colleges and Employers survey, employers rated ability to work on a team as one of the most sought out attributes in hiring employees. As such, it is incumbent on educators to consider how computing students are being prepared to engage in the workforce as effective team members. Within computing curriculum, teamwork is commonly aligned with collaborative learning. While many studies have examined how students learn in a collaborative environment, little research has been conducted on the faculty practices around collaborative learning in computing education. This paper reports on the findings from an exploratory qualitative case study that examined the faculty perspectives and instructional approaches to collaborative learning in first-year and second-year post-secondary computing education. Findings indicated that collaborative learning was limited to informal instructor-student classroom interactions and unstructured student group work. Furthermore, faculty emphasized building individual student skillsets over collaborative learning or teamwork skills in the computing domain. This suggests that there is space for faculty development around pedagogical knowledge, training and curriculum development specifically related to collaborative learning in computing education. Future research should extend to examine instructional approaches that foster and inform the development of collaborative learning, particularly in the scope of fostering diverse and inclusive computing environments.

The underrepresentation of women faculty in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) has been studied for several decades. Many programs have been developed with a bottom-up approach toward addressing this underrepresentation. While these bottom-up approaches are an important component in addressing the underrepresentation, the question arises as to their sufficiency for transforming an institution to address the issue. Another method considers the combined use of a bottom-up and a top-down approach in looking toward the goal of institutional transformation by removing barriers to resources that support career success and creating new interventions and resources. This paper reports on the progress of programming and activities that are underway during the first two years of an institutional transformation project (NSF ADVANCE 1209115) at a large-private technical university that incorporates this combined approach. The transformation is outlined using a multi-frame organizational analysis approach from Bolman and Deal, which integrates several aspects of organizational theory, including structural, human resources, political and symbolic perspectives. Data used to inform the top-down and bottom-up programming and activities is presented, as well as a discussion of milestones, accomplishments and lessons learned in the context of the overarching project goals and the framework posed by Bolman and Deal's lenses.