The Wind River Elementary Computer Science Collaborative is a research-practice partnership (RPP) among three school districts serving Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone communities on the Wind River Reservation, the Wyoming Department of Education, BootUp PD, and the American Institutes for Research. The purpose of the Collaborative is to support development and sustainability of K-8 computer science (CS) education through professional development, capacity-building, and connections to the school and broader communities. Since 2019, the Collaborative has engaged elementary and middle school educators and explored how to build sustainability of CS education in Indigenous communities. In this report, we share strategies our Collaborative used to foster sustainable CS instruction in our fourth and fifth years of implementation. We share teacher and student survey results that suggest progress toward sustainability, including increases in teacher self-efficacy and evidence of developing CS identities in students. We use teacher feedback and interviews to reflect on key features of the RPP's structure that supported sustainability and share future steps we plan to take to address continued challenges.

The Idaho Elementary Computer Science Collaborative (IECC) Collaborative is a research-practice partnership (RPP) among the Idaho STEM Action Center (Idaho STEM AC), the American Institutes for Research (AIR), and BootUp Professional Development (BootUp PD). The purpose of the IECC is to explore the strengths and challenges rural school districts bring to the process of developing and implementing elementary computer science (CS) pathways. The IECC conducted interviews with CS leaders in five districts across the state. Analysis of the interviews provided insight into both the nuances of local contexts and the values, issues, and challenges common across rural districts. In this poster, we discuss how the shared challenge of low exposure to CS, the shared strength of community connections to education, and the similar processes of curriculum adoption played out with local nuances in five rural Idaho districts. We discuss implications for developing elementary CS pathways in rural contexts.

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.

The Idaho Elementary Computer Science (CS) Collaborative (IECC) is a researcher-practitioner partnership dedicated to understanding how to better support the predominately rural districts in Idaho to implement elementary CS education. As part of the IECC's work, we conducted a survey of elementary teachers across the state. This poster will present our initial findings. Two of the research questions we addressed via the survey are: (1) What factors would motivate Idaho elementary teachers to pursue professional development (PD) related to CS? (2) What are elementary teachers' perceptions of the value of connecting CS education to rural community economies and industries? Descriptive analyses of 309 survey responses suggest that about three-quarters of elementary teachers reported that the following factors would be at least somewhat influential in their decisions to pursue CS PD: a K-5 computational thinking requirement, a district-wide CS planning staff, a pathway for elementary teachers to earn a certification in CS teaching, and a way to request CS PD funding. Few (9%) Idaho elementary teachers found that the perception of a disconnect between CS education and rural community interests was a significant barrier to elementary CS education. Even so, over 70% of them were moderately to strongly interested in mechanisms for connecting their CS education efforts to rural community industries through guest speakers and industry partnerships. The poster will discuss the implications of these and other emerging findings from the teacher survey, as well as IECC's related surveys of Idaho district superintendents and elementary school principals.

The Wind River Elementary Computer Science (WRECS) Collaborative is a research-practice partnership (RPP) among three school districts serving Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho communities on the Wind River Reservation, the Wyoming Department of Education (WDE), BootUp Professional Development (BootUp PD), and the American Institutes for Research (AIR). The purpose of the WRECS Collaborative is to develop culturally sustaining elementary computer science (CS) education through integration of CS and Indigenous studies. The Collaborative engaged three cohorts of elementary educators in cycles of professional development, classroom implementation, and group reflection over the 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23 school years. In this experience report, we share a set of reflections and lessons learned as the RPP developed relationships and worked through intersecting priorities, instructional goals, and ways of knowing and learning present within the RPP.

This study took place in the context of a researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) between a research organization, the Wyoming Department of Education, and three school districts serving primarily Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho students on the Wind River Reservation. The goal of the RPP is to integrate instruction on the Indian Education for All Wyoming social studies standards with the Wyoming computer science standards in elementary school in ways that are culturally responsive [1]. The project team provided 12 hours of professional development across three sessions, three professional learning community sessions, lesson plans, and model projects. Teachers were expected to implement three coding projects across the school year. The study team collected data via teacher interviews, surveys, and observations of professional development and professional learning community sessions [2]. Three problems of practice that emerged from our preliminary qualitative analysis [3] include: (a) how to support student interest and engagement in computer science especially upon first introduction of a coding platform, (b) how to find time in the school day for computer science and to develop methods for integrating computer science with other subjects, and (c) how to build collaboration across classrooms and districts. The poster will discuss the adaptations teachers made to address the first two problems of practice and the RPP's strategy for addressing the third problem of practice in our next year of implementation. These findings will be of interest to researchers and practitioners working to implement culturally responsive computer science instruction in elementary schools in Indigenous communities.

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.

The representation of women in computer science (CS) is low in the United States and has been declining over the past few decades. Prior research has demonstrated that educators play an important role in increasing gender diversity. Not much, however, is known about their views regarding gender diversity in CS. Educators are often isolated as the only ones teaching CS in their schools, with limited opportunity to converse with each other about the underrepresentation of women in CS and other issues facing the field. Thus, to better understand educators rq questions and concerns about gender diversity, we conducted a qualitative exploratory study within an online discussion forum, Stack Exchange for CS educators. The conversations gave us insights into gender diversity issues that the forum members were interested in, such as enrollment, retention, and roles of teachers. We also analyzed the lenses through which the forum members spoke about gender representation. Results from this study suggest that researchers need to continue to examine educator perceptions so that we can design appropriate online teacher communities, teacher education courses, and professional development workshops to address equity and gender diversity issues in CS.

Curriculum development is dependent on the following question: What are the learning goals for a specific topic, and what are reasonable ways to organize and order those goals? Learning trajectories (LTs) for computational thinking (CT) topics will help to guide emerging curriculum development efforts for computer science in elementary school. This study describes the development of an LT for Debugging. We conducted a rigorous analysis of scholarly research on K-8 computer science education to extract what concepts in debugging students should and are capable of learning. The concepts were organized into the LT presented within. In this paper, we describe the three dimensions of debugging that emerged during the creation of the trajectory: (1) strategies for finding and fixing errors, (2) types of errors, and (3) the role of errors in problem solving. In doing so, we go beyond identification of specific debugging strategies to further articulate knowledge that would help students understand when to use those techniques and why they are successful. Finally, we illustrate how the Debugging LT has guided our efforts to develop an integrated mathematics and CT curriculum for grades 3-5.

Computer science (CS) education advocates argue that integration of computational thinking (CT) into instruction in other subjects has promise for providing a strong foundation in computer science ideas for elementary school students. Less attention has been given to the role that CT may play in improving learning in subjects other than computer science. This document summarizes my plans to study how teaching elementary level mathematics through computational thinking practices can improve mathematics learning.

As new initiatives in computational thinking and computer science (CS/CT) are being developed and deployed, it is important to identify and understand the key concepts that are essential for student learning. In this study, we present the phases of construction of a learning trajectory (LT) for Decomposition in the context of CS/CT in K-8 education. From an extensive literature review, 63 learning goals representative of decomposition understanding and practices were identified and synthesized into 13 consensus goals. The focus of this paper is how relationships between these consensus goals were identified and used to place the goals into a learning trajectory. We discuss the theories and frameworks that guided the trajectory's construction as well as the methodology and justifications used to draw pathways through the trajectory in each phase. Finally, we discuss potential uses for the trajectory and suggest further explorations for decomposition in CS/CT.

Computing curricula are being developed for elementary school classrooms, yet research evidence is scant for learning trajectories that drive curricular decisions about what topics should be addressed at each grade level, at what depth, and in what order. This study presents learning trajectories based on an in-depth review of over 100 scholarly articles in computer science education research. We present three levels of results. First, we present the characteristics of the 600+ learning goals and their research context that affected the learning trajectory creation process. Second, we describe our first three learning trajectories (Sequence, Repetition, and Conditionals), and the relationship between the learning goals and the resulting trajectories. Finally, we discuss the ways in which assumptions about the context (mathematics) and language (e.g., Scratch) directly influenced the trajectories.

Research on appropriate topics and goals for computer science (CS) education in elementary and middle school has been ongoing for decades, but the recent movement toward CS for all requires the research community to gain a better understanding of what is most important to teach, to whom, and in what order. We conducted a literature review with specific attention to cataloging computer science learning goals that experts theorize are important to teach as well as learning goals that have been explored and researched with students in K-8. By mapping the former onto the latter, we discovered six categories of goals that are theorized as important but, according to our review, are yet to be researched with K-8 students. We discuss the potential implications of these gaps for future research.