Research has shown that factors such as teaching confidence and a sense of belonging influence an educator's classroom practice and motivation to remain in the profession. Although professional learning programs focused on CS content and pedagogy abound, opportunities to develop these affective components are often scarce for K-12 teachers. This is particularly true for those who are the sole CS educators at their school or are thrust into CS teaching with minimal preparation. To address this gap in support, we developed a peer mentoring program for high school teachers, featuring one-on-one mentoring focused on goals aligned with the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) Standards for CS Teachers, a monthly community of practice for mentors to enhance their mentoring skills to better support their mentees, and numerous opportunities for community building among all participants. Drawing on four years of experience partnering with three CS teacher communities and analyzing evidence of growth from survey and interview data, we illustrate how we designed a program that fosters the professional development of both mentors and mentees, while incorporating a focus on equitable CS teaching. As more stakeholders create programs to support in-service and pre-service teachers transitioning to CS education, the insights shared in this experience report can provide guidance on developing initiatives that holistically support educators and contribute to a more sustained and well-prepared K-12 CS teaching workforce.

While national initiatives such as CS10K have expanded efforts to prepare high school computer science (CS) teachers, many educators report limited opportunities to engage in sustained professional learning that emphasizes collaboration, mentoring, and instructional development. In response to this persistent gap, our team developed MENTORS in CS, an equity-focused peer mentoring program designed to support high school teachers within their first three years of teaching CS. Over five years, the program has reached more than 150 educators across the U.S., with participants reporting increased teaching confidence, commitment to CS education, and a stronger sense of professional belonging. This tutorial will introduce participants to the structure, practices, and materials that underpin MENTORS in CS, with the goal of supporting attendees in designing or enhancing their own mentoring initiatives. Participants will engage in structured activities to: (1) analyze sociocultural and educational data to inform program design for specific teacher communities; (2) explore mentoring-focused community of practice activities that promote equity and pedagogical growth; and (3) review and apply tools that support goal setting aligned with the CSTA Standards for CS Teachers. The session will also include brief framing presentations, opportunities for peer exchange, and access to an implementation guidebook. This tutorial is intended for teacher educators, university faculty, and leaders of K–12 CS professional learning communities. Attendees will leave with practical strategies, adaptable resources, and a clearer understanding of how peer mentoring can contribute to a more supported, confident, and sustained CS teaching workforce.

Partnerships between researchers and practitioners are becoming increasingly commonplace in computer science education research. Practitioners can range from K-12 teachers and administrators to community partners (e.g., museums or out of school organizations). Computer scientists and education researchers may also partner to lead research efforts. Developing a successful partnership ensures that the research will be of benefit to both the researchers and the practitioners, however, building strong collaborations that span communities takes time and effort. In this session, we invite participants to explore and discuss how to establish research practice partnerships (RPPs) and build the trust and relationships necessary for a successful partnership. Participants who are new to RPPs will develop an understanding of what they are and how to start one. For participants who are experienced with these types of partnerships, they will have an opportunity to discuss common challenges and strategies for addressing them.

Integrating computational thinking (CT) into early K-12 education is increasingly recognized as essential for preparing students to navigate a technology-driven world. Digital storytelling, with its capacity to combine narrative expression with programming, offers a promising interdisciplinary strategy for promoting CT. This experience report presents a narrative-centered learning environment that integrates digital storytelling, block-based programming, and hands-on maker activities to foster CT and interdisciplinary learning in upper elementary classrooms. Grounded in a problem-based storyline, the environment engages students in solving real-world-inspired challenges through physical science experimentation and interactive narrative creation. We describe a multi-week classroom implementation with fourth- and fifth-grade students and analyze survey responses and programming artifacts from 41 participants to explore how CT concepts and practices, including sequencing, conditionals, and debugging, emerged in their work. While students demonstrated statistically significant gains in CT, they also encountered challenges related to narrative coherence, science alignment, and conditional logic. We reflect on what did and did not work, offering design insights for educators and designers adopting interdisciplinary, story-driven approaches to computing education.

Motivation. Teachers can play a role in disrupting social inequities that are reflected in education, such as racial disparities in who succeeds in CS. Professional learning addressing inequities causes teachers to confront difficult topics, including how their own identities impact these problems. Understanding the differing ways teachers’ identities surface can provide insights into designing better supports for their professional learning.

Computing education through informal (out-of-school-time) programs provide a pathway for students of all ages to learn introductory programming and enter computing careers. Many of these programs explicitly aim to broaden participation in computing careers by recruiting and meeting the needs of students from historically underrepresented groups in computer science (CS).

There is a growing need for 21st-century workers to be digitally literate and to possess computational thinking and collaborative problem-solving skills. Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) focused on computational thinking can guide students toward the co-development of these skills. In this work, we present our approach to integrating virtual and physical learning modalities into InfuseCS, a CSCL environment. InfuseCS uses problem-based learning scenarios to situate upper elementary school students (ages 8 to 11) in a CSCL setting to foster their computational thinking and science knowledge construction as they collaborate to create digital narratives.

The CS education community has over the years recognized the importance of data science by including it in the seminal K-12 CS Framework. The move is prompted by research that shows data science is a great tool to broaden participation in CS because it offers students an opportunity to apply their computing knowledge to socially relevant problems. Broadening participation, particularly among underrepresented students, is critical to the future health and stability of the field. However, data science is still a relatively new in the context of K-12 schools and few CS teachers are pedagogically trained in data science. In order to test whether or not data science can be a tool to increase student representation in CS and help schools implement more data science curriculum, our project partnered with a local school district to modify an existing data science unit. This work explores the process of how our research practice partnership tackled the development of the new data science unit.

As the number of secondary CS teachers increases to meet the burgeoning course offerings in the U.S., teachers new to the discipline need additional supports beyond one-time workshops focused on particular curricula. To address this need, we implemented a year-long, equity-focused peer mentoring program with twenty-six teachers across one state. Participants met twice monthly to identify and work towards three goals related to the CSTA Standards for CS Teachers. Pilot data suggest that mentees increased in their teaching confidence but needed additional support to apply their learnings in their classrooms. We also identified several ways that our application process hampered our broadening participation goals by making it difficult for teachers working with rural, minoritized or low-income students to participate. In this poster, we will share lessons learned from our pilot and emerging findings from our second year of implementation.

Digital storytelling, which combines traditional storytelling with digital tools, has seen growing popularity as a means of creating motivating problem-solving activities in K-12 education. Though an attractive potential solution to integrating language arts skills across topic areas such as computational thinking and science, better understanding of how to structure and support these activities is needed to increase adoption by teachers. Building on prior research on block-based programming for interactive storytelling, we present initial results from a study of 28 narrative programs created by upper elementary students that were collected in both classroom and extracurricular contexts. The narrative programs are evaluated across multiple dimensions to better understand the types of narrative programs being created by the students, characteristics of the students who created the narratives, and what types of support could most benefit the students in their narrative program construction. In addition to analyzing the student-created narrative programs, we also provide recommendations for promising system-generated and instructor-led supports.

Background and Context. The quality of a research field is greatly determined by the quality of its publications. However, in many research fields this quality is endangered because of biases towards publishing positive results, which have led to questionable research practices that negatively impact the reliability of the reported findings. Objectives. We explored two approaches that could guard against these questionable research practices for computer science education research: 1. The replication of prior studies to confirm (or refute) previous findings and 2. requiring authors to submit a registered report, containing hypotheses, methods, and analytic procedures, before conducting the studies. Method. Over the span of 18 months, we organized a special issue of the Computer Science Education journal that only accepted registered reports that replicated a previous computer science education research study. Registered reports involve peer review and approval at the research design stage, before data collection begins. The editorial process was thus modified to accommodate multiple rounds of review and a longer time period between original and final submissions. We believe this is the first use of registered reports in computer science education research. A questionnaire gathering feedback on the new process was also administered to the authors of the accepted reports. Findings. We found seven author teams willing to submit a manuscript for the special issue. Out of this pool, preregistered reports from five teams were accepted to be taken forwards. One team then withdrew because the ethics procedure at their institution exceeded the special issue timeline. The remaining four author teams conducted their studies and resubmitted full papers that were accepted, pending some final corrections. Authors’ feedback about the registered reports process was positive. Implications. We demonstrated that it is possible to attract interest for registered report replications in a computer science education journal issue, and to successfully conduct the necessary editorial steps. Future efforts should attend to challenges related to modified research and journal submission timelines and consider adding a second review cycle for the first stage of registered reports. While the procedures used in this special issue may be suitable for many research approaches, further discussion is warranted on how they can be combined with exploratory research (as opposed to hypothesis testing research) and how they can be adapted to non-positivist research.

There is a burgeoning population of new CS teachers who are looking for additional support in their first few years of teaching, particularly around equitable and inclusive pedagogy. At the same time, there are a sizable number of teachers with multiple years of CS teaching experience who are looking for growth opportunities without taking on new courses. To address these needs, we are designing an innovative, equity-focused peer mentorship program for high school CS teachers. Mentors and mentees work together to support the mentee in identifying and achieving goals aligned to three of the CSTA Standards for CS Teachers: equity and inclusion, instructional design, and classroom practice. Mentors are provided with training and participate in a monthly community of practice focused on effective mentoring. The poster will share findings from our first year of implementation as well as examples of the materials we developed to support mentors and mentees.

One of the most efficient ways for elementary school students to gain exposure to computational thinking is when it is integrated into other disciplinary areas; however, elementary school teachers often lack the necessary resources to do this effectively. By leveraging the motivation force of narrative to engage students and the scaffolding affordances of block-based programming to support students, computationally-rich narrative-centered learning offers promise to address this need. In this work, we review design principles from prior work for engaging elementary students in computational thinking as well as results from initial pilot studies to investigate how computationally-rich narrative-centered learning in the context of science problem solving can support the integration of computational thinking into other disciplinary areas.

How might we better address the pervasive inequities in CS education? While empirical efforts have advanced pedagogy, created innovative learning tools, and deepened our understanding of learner cognition, we are still failing many students. Disparities in who can access and who succeeds in CS persist. In this position paper I argue that we need to reconsider how we approach CS education research (CSER). Prior research discussions have focused on methodologies, but research designs are influenced by more than strategies and methods of data collection. They are also guided by philosophies of how the world works. Philosophical views dominant in CSER have served us well in answering questions such as which instructional approaches lead to greater achievement or how do alternative programming conceptions develop. However, confronting systemic problems that prevent some learners from being at the table might require a transformative research lens. I introduce critical theory as a means to put inequities and the voices of the marginalized at the fore of our research. This is demonstrated through the analysis of three examples: a narrative ethnographic analysis of the power differences in a researcher practitioner partnership serving Latinx youth; an autoethnography of a Black scholar's journey into an IT career; and a survey study examining the relationship between interest, stereotypes and CS career intentions in students from minoritized groups. Lastly, I offer a call to action for increasing the use and acceptance of critical theory in our dissemination venues and professional development opportunities.

Recent years have seen a growing recognition of the importance of enabling K-12 students to engage in computational thinking, particularly in elementary grades where students' dispositions toward STEM are developing. Block-based programming has emerged as an effective tool for engaging these novice learners in computational thinking. At the same time, digital storytelling has emerged as a promising avenue for creating motivating problem-solving scenarios that engage students in science investigations. Although block-based programming and digital storytelling are in many ways synergistic, there is a lingering question of how to design block-based languages at an age-appropriate level to enable effective and engaging storytelling. In this work, we review design principles from prior block-based and digital storytelling systems as well as propose the design of block-based programming language features to enable the creation of rich, interactive science narratives by upper elementary students.

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), which includes knowledge of student understanding and knowledge of instructional strategies to support learning, is a component of teaching expertise that develops over time and with experience. In this poster, I present exploratory work to identify and categorize PCK amongst secondary teachers new to computing. Four teachers participating in a multi-year case study completed a questionnaire where they (a) listed student difficulties with linear data structures and (b) described how they address the topic in their teaching. Using a content analysis approach, I analyzed the quantity and type of responses provided. Since little research exists describing computing PCK, I also compared responses against public data sources gathered from experienced teachers who completed similar tasks. Results show that participants provided more ideas about student difficulties than teaching strategies and they focused equally on difficulties with programming notation and with programming pragmatics and plans. In contrast, the experienced educator list included a wider range of difficulty types. Ideas about teaching strategies focused mostly on presenting information, while the experienced educator list focused mostly on providing problem solving tasks. Unlike participants, the experienced educator list referenced real-life examples as an instructional strategy. Lastly, the responses provided by participants were not simply a subset of the experienced educator list and included unique ideas. On the poster I suggest possible contextual and experiential differences between new and experienced computing teachers that might lead to these differences.

The recent groundswell of interest in computer science education across many countries has created a pressing need for computing teachers at the secondary level. To satisfy this demand, some educational systems are drawing from their pool of in-service teachers trained in other disciplines. While these transitioning teachers can learn about computing pedagogy and subject matter at professional learning workshops, daily teaching experiences will also be a source of their learning. We studied a co-teaching program where instructional responsibilities were distributed between teachers and volunteers from the tech industry to explore how specific teaching practices supported teacher learning, with a focus on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Through qualitative analysis of questionnaire and interview data gathered from three teachers during one school year, we identified the practices they engaged in and how their learning related to the enactment of those practices. Our results highlight several factors that influenced the ways in which teaching practices provided participants with opportunities to learn PCK: (a) active participation of students and volunteers; (b) teacher's level of content knowledge; (c) interdependent practices; and (d) immediacy of the classroom environment.

Pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is specialized knowledge necessary to teach a subject. PCK integrates subject-matter content knowledge with knowledge of students and of teaching strategies so that teachers can perform the daily tasks of teaching. Studies in mathematics education have found correlations between measures of PCK and student learning. Finding robust, scalable ways for developing and measuring computer science (CS) teachers' PCK is particularly important in CS education in the United States, given the lack of formal CS teacher preparation programs and certifications. However, measuring pedagogical content knowledge is a challenge for all subject areas. It can be difficult to write assessment items that elicit the different aspects of PCK and there are often multiple appropriate pedagogical choices in any given teaching scenario. In this paper, we describe a framework and pilot data from a questionnaire intended to elicit PCK from teachers of high school introductory CS courses and we propose future directions for this work.

Educators, researchers, politicians, tech companies, and others continue to advocate for the importance of K-12 students learning computer science in our increasingly tech-driven society. One way school districts in the United States address this growing demand is by allowing teachers certified in other disciplines to lead computer science courses. Summer and weekend professional development opportunities support these educators in developing the expertise needed for effective computer science teaching, but a great portion of their learning to teach computer science will occur through on-the-job experiences. Our four-year NSF EHR grant explores how a job-embedded professional development program that pairs high school teachers with tech industry professionals supports educators in acquiring computer science teaching knowledge. The research presented in this poster focuses on the third year of the study and includes (a) a theoretical component focused on creating a framework to explain on-the-job computer science teaching knowledge development based on case studies with six teachers, and (b) an empirical component focused on the creation and administration of a computer science teaching knowledge assessment. By the time of the SIGCSE symposium, we expect to have pre-test results from the first administration of our teaching knowledge assessment, completed by both high school teachers and their collaborating tech industry professionals. This poster will present our theoretical framework, resultant teaching knowledge assessment with sample items, and analysis of participants' assessment responses and their relationship to specific teaching experiences.

One of the critical barriers to increasing pre-collegiate computer science course offerings in the U.S. is a lack of qualified computer science teachers. Programs such as TEALS, a teacher preparation program pairing high school teachers with computing professionals to offer CS courses, provide opportunities for in-service teachers to gain experience teaching computer science. However, it is not clear whether the high school teachers develop sufficient pedagogical expertise to sustain high-quality computer science course offerings at their schools. Furthermore, the field of computer science education lacks valid and reliable ways of measuring pedagogical content knowledge (PCK), a construct that describes the knowledge teachers need for effective instruction. In this poster, the authors present these results from the first year of a three-year NSF grant to study how TEALS participation influences novice computer science teachers' PCK: 1) a theoretical framework describing the critical components of CS PCK, 2) the results of the first field test of a CS PCK assessment, including the psychometric properties of the assessment, and 3) a comparison of how teachers performed on the assessment at the beginning and end of their first year of computer science teaching and how they performed relative to their computing professional mentors.

Eco-feedback technology is a growing area of interest in interaction design research. From smart meters to ambient feedback displays, well-designed technology has the potential to help families cut costs, reduce waste, and increase environmental sustainability. In this paper, we reflect on this trend and pose two interrelated design challenges that we believe are important for the development and evaluation of next-generation eco-feedback technology. First, how can we design technology to encourage entire families, children as well as adults, to become meaningful and active participants in the management of household resource consumption? And second, how can we design interactive systems to engage families in inquiry-based learning around concepts of consumption and sustainability?