As computer science (CS) becomes a foundational part of K-12 education, universities face increasing pressure to prepare pre-service teachers to deliver highly effective CS instruction. However, most teacher preparation programs lack structured pathways to develop CS teachers, and leaders of these programs often feel unprepared to provide CS instruction. Therefore, the PrepareCS Project is a three-year initiative that brings together university teams from across the United States to develop sustainable CS teacher preparation programs. This paper reports on the first year of the project, using data from focus groups with university representatives to explore the challenges they faced while developing their CS teacher pathways. Findings reveal that teams encountered issues with program constraints, policy barriers, and communication problems. Lessons learned include the importance of establishing clear roles and communication protocols, strategically building community, applying best practices for interdisciplinary virtual teams, and developing marketing plans in tandem with program development. These findings offer timely guidance to researchers, policymakers, and educational leaders seeking to meet the growing demand for CS education and expand access

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.

Background. U.S. state and district policies increasingly mandate computer science (CS) instruction in K-12 classrooms. To ensure all students benefit from computing education, we recognized the crucial need for teachers to adopt equity-focused practices. Leveraging a researcher practitioner partnership (RPP), we launched a pilot program providing teachers with individualized coaching.

While the U.S. government tracks teacher certification, this tracking is limited to initial certification. However, many computer science (CS) teachers did not initially certify in CS but in another subject. As a result, there is a data gap involving pathways to CS teacher certification, pathway requirements, and the number and characteristics of teachers who pursue each pathway. This gap in the data landscape may be an impediment to the goal of expanding CS education: a lack of understanding of these pathways may inhibit recruitment, retention, and ensuring that the pathways adequately prepare educators to support student learning.

We developed a 1.5 year coaching program to provide sustained support for newer U.S. high school computer science (CS) teachers, aiming to foster their knowledge about CS and CS practices and strengthen their confidence as CS educators.This study addressed the research question: How do teachers' abilities and confidence in applying computer science (CS) practices and concepts change as a result of the coaching process?We collected participant data across three timepoints, prior to the start of the coaching sessions, after the first year, and after the final coaching sessions.These results may indicate preliminary evidence that the intervention successfully increased CS coachees' reported knowledge and skills and their confidence as a CS teacher.

We designed a one-year coaching program to provide U.S. high school CS teachers with the ongoing support to help shape their professional growth and identity as CS teachers. Our research question for this project was: Does CS coaching facilitate teacher professional growth and identity as a CS teacher? Adopting a mixed-methods approach, our study leveraged pre- and post-program surveys, ongoing coaching logs, and introspective self-reflection checklists to triangulate data from both coaches and coachees. Coachees' rated their professional growth and identity significantly higher after the intervention compared to before, and this difference indicated a large effect. Both before and after intervention, coachees indicated they identified partially as CS teachers, and this sense of identity grew after intervention. The success of this pilot, rooted in effective professional development practices, demonstrates how engaging teachers in coaching can motivate their interest in teaching CS. Professional development providers and regional agencies can replicate and adapt these processes to empower new CS educators.

The landscape of computer science (CS) education in the United States has experienced a significant shift, with a notable emphasis on moving beyond introducing CS courses at the high school level to providing K-8 CS learning experiences. Early exposure to CS fosters interest and the foundational knowledge and skills needed for students to pursue future CS opportunities. However, the concept of equitable access to CS education at the elementary and middle school levels is still relatively nascent. To address the issue, we provide an in-depth analysis of our collaborative endeavor with a local public school district to develop and iteratively refine a professional development experience to enable teachers to implement a CS-integrated lesson in their classrooms. In this paper, we expand on the structure of the educator training experience and highlight strategies for curating and adapting CS lessons. In addition, we critically reflect on the strengths and challenges of this program based on teacher surveys and focus groups, as well as propose potential iterations for the program.

As K-12 computer science education grows, so does the imperative for universities to prepare highly qualified computer science teachers. An increasing number of SIGCSE participants either have developed programs at their universities to credential CS teachers in their states, or are interested in doing so. This BOF provides an opportunity to build community, share best practices, and address challenges in creating CS teacher preparation programs. We particularly welcome participants from Colleges of Education.

Tangential to the efforts to bring computer science (CS) into K-12 education, there has been increasing recognition of the critical role of data science (DS) in preparing future citizens to be able to gather, analyze, and represent data. With only 51% of K-12 schools offering CS, however, and the critical need for students to engage in DS practices, there is the need to examine ways to integrate DS in other subjects. Our study explores the current landscape of DS in methods and content courses within preservice teacher pathways. This poster outlines a study in its preliminary stages that explores how faculty teaching math, science, and social studies methods and content courses in colleges of education: a) define DS, b) conceptualize DS as related to their course content, c) make connections between DS, CS, and/or computational thinking (CT). Taking a participatory design approach, this study will also explore research-based approaches to building the capacity of preservice faculty in DS to advance the practice of teaching CS in a scalable way to expand access in equitable ways to CS and CT.

Research Problem. The CAPE Framework has been used in multiple studies to situate capacity-building efforts within schools to offer equitable student access to and participation in K-12 computer science (CS) education. CAPE defines four major components of capacity, access, participation and experience. However, to define what each of the CAPE components can entail, well-defined subcomponents are needed.

Motivation. There are countless factors that contribute to academic achievement [3, 6, 7, 8]. For K-12 computer science (CS) education, these building blocks of student success are broadly captured in the four components of the CAPE framework, which considers the capacity for, access to, participation in, and experiences of students learning CS through a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion [4]. However, there is currently little published research that identifies factors within each component that influence the education ecosystem that students rely on to participate and have positive learning experiences in CS [10].

Coaching is a critical mechanism for providing guidance and support to educators on improving their teaching practice and thereby improving student learning. Coaching is a process where an experienced educator (coach) supports a teacher in developing and refining their teaching practice. Coaching is in widespread use in K-12 schools for many subject areas and is growing for computer science. Coaching has the potential to be a key lever in meeting the CS education community's equity goal of CS for all students. This session will be led by CS coaches from a variety of contexts including elementary, secondary, and higher education. Goals for the session include increasing the understanding of what coaching is and how it is applied in various contexts, resources available to support coaching, how equity is addressed in coaching, and impacts on teachers and students.

Changing the language used to teach the AP Computer Science A course is an expensive, time-consuming, and ultimately controversial endeavor. However, it is worth raising the question from time to time to determine if such a change may now be appropriate. This panel offers a set of speakers specifically chosen to provide a diverse set of viewpoints and experiences (high school teacher, curriculum developer, exam reader, exam development committee member, university credit-granting administrator) on the question of whether the language in the AP CS A exam should be switched to Python in the near future.

To meet the rising demand for computer science (CS) courses, K-12 educators need to be prepared to teach introductory concepts and skills in courses such as Computer Science Principles (CSP), which takes a breadth-first approach to CS and includes topics beyond programming such as data, impacts of computing, and networks. Educators are now also being asked to teach more advanced concepts in courses such as the College Board's Advanced Placement Computer Science A (CSA) course, which focuses on advanced programming using Java and includes topics such as objects, inheritance, arrays, and recursion. Traditional CSA curricula have not used content or pedagogy designed to engage a broad range of learners and support their success. Unlike CSP, which is attracting more underrepresented students to computing as it was designed, CSA continues to enroll mostly male, white, and Asian students [College Board 2019, Ericson 2020, Sax 2020]. In order to expand CS education opportunities, it is crucial that students have an engaging experience in CSA similar to CSP. Well-designed differentiated professional development (PD) that focuses on content and pedagogy is necessary to meet individual teacher needs, to successfully build teacher skills and confidence to teach CSA, and to improve engagement with students [Darling-Hammond 2017]. It is critical that as more CS opportunities and courses are developed, teachers remain engaged with their own learning in order to build their content knowledge and refine their teaching practice [CSTA 2020]. CSAwesome, developed and piloted in 2019, offers a College Board endorsed AP CSA curriculum and PD focused on supporting the transition of teachers and students from CSP to CSA. This poster presents preliminary findings aimed at exploring the supports and challenges new-to-CSA high school level educators face when transitioning from teaching an introductory, breadth-first course such as CSP to teaching the more challenging, programming-focused CSA course. Five teachers who completed the online CSAwesome summer 2020 PD completed interviews in spring 2021. The project employed an inductive coding scheme to analyze interview transcriptions and qualitative notes from teachers about their experiences learning, teaching, and implementing CSP and CSA curricula. Initial findings suggest that teachers’ experience in the CSAwesome PD may improve their confidence in teaching CSA, ability to effectively use inclusive teaching practices, ability to empathize with their students, problem-solving skills, and motivation to persist when faced with challenges and difficulties. Teachers noted how the CSAwesome PD provided them with a student perspective and increased feelings of empathy. Participants spoke about the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on their own learning, student learning, and teaching style. Teachers enter the PD with many different backgrounds, CS experience levels, and strengths, however, new-to-CSA teachers require further PD on content and pedagogy to transition between CSP and CSA. Initial results suggest that the CSAwesome PD may have an impact on long-term teacher development as new-to-CSA teachers who participated indicated a positive impact on their teaching practices, ideologies, and pedagogies.

Computing has, for many years, been one of the least demographically diverse STEM fields, particularly in terms of women's participation [2] and those from minoritized racial and ethnic groups. In the case of higher education, one of the most powerful sites of intervention is the classroom. The last decade has seen a proliferation of research exploring new teaching techniques and course sequencing and their effect on the retention of students who have historically been excluded from computing. This research suggests interventions and practices that can affect the inclusiveness of the computer science classroom and potentially improve learning outcomes for all students. But research needs to be translated into practice, and practices need to be taken up in real classrooms. The goal of this working group (WG) is to conduct a systemic "state-of-the-art" review of recent empirical studies of teaching practices that have some explicit test of the impact on women (or other under-represented groups) in computing. The WG will produce an annotated bibliography and a report that distills the research into specific, actionable practices.

As computer science programs experience booming enrollments, departmental priorities for educating all students are shifting. Nurturing a departmental culture that promotes inclusion when resources and space are scarce can be difficult. As a Birds of a Feather session, the facilitators will lead participants in a discussion of practices that support inclusion at the departmental and classroom levels. We focus on ways that faculty and departments can prepare and implement inclusive practices and policies that support the ideas that all students can learn and belong, and that ability is not fixed, but malleable. We will also discuss how departmental efforts can be documented and measured for effectiveness. While evaluation is always important, departments impacted by new BPC requirements piloted by the NSF to measure departmental changes to support equity (see https://www.nsf.gov/cise/bpc/White_Paper.pdf) may be particularly interested. Participants will form small guided discussion groups with one BOF facilitator in each group. Groups will be provided centering questions and artifacts to guide their discussion. Participants will reconvene to report out across groups. The BOF is appropriate for computing educators who are focusing on/or developing departmental practices that support the success of all learners, with an emphasis on underrepresented and underserved groups. It is also appropriate for educational researchers who emphasize department and classroom level research related to growth mindset, asset-based pedagogy, culturally relevant pedagogy, and inclusion.

Higher education institutions and their computer science departments have been strong supporters of K12 CS. One area that has not been explored in-depth is the use of concurrent enrollment (CE) programs to expand access to high school CS courses such as CS Principles or CS1. CE courses are those that are taught by an approved teacher in a high school. Unlike other programs that offer credit by exams (e.g., College Board's Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate), the context for concurrent enrollment varies with state and insitutional policies. However, CE programs also hold potential for broadening participation in computing with flexibility in timelines and assessments in alignment with local school contexts. We will facilitate discussion around what it takes to develop a CS CE program including teacher qualifications, aligning courses to majors or other college requirements, partnering with high schools, assessment standards, etc. CE programs also have the potential to support departmental Broadening Participation in Computing plans. Computer with webcam and microphone recommended; handout on starting CS CE programs provided.

As primary and secondary computer science offerings expand across the United States and other countries, there is a growing demand for educators who can teach CS. One way to meet the demand is to include CS content and instruction in teacher preparation programs, at the inservice (practicing teachers) and/or preservice (becoming a teacher) levels. This workshop is designed for higher education faculty from CS and Education departments as well as teachers who support CS education programs and would like to learn more about creating pathways for preparing teachers to teach CS. The workshop will provide rationales for CS teacher preparation programs (including how to develop and sustain the programs), detail what teachers need to know and be able to do to teach CS, review dimensions and examples of existing programs, and share resources to support CS teacher preparation program development. Participants will have an opportunity in the last hour to work on developing a CS program for their institution and writing an action plan of 2-3 short term goals to support program development.

The use of video recording in the classroom has the potential to improve pre- and in-service teacher practice. This poster explores the use of video as a virtual-visit and professional development tool for computer science educators at the high school level. The Mobile Computer Science Principles (CSP) program offers a rigorous professional development (PD) and curriculum for new and experienced computer science teachers. With support from the National Science Foundation, the program was able offer a stipend to teachers who completed the research requirements, which for the online program included recording, reflecting on, and submitting a 10-minute unedited video of educators implementing a chosen lesson in their course. In addition to the video submission and reflection, teachers reviewed and commented on others videos in a protected online environment. Researchers have begun examining the teacher reflections and the comments. This poster presents preliminary common themes and findings from teacher video reflections, video comments, focus group data, and an end of course survey. Trends surrounding student engagement, teacher confidence, and teacher views of effective pedagogical strategies such as growth mindset and pair programming have emerged. Results show that while computer science educators can often feel isolated in their school environment, video serves as a powerful tool for promoting connectedness and individual reflection. Creating a space where teachers can reflect on their own teaching is an important professional development opportunity. Results show that while computer science educators can often feel isolated in their school environment, video serves as a powerful tool for promoting connectedness and individual reflection. The use of video helps teachers to how to develop and implement best teaching practices and pedagogical strategies effectively into their classroom.

With approximately 37,000 students entering college with an Advanced Placement CS Principles credit, students, parents, and teachers are wondering how that AP credit "counts" in college. In this panel, we will share perspectives from the College Board and higher education institutions of various pathways from CS Principles to a major in CS. While over 500 institutions have indicated they have credit and placement policies for CSP, they may vary quite a bit. (Credit gives students units of credit on their college record while placement means the AP credit can meet a particular course requirement.) For example, some institutions offer credit only, while others allow the course to count as part of a general education program, as a major elective, or even require CSP in the major. Panelists will share institutional context and reasoning behind their policies. Audience members will have a better understanding of the breadth of credit and placement options and considerations for their own institution.

The Mobile CS Principles (Mobile CSP) course is one of the NSF-supported, College Board-endorsed curricula for the new Computer Science Principles AP course. Since 2013, the Mobile CSP project has trained more than 700 teachers, and the course has been offered to more than 20,000 students throughout the United States. The organizing philosophy behind the Mobile CSP course is that student engagement in the classroom is the key to getting students, especially those traditionally underrepresented in CS, interested in pursuing further study and careers in CS. The main strategies used to engage Mobile CSP students are: (1) a focus on mobile computing throughout the course, taking advantage of current student interest in smartphones; (2) an emphasis on getting students building mobile apps from day one, by utilizing the highly accessible App Inventor programming language; and (3) an emphasis on building creative, 'socially useful' apps to get students thinking about ways that computing can help their communities. In this paper we present and summarize two years of data of various types (i.e., student surveys, teacher surveys, objective assessments, and anecdotal reports from students and teachers) to support the hypothesis that engagement of the sort practiced in the Mobile CSP course not only helps broaden participation in CS among hard-to-reach demographics, but also provides them with a solid grounding in computer science principles and practices.

The College of St. Scholastica, in partnership with Trinity College, adapted the Mobile Computer Science Principles (CSP) curriculum and professional development (PD) for delivery online to reach high school teachers unable to attend traditional face-to-face PD. The Mobile CSP curriculum and PD were designed to increase the number of schools offering computer science (CS) courses and to broaden the participation of traditionally underrepresented students such as females and minorities. A deliberate and intentional process was used that incorporates evidence-based practices for the online environment and professional development. A comparison of student and teacher results suggests that online PD can be a successful strategy for scaling computer science professional development. This paper will discuss not only these results but also challenges from the first year of the project and how they are being addressed in subsequent years. This report focuses primarily on the activities and accomplishments of the online PD, although data and accomplishments are provided for the Mobile CSP project as a whole where appropriate.

No abstract available.

CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) is an initiative sponsored by Google to promote Computer Science and Computational Thinking in high school and middle school curricula. In the past, workshops were offered in a face-to-face format; however, this left many K-12 computer science teachers unable to attend a workshop in their geographical region. During the 2013 round of funding, Google funded the creation of 4 workshops to be delivered in an online format, open to teachers across the United States and beyond. The panelists will share their experiences with development and deployment of large scale workshops that aim to fill the gap in professional development for K-12 computer science teachers.

The College Board's CS Principles (CSP) Project is an effort to develop a language-neutral, breadth-first advanced placement (AP) course in computer science. MobileCSP is an NSF-funded effort to train high school teachers to teach a CSP course that engages students in building mobile apps with App Inventor. The workshop will provide an overview of MobileCSP training including a hands-on introduction to App Inventor and a representative sample of CSP-based lesson plans, assessment materials, and other resources. MobileCSP training will be available for free to all high school teachers in summer 2014 through an online course. Attendees will be provided information about getting involved in the summer 2014 training. Target audience: high school teachers. Laptop required.

A recent focus in CS education has been at the K-12 level, developing CS and computational thinking skills. Oftentimes CS programs find it difficult to get into schools. At St. Scholastica a unique partnership exists between CS and Education. Together they sponsor workshops, write grants, conduct research and support a CSTA chapter. Activities have credibility with K-12 educators and involve subject matter experts. CS programs are able to reach their target audience, encouraging more teachers to include CS in their curriculum and to support their students in pursuing technical careers. Education programs have another way to partner with teachers and provide continuing education. The poster will share benefits for each program, collaborative activities, logistics and results.