This paper examines how the Alliance for Interdisciplinary Innovation in Computing Education (AiiCE) partnership operationalized the eight Collective Impact Principles of Practice to advance identity-inclusive computing education. Identity-inclusive practices actively recognize and integrate students' diverse identities into curricula, pedagogy, and institutional structures to promote more inclusive learning cultures. Principles were utilized to cultivate a learning culture and co-develop a common agenda during their formative stages, addressing persistent structural barriers in computer science (CS) education such as exclusionary curricula, biased departmental cultures, and inequitable data systems. The research employs a qualitative design, analyzing interviews with Steering Committee and Backbone members (N=8) alongside program documents (N=25) to trace the partnership's application of core principles, such as equity-centered design, community inclusion, and data-driven adaptation, to embed identity-inclusive practices in CS education ecosystems. Findings reveal that the partnership's success hinged on interdependent strategies: embedding structural accountability into its shared vision for computing education and fostering continuous learning through cross-sector collaboration and localized tools. Key innovations included governance design that center community voices in CS and a constellation model that facilitated knowledge exchange across CS research, policy, professional development, and curricula and pedagogy. However, limitations emerged, such as uneven leadership development. The study contributes to collective impact research by demonstrating how Principles of Practice can be integrated in cross-sector partnerships for CS education.

Integrating literacy and computational thinking (CT) can broaden computer science education participation, especially for multilingual learners. This study examined how the Computing and AI for All (CAIforALL) Act 1 Curriculum, an ELA-integrated Scratch-based CT curriculum, impacts coding attitudes among elementary students in predominantly Latine and multilingual districts. The curriculum integrates literacy strategies into CT instruction as proposed by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to support multilingual learners. We conducted a cluster randomized controlled trial with 1,325 students in grades 3–5 across 23 schools in two suburban districts. The treatment group used an ELA-integrated CT curriculum for a school year while controls continued with business-as instruction. Pre- and post-surveys measured five coding attitude constructs: confidence, interest, utility, perceived coding values of social circles, and perceptions of young coders. We estimated treatment effects using a two-level hierarchical linear model, controlling for student and classroom characteristics. Findings show no statistically significant differences emerged in overall coding attitudes between groups. However, students exposed to a year of ELA-integrated CT curriculum showed significant increases in coding confidence. The curriculum did not significantly affect other attitude dimensions. Findings suggest that an ELA-integrated CT curriculum can enhance coding confidence among elementary students, demonstrating the value of early computing exposure and integrated approaches.

The Latinx community is underrepresented in tech-oriented fields, which aligns with the lack of culturally relevant learning experiences in CS for Latinx youth, hindering their ability to conceptualize technology as a tool for transformation and vehicle for cultural expression. This study takes on a restorying approach at the elementary level, where 9 fourth-grade students engaged in focus group discussions over three days to generate prompts for a generative AI art. Through the lens of restorying, the prompts had students conceptualize a future with a focus on their Mexican-American heritage, local community, and technology. The study revealed that students associated their heritage with symbolic representations such as food and music, and characterized the community as a commercialized space while also emphasizing locations conducive to family-oriented activities. As a result, technology in community spaces was associated with consumerism. However, when envisioning a futuristic, transformed community, they made deeper connections between the role of technology in the community, making intricate connections between community improvements and technology-based solutions. This underscores the need for computing education to dedicate time for young learners to reflect on the role technology has on their current culture and community to make deeper connections.

As computing education begins to grow in K-12 classrooms, it is increasingly important to understand the relationships between a student's coding attitudes and computing outcomes. While work has been done at the undergraduate and high school level, less is known about elementary students, and even less about Latinx students. We sought to explore the connections between Latinx elementary students' coding attitudes and computational thinking (CT) skills after participating in a year-long, remote computing curriculum in a public school district in Southern California. We collected validated measures on coding attitudes and CT skills for 164 fourth-grade students. We used structural equation modeling to analyze the relationship between the coding attitude constructs (i.e., confidence, utility, perception of coders, social influences, and interest) and scores on a CT assessment while controlling for demographic factors (i.e., gender, English language fluency, free or reduced lunch status, reading and math standardized test scores). In a model demonstrating acceptable fit, only math scores were a significant predictor of CT scores and coding confidence. Confidence was found to be significantly associated with the other attitude constructs except for perception of coders. Our results indicate that confidence plays a prominent role in student computing learning, especially at a young age. Efforts to better support Latinx students in computer science should include strategies that address students' coding confidence, such as developing positive perceptions of a student's learning process (e.g., failures as learning opportunities) in specific coding skills and practices (e.g., tinkering, debugging).

This study analyzed the relationship between computational thinking (CT) and coding attitudes of upper elementary students after exposure to a year-long CT curriculum. Using ordinary least squares regression and controlling for student demographics (i.e., gender and English Learner (EL) status), we found that CT skills were a significant factor in modeling coding attitudes, regardless of demographic controls. Interviews of the students unveiled an interaction between coding interest and social values in a debugging process.

Background and Context. With increasing efforts to bring computing education opportunities into elementary schools, there is a growing need for assessments, with arguments for validity, to support research evaluation at these grade levels. After successfully piloting a 10-question computational thinking assessment (Assessment of Computing for Elementary Students – ACES) for 4th graders in Spring 2020, we used our analyses of item difficulty and discrimination to iterate on the assessment. Objectives. To increase the number of potential items for ACES, we created isomorphic versions of existing questions. The nature of the changes varied from incidental changes that we did not believe would impact student performance to more radical changes that seemed likely to influence question difficulty. We sought to understand the impact of these changes on student performance. Method. Using these isomorphic questions, we created two versions of our assessment and piloted them in Spring 2021 with 235 upper-elementary (4th grade) students. We analyzed the reliability of the assessments using Cronbach’s alpha. We used Chi-squared tests to analyze questions that were identical across the two assessments to form a baseline of comparison and then ran Chi-Squared and Kruskal-Wallis H tests to analyze the differences between the isomorphic copies of the questions. Findings. Both assessment versions demonstrated good reliability, with identical Cronbach’s alphas of 0.868. We found statistically similar performance on the identical questions between our two groups of students, allowing us to compare their performance on the isomorphic questions. Students performed differently on the isomorphic questions, indicating the changes to the questions had a differential impact on student performance. Implications. This paper builds on existing work by presenting methods for creating isomorphic questions. We provide valuable lessons learned, both on those methods and on the impact of specific types of changes on student performance.

The demand for computational thinking (CT) problem solving abilities surge as every aspect of life becomes more dependent on complex digital technologies. Just as in math and language, a strong CT foundation needs to be established in early education in order for students to develop an instinctive CT perspective of the world. The urgent demand for CT instruction in elementary school quickly draws attention to the shortage of elementary school-level teachers qualified and interested in CT. Additionally, with a commitment to equity in the United States education system and knowledge of the high percentage of English language learning (ELL) students in schools, the obligation to create curricula that will provide access to CT knowledge, skills, and practices for elementary-level ELL students is loudly apparent. In response to these two needs, our team has adapted existing Scratch-based CT curriculum to support classroom teachers with minimal CT experience and to be more accessible to English language learners. The purpose of this paper is to share the framework that guided the curriculum adaptations, to describe the specific changes that were made, and to discuss discoveries made during the process. This journey may be helpful to anyone who is tasked with modifying a curriculum to meet the needs of novice content teachers and ELL students.

School mission statements promising to transform students into leaders have become commonplace. Yet there appears to be a disconnect between educational practices and their application to real challenges pertaining to students' communities and to society as a whole. This gap results in a low sense of agency and presents an opportunity to develop tools that foster informed civic engagement and participation.