Over a decade ago, "Running on Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age" (Wilson et al., 2010) compelled stakeholders in the United States to recognize the critical need for K-12 computer science (CS) education. The report highlighted the absence of K-12 CS courses due to the low number and inadequate preparation of K-12 CS teachers. CS teacher education remains as a roadblock to equitable access and achievement in CS education nationally.

Have you ever frozen-not knowing what to say-when you heard a biased comment from a student or colleague? It is challenging to interrupt microaggressions and respond to biased beliefs in the moment, but practice helps people become more comfortable and confident. In this special session, teams from the CSTA Equity Fellowship and CSTeachingTips.org will demonstrate an activity that invites participants to discuss how they would respond to different tricky situations related to bias. Participants will directly engage in the activity and learn how they can use it in ongoing professional development for K-12 computer science teachers.

The computer science (CS) education field is exploring several instructional strategies for teaching CS to children in elementary school. Strong arguments have been made for integration--- constructing activities that not only teach CS, but use the CS to support learning in a core subject. Integrating CS materials into a specific curriculum is a non-trivial task that may unfairly burden elementary teachers, who are often generalists. Successful development and classroom implementation of integrated materials relies on many decisions about what, when, and how much subject matter to cover in relation to the main curriculum.

Broadening participation in computing (BPC) has long been a major emphasis in computer science education. The efforts to bring about greater equity in participation often address issues related to curriculum, educator preparation and professional development, and to a lesser extent, school systems and structures. Furthermore, issues related to broadening participation such as what populations we consider, how disenfranchised populations fare, and their rates of retention and achievement within CS education programs are central to equitable computing and the aspirational goals of CSforAll. While the goals of broadening participation are admirable, the 2020 State of CS Education (Code.org, CSTA, & ECEP Alliance, 2020) report makes it clear that equitable CS education is a distant shore. The purpose of this BoF session is to create a space: (a) to explore current research and policy efforts towards equitable CS education and their efficacy, and (b) to interrogate the tensions that underlie these efforts and the practical implications of the current research agenda for K-12 teachers and students.

Given the academic diversity of today's classrooms, elementary teachers engaged in computer science (CS) and computational thinking (CT) instruction must create CS/CT experiences that are accessible and engaging to a broad range of learners, including those with disabilities. One method of developing inclusive instructional experiences is through the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, wherein teachers proactively design instruction for the broadest range of learners. Doing so may be challenging as elementary teachers may not be familiar with the UDL framework or may not have experience with applying UDL within CS/CT instruction. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate how four elementary teachers provided UDL-based instruction to academically diverse learners during CS/CT instruction. Teachers received professional development and instructional coaching related to UDL within CS/CT education. Data included teachers' lesson plans, coaching logs, and teacher interviews which were qualitatively analyzed and triangulated. Data revealed that teachers generally addressed all three UDL principles, with an emphasis on two of the principles (multiple means of engagement and multiple means of representing content) above the third principle (multiple means of action and expression). They focused on breaking tasks into steps, emphasizing student choice, and presenting information in multiple ways. Findings revealed nuanced implementation differences among the teachers as well.

Computer science (CS) education K-12 has spread at a remarkable pace over the last few years. As CS education becomes more and more a part of the general curriculum, students with disabilities, who spend much of their time in general education classrooms, will be included. Yet, there is little research on how to equitably and rigorously include students with disabilities in CS education. To begin to understand how best to provide CS educational services to diverse learners, we must first understand the challenges and barriers they face and what strategies they are already using to enable their success. This basic qualitative interpretative study utilized video screencast data of three upper-elementary students with high-incidence disabilities engaged in block-based programming. Findings confirmed students encountered multiple barriers and challenges, both unique and shared, across classrooms. While students utilized several problem solving and debugging strategies, they seldom did so in a systematic fashion.

Computer science (CS) education is rapidly expanding in the United States[4]. That said, the CS education field is still grappling with coming to consensus about definitions of K-12 CS and how to reach all students. While the CS education community has made great efforts to expand opportunity for under served groups, students with disabilities have regularly been left out of the conversation. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, approximately 13% of all students enrolled in public schools in the US receive special education services and 95% of these students are taught either part or full time in the regular classroom[3] . One aim of CSforALL is to increase equity in CS education and opportunities[5]. Recent studies have examined the challenges faced by students with disabilities in K12 CS education[1][2]. Including students with disabilities in CS classes not only increases their access to academic and career opportunities in CS, but it also gives them the opportunity to develop new ways of thinking and participating in the world that they would otherwise be potentially without. This panel addresses the inclusion of students with disabilities as part of the national all and seeks to augment the discussion initiated by the CSforALL Consortium and AccessCSforALL with the introduction of the Accessibility Pledge at the annual CSforALL Summit. This panel brings together four different experts, with a wide range of experience in regards to computer science education and students with disabilities, in an effort to expand both the national conversation and increase efforts related to including students with disabilities equitably in CS education. In this panel we present a group of CS education community members who represent multiple approaches to accessibility and serving students with disabilities, as well as diverse implementations; peer-to-peer mentoring, initiatives focused on a single subpopulation of students with disabilities, curriculum and platform providers, and district and state-wide solutions. The panelists, and the organizations they represent have a diversity of experiences to share, including current high school students and parents of students with disabilities.

Creating equitable, sustainable, and productive partnerships between computer science (CS) education researchers and practitioners is essential if we are to further improve CS educational outcomes, practice, and equity. Research-practice partnerships (RPPs) provide one promising approach for expanding how practice may inform research and research may inform practice. This early work, centered around a framework proposed by Henrick et al., and utilizing interview data from 11 participants, explores the ways in which six diverse RPP teams went about developing trusting and collaborative relationships as they worked together to solve local problems of practice. Barriers and challenges to collaboration and trust building, as well as mechanisms by which teams overcame those challenges, are discussed. The study revealed discrete team behaviors, norms, and structures that may contribute to building more collaborative, trusting, and sustainable RPP relationships. Limitations are presented and implications for current and future RPP teams, as well as possible future research directions, are addressed.

Now more than ever, students with disabilities are participating in computer science (CS) education. As CS increasingly becomes a part of the general curriculum in grades K-8, ensuring that these learning experiences are equitable and accessible for a wide range of learners may help broaden the diversity of individuals who choose to engage in computing experiences throughout their schooling and into their professional lives (Qualls & Sherrell, 2010). Therefore, it is essential to identify pedagogical approaches that lower barriers for students with disabilities and give teachers new tools to help those students succeed. Initial findings will be presented from a National Science Foundation STEM+C project derived from a series of qualitative case studies about challenges faced by K-8 students with disabilities in CS education. These findings have been converted to practitioner-oriented pedagogy briefs, written in the form of vignettes, and grounded in our own research findings as well as special education best practice. These pedagogy briefs are disseminated to practitioners and used for professional development and intervention work. Current topics include: Universal Design for Learning, project planning, co-teaching, working with paraeducators, and promoting student collaboration. Pedagogy briefs will be available and can be found on the Creative Technology Research Lab (CTRL) website: http://ctrl.illinois.education.edu

Despite efforts to integrate computer science (CS) into K-12 education, there are numerous unanswered questions about how students learn CS, how to provide positive computing experiences, and how students interact with each other during CS instruction. To begin to deconstruct these complexities for a diverse range of students, it is important to not only study the outcomes and products of students' computational experiences, but also the processes they take in creating those products. In recognizing the necessity for targeted, narrow research questions, this paper focused on how elementary students interacted with each other during puzzle-based CS instruction. Future work will focus on comparing these findings to students' collaborative interactions in more open-ended computing situations. Data analysis made use of the Collaborative Computing Observation Instrument (C-COI) [M. Israel et al. 2015] to analyze video screen captures of nine students as they engaged in CS activities within Code.org's Code Studio. Findings confirmed three predominant types of collaborative interactions: Collaborative problem solving, excitement and accomplishment related to CS activities, and general socialization.

There is growing momentum to integrate computer science (CS) education across K-12, but there is little information about how this integration should take place (Grover & Pea, 2013). This is especially true in the elementary grades, as fewer studies have examined computing at these grades. Through a National Science Foundation STEM+C project, we are developing and studying learning progressions for integrated CS and mathematics at the elementary level. Our research examines how teachers are introducing CS concepts within mathematic as well as what computational concepts and practices naturally can be taught within the context of elementary mathematics. We are also examining how these emerging progressions align with the K-12 CS Framework and the new standards from the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA). Future aims are to develop a coherent set of learning progressions related to areas such as debugging, sequencing, looping, conditionals, and decomposition within mathematics topics such as geometry, fractions, and arithmetic number stories. Our research lays the groundwork for the development of learning trajectories that will guide curriculum developers and practitioners to understand how to teach students across grades K-5 computing within the context of their mathematics instruction.