This work-in-progress paper is part of a larger research project that aims to study how a digital game-based math program affects middle school students' perceptions of their math learning. We present preliminary results related to how a story-based game environment supports students' perceived math learning experience and affective outcomes. We first compare survey outcomes between treatment and business-as-usual control groups. We then analyze various in-game activity metrics to explore how students' gameplay behaviors relate to these perceptions and affective outcomes. Preliminary results suggest that embedding math learning in a narrative-supported context may shape middle school students' engagement with and perceived understanding of math learning. This work also offers a novel method for analyzing the impacts of digital game-based math programs using students' gameplay behavior metrics.

The "Computer Science for All" initiative advocates for universal access to computer science (CS) instruction. A key strategy toward this end has been to establish CS content standards outlining what all students should have the opportunity to learn. Standards can support curriculum quality and access to quality CS instruction, but only if they are used to inform curriculum design and instructional practice. Professional learning offered to teachers of CS has typically focused on learning to implement a specific curriculum, rather than deepening understanding of CS concepts. We set out to develop a set of educative resources, formative assessment tools and teacher professional development (PD) sessions to support middle school CS teachers' knowledge of CS standards and standards-aligned formative assessment literacy. Our PD and associated resources focus on five CS standards in the Algorithm and Programming strand and are meant to support teachers using any CS curriculum or programming language. In this experience report, we share what we learned from implementing our standards-based PD with four middle school CS teachers. Teachers initially perceived standards as irrelevant to their teaching but they came to appreciate how a deeper understanding of CS concepts could enhance their instructional practice. Analysis of PD observations and exit surveys, teacher interviews, and teacher responses to a survey assessing CS pedagogical content knowledge demonstrated the complexity of using content standards as a driver of high-quality CS instruction at the middle school level, and reinforced our position that more standards-focused PD is needed.

The development of the CS content standards underscores the importance of curricula aligned with the standards, ensuring equitable coverage of CS concepts for all students. Because standards are broad, we emphasize the need for CS curricula to specify not only the standards they align with but also which aspects of the standards they align with and how. We map one common middle school CS curriculum to a few standards to demonstrate this need.

This poster presents lessons learned from offering three iterations of summer professional development (PD) for rural fourth- to sixth-grade teachers. Participating teachers attended a PD on Utah's new state science standards, computer science concepts, and the integration of computer science within science. With each iteration, the content covered in the PD became more focused, and a higher percentage of teachers expressed intent to integrate CS in their elementary science classrooms. The last year of the PD relied heavily on a Teacher-Learner-Observer model to familiarize teachers with the TIPP&SEE lesson structure before encouraging teachers to modify an existing TIPP&SEE lesson for integration in science. All nine participants in this latest cohort plan to create their own TIPP&SEE lessons; eight of the nine have already completed and taught their lessons by December. The poster shares the PD agenda, links to teacher-developed Scratch lessons integrating CS in elementary science, and lessons learned from three years of workshops delivered to teachers from rural districts.

The rapid expansion of K-12 CS education has made it critical to support CS teachers, many of whom are new to teaching CS, with the necessary resources and training to strengthen their understanding of CS concepts and how to effectively teach CS. CS teachers are often tasked with teaching different curricula using different programming languages in different grades or during different school years, and tend to receive different professional development (PD) for each curriculum they are required to teach. This often leads to a lack of deep understanding of the underlying CS concepts and how different curricula address the same concepts in different ways. Empowering teachers to develop a deep understanding of CS standards, and use formative assessments to recognize common student challenges associated with the standards, will enable teachers to provide more effective CS instruction, irrespective of the curriculum and/or programming language they are tasked with using. This position paper advocates supporting CS teacher professional learning by supplementing existing curriculum-specific teacher PD with standards-aligned PD that focuses on teachers' conceptual understanding of CS standards and ability to adapt instruction based on student understanding of concepts underlying the CS standards. We share concrete examples of how to design standards-aligned educative resources and instructionally supportive tools that promote teachers' understanding of CS standards and common student challenges and develop teachers' formative assessment literacy, all essential components of CS pedagogical content knowledge.