This Birds of a Feather (BoF) session aims to build a community of graduate student researchers who study Computer Science Education (CSEd) during SIGCSE TS and continue beyond the conference. Given the interdisciplinary nature of CSEd research, graduate students may enter the field from varied departments such as computer science, education, information, and engineering education. Therefore, many graduate students lack a CSEd research community within their own institution. This BoF session will provide a space for SIGCSE TS graduate students to build their community across institutions, both during and after the conference. In this session, we will discuss key topics to improve graduate study experiences, including relationships with advisors, research topic selection, mentoring, and navigating conferences. The second half of the session will focus on discussing post-BoF activities to keep students engaged throughout the year, including future paper outlining and peer review sessions, as well as inviting former graduate students to share their career paths and experiences. During the BoF session, attendees will meet fellow graduate students in the same research field and brainstorm future activities. They will then have the opportunity to participate in follow-up sessions based on their ideas.

While global interest in K–12 AI and ML education grows, many African education systems lack foundational computing education beyond basic computer literacy. This creates unique challenges for AI integration in countries where computer science isn't part of the K–12 curriculum. Teachers are central to this effort, but little is known about what motivates them to engage with these technologies or how they use them. This study examined what motivates K–12 teachers to engage with AI and ML in Botswana. Using a mixed-methods approach, we surveyed 59 teachers using an adapted version of the Motivation to Teach Computer Science (MTCS) scale and open-ended questions. We used Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as a lens to interpret the findings. Results showed that intrinsic motivation and identified regulation were primary drivers. Context-specific, extrinsic factors were also observed, including a desire to improve educational systems and concerns about infrastructure in schools. Access disparities in teachers' use of AI emerged: secondary and computing teachers with better infrastructure used AI tools more frequently than primary or non-computing teachers. The results show that while teachers' engagement with AI stems from perceived teaching and learning value, sociocultural factors like infrastructure determine how motivation translates into practice. These findings have implications for professional development, infrastructure planning, and inclusive AI adoption in resource-constrained education systems.

This Birds of a Feather (BoF) session serves to build a community of graduate student researchers in Computer Science Education (CSEd) at SIGCSE TS and beyond. Many graduate students lack a CSEd research community within their own institution. This BoF session will serve to provide a space for SIGCSE TS graduate students to build their community across institutions, both during and after the conference. During the session, we will discuss the successes and challenges that come with being a CSEd graduate student, including work/life balance, advisor-student relationships, and developing collaborations. Attendees will leave with an opportunity to connect with other CSEd graduate students beyond the conference through a dedicated CSEd graduate student Slack channel.

Emergent bilingual (EB) students are a growing demographic within the United States, with an increasing number enrolling in K-12 computing courses. Since programming languages are primarily grounded in English, K-12 computing teachers must balance and tailor their instruction to meet the needs of these students. Teachers reported a lack of sufficient computing education resources to guide their instruction for teaching computing to EB students. Through a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with eight K-12 computing teachers who have EB students in their classrooms, we identified some of the challenges they face and the strategies they use to support them. Our analysis revealed three challenges: (1) students experience cognitive overload from translating between English and their native language, (2) terminology has subtle differences across disciplines (e.g., 'variable' in Math vs. Science), and (3) educators' low computing self-efficacy. Teachers counter these challenges with two implemented strategies: (1) providing multiple ways for EB students to engage with content to prevent them from becoming overwhelmed, and (2) offering multiple modalities to help translate computing concepts. This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on inclusive computing education by offering insights into educators' needs and potential solutions for supporting EB students' learning in computing.

This ITiCSE Working Group (WG) has two goals: first, to increase awareness of computing education research in the African countries, and second, to create and strengthen connections between computing education researchers in African countries and those in the larger computing education research community.

This Work-in-Progress, Research paper presents the experiences of three engineering students who navigate STEM education with multiple marginalized identities. Using the Social Identity Wheel as a framework, the study aims to fill gaps in intersectionality research by exploring the positionality and experiences of these marginalized students in STEM. This paper showcases the practical application of the Social Identity Wheel in computing and engineering education research, particularly for studies with small sample sizes, to guide in participant selection and data interpretation techniques. The findings underscore the significance of incorporating intersectional perspectives in all forms of educational research and the importance in understanding the complexities of intersectionality. The research questions guiding this study are: (1) How can the use of the Social Identity Wheel be used to further contextualize and explore the positionality and experiences of marginalized students in STEM? and (2) In what ways does the interplay of one's non-visible identities and visible identities intersect to shape their STEM experience?

K-12 teachers seek examples of relevant and appropriate content that engages a diverse audience for their courses. Naturally, teachers may look to universities for inspiration and even curriculum and course content. In this innovative practice paper, the researchers worked with an urban public high school that had an existing partnership with our home university; this was a natural place for high school teachers to find educational examples. Our university recently created a novel introductory robotics course which the leadership at the partner high school saw as an attractive model for an 11th grade engineering course. To help create the high school engineering course, we facilitated participatory design sessions with various educational stakeholders who had varying visions for the course; these stakeholders included high school teachers, university faculty, educational researchers, and undergraduate students who had previously taken the university robotics course. In this paper, the authors explore the ways in which ideas from the participatory design sessions shaped the first iteration of the engineering course. A design challenge the authors faced was incorporating the stakeholders’ competing and sometimes contradictory visions for the course into instructional materials. In this paper, we present these methods of integration as a model for others seeking to adapt university engineering courses for a high school context.