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.

In a recent pilot study, we investigated computer science (CS) motivation among middle school students through multiple lenses: identity, interest, value, communal/agentic goal affordances and endorsements, sense of belonging, self-efficacy, and intentions to pursue CS. Our research question was: What are the motivational differences to learn computer science among boys and girls in middle school? We collected data from three U.S. sites (California, Michigan, and Illinois) in Spring 2025. We conducted an independent-samples t-tests to ascertain gender differences in each type of CS motivation. While significant results were found across three measures (value for CS, communal goal endorsements, and intentions to pursue CS), the remaining measures did not produce significant differences, indicating that boys and girls may have similar CS identities, interest in CS, sense of belonging in CS, and self-efficacy.

The Computer Science (CS) Professional Development (PD) Passport Alliance has created an addition to the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) member platform that provides the capability for CSTA members to track their CS PD-related activities in one convenient place. As part of our research effort supporting the platform development, one of our research questions was: Among teachers, what features or practices are associated with trusting in software that contains professional personally identifiable information (PII)? We conducted an exploratory mixed methods study (teacher interviews n = 17, teacher survey n = 495, program evaluation survey n = 494) to determine what enables trust in software that stores professionally identifiable information and which features were most important to teachers future use of the platform. We provide recommendations for the project implementation team (such as adding multi-factor authentication to the platform) to mitigate risks of a data breach (which our survey indicated would impact 98% of the respondents' perceptions).

Background. The Standards for Computer Science (CS) Teachers include indicators related to classroom practices. To assess teacher proficiency related to these indicators at scale, we created and pilot-tested a vignette-based measure of K-5 CS teacher proficiencies related to Standards 2, 4, and 5.

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.

Although there is extensive research on what makes K-12 teacher computer science (CS) professional development (PD) effective, little attention has been given to how PD providers prefer to collect and report data. A platform that met the needs of teachers while also simultaneously meeting the needs of funding bodies could be powerful in answering questions about participation and experiences in CS PD. Our research question for this study was: Which features and types of data do teachers find most important to include in a platform designed to record data related to their engagement with PD? We used an exploratory-sequential mixed methods approach that included focus groups and a survey created from an analysis of the data from the focus groups.

Problem. Understanding computer science (CS) teacher CS knowledge primarily relies on self-reported data from participants to understand the learning impact on teachers and improve teacher growth. There is currently a lack of quality instruments to determine where CS teachers need to improve their knowledge.