This study investigated middle school students' learning experiences with a computer science and digital literacy (CSDL) curriculum, which was developed through the CS Pathways researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) project. The curriculum is based on students learning computer science (CS) through creating apps that serve community and social good. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from students in three urban districts: 1) 330 paired pre- and post-survey responses indicating students' confidence and interest in both learning CS and creating apps for social good; 2) 343 open-ended question responses in the post-survey probing into students' perceptions on learning CS after taking the course. Whether there were gender differences emerged from both data were also examined. The results showed that students' confidence in coding and creating apps for social good significantly increased after completing the course, regardless of gender. However, their interest in pursuing CS learning remained at a low level. Further analysis showed male students reported significantly stronger interest than female students. Qualitative analysis of the open-ended responses revealed that both male and female students appreciated the collaborative learning environment and learning coding through making apps. Male students did not like certain instructional approaches that their teachers used. Female students expressed their dislike of coding in general. We applied an interest development theory to further understand these results, which suggested that we consider the trajectory of students' interest development of CS.

This study examined student learning outcomes from a culturally responsive middle school computer science (CS) curriculum. The curriculum is based on students creating mobile apps serving community and social good. Two sets of data were collected from 294 students in three urban districts: (1) pre- and post- survey responses on their attitudes toward learning CS and creating culturally responsive apps; (2) the apps created by those students. The analyses of student apps indicated that students were able to create basic apps that connected with their personal interests, life experiences, class community, and the larger society. Paired sample t-tests of pre- and post- survey results indicated that students were significantly more confident in coding and creating community-focused apps after completing the course, regardless of gender and race. However, their interest in solving coding problems and continuing to learn CS decreased afterward. Analyses of students' attitudes by gender, grade, and race showed significant differences among some of those groups. Seventh grade students rated more positively on their attitudes than eighth graders. Students of different racial groups indicated significantly different attitudes, especially the Southeast Asian and African American groups. Male students also reported stronger confidence and interest and more positive attitudes overall than female students.

Effective professional learning communities (PLCs) are important in supporting teacher learning. This study investigated computer science (CS) teacher leaders' perspectives on the lessons and the challenges in supporting CS teachers through local PLCs. We purposefully selected ten CSTA chapters and conducted focus group interviews with the chapter leaders between 2020 and 2022. Our findings indicated that these PLCs offered social-emotional support, continual networking opportunities, and rich professional learning resources. Also, they amplified teachers' voices and supported CS teachers' professional identity building. To engage CS teachers, the teacher leaders built trust, collaborated with other PLCs or organizations, and set an inclusive PLC culture. These PLCs had challenges in recruitment, leadership development and transition and building group identity.

In this Research-to-Practice Full Paper, we report on CS Pathways, a middle school computer science (CS) curriculum developed as part of a researcher-practitioner partnership among two public universities and three urban school districts in the Northeast USA. The curriculum serves middle school students to develop apps for social impact. The partnership focuses on bridging the gap between STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) and community and gender gap within STEM. The project is based on Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP), which includes the importance of recognizing students’ culture in all facets of learning. The project employs a researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) model, which recognizes that transformational change can occur in educational ecosystems that connect research, policy, practice, and community work.The project curriculum was collaboratively developed by CS researchers, teacher-practitioners, and school administrators. Middle school students develop their own apps that support socially relevant activities in their communities. Using the RPP process, continuous feedback from researchers, teacher-practitioners, and students shaped the curriculum design. Key feedback was collected via one-on-one meetings with the teacher-practitioners, which bridged the visions and knowledge among different groups of the project partners.The curriculum includes the areas of computing and society, digital tools and collaboration, computing systems, and computational thinking. The curriculum helps students develop a critical consciousness of the role they can play in affecting their communities through computing, and empower them to move beyond simply learning to code [1]. The curriculum strives to demonstrate how to integrate computing across middle school subjects in a culturally-responsive way and spread a powerful message of Computer Science for All. This paper advocates for the need for culturally-responsive computing, describes how it is integrated into teachers’ instruction, and presents the CS Pathways curriculum design.

The recent pandemic has resulted in challenges to the prioritization of CS curriculum and strained the structures that support and grow the professional development and identity building of the teachers who implement it. In this poster we examine how local chapters of a national CS teacher advocacy organization (the CSTA) support their members during a time of transition and change. Using focus group data collected from an ongoing multi-year longitudinal research project, we tried to better understand the challenges that these entities faced as their normal structures of communication and outreach were closed off, and how such challenges might affect the perceptions of the role that local chapters play in supporting the continued development of their members, including their identity as CS teachers.

This poster shares our experience of engaging middle school teachers in a collaborative design of a computer science and digital literacy (CSDL) curriculum through a researcher and practitioner partnership (RPP) among two public universities and three urban school districts in the Northeast USA. The project used the co-design approach to facilitate curriculum development and foster professional learning. In this poster, we introduce the co-design process, the developed curriculum, and teachers' professional learning experiences. Preliminary results indicate that the co-design approach supplemented with one-one-on coaching has not only facilitated the curriculum development but also fostered professional learning and collective capacity building for CS education.

Motivation: Recent efforts to expand K-12 computer science education highlight the great need for well-prepared computer science (CS) teachers. Teacher identity theory offers a particular conceptual lens for us to understand computer science teacher preparation and professional development. The emerging literature suggests that teacher identity is central to sustaining motivation, efficacy, job satisfaction, and commitment, and these attributes are crucial in determining teacher retention. While the benefits associated with a strong sense of teacher identity are great, teachers face unique challenges and tensions in developing their professional identity for teaching computer science.

This pilot study explores the impact of the CS Pathways professional development (PD) program on the teachers' self-efficacy in teaching a middle school computer science and digital literacy (CSDL) curriculum. The main goal of the study is to investigate the attributes that describe the teachers' self-efficacy after their first-year participation in the PD. A total of 19 middle school teachers from two states, NY and MA, attended the CS Pathway PD program and completed the end-of-year survey pertaining to self-efficacy in CSDL; more than half accepted the interview to help further understand their perceptions (n=10). Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to study the attributes of the teachers' self-efficacy. The preliminary results capture teachers' self-efficacy patterns, which inform the PD and indicate its effectiveness and challenges.

This paper reports a study of CSTA chapter leaders' percep-tions of their chapter's roles in supporting computer science (CS) teachers. Intent on understanding the impact of member-ship in a professional organization on the development of teacher professional identity, our research revealed that in the chapter leaders' perceptions local CSTA chapters had an im-portant role in supporting the development of their mem-bers' professional identity as a CS teacher.

This paper presents an experience report from an NSF-funded researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP) project. Based on a collaboration among two public research universities and three urban school districts in the Northeast USA, the goal of the project is to establish an institutionalized middle school computer science curriculum in the districts. The CS curriculum incorporates digital literacy skills as an integral aspect of learning computer science, and is based on students developing mobile apps that provide social and community good. Here, we share our professional learning process during the project's first year, which had been developed iteratively and dynamically adjusted to a remote format in response to exigencies of Spring 2020. The paper includes analysis of three data sets from teacher-participants: (1) their questions about the nature of the project, which we categorized into three levels: project, district and teacher levels. These questions bridge the visions and knowledge among different groups of the project partners; (2) analysis of semi-structured interview conversations with more than half of the teacher-participants; and (3) teacher survey responses. Our findings include two recommendations: that RPP projects elicit teacher questions to illuminate the three levels identified, and use strategies that engage teachers in designing a professional learning process for teaching computer science.

Current efforts to expand K-12 CS education highlight the great need of well-prepared CS teachers with a strong sense of professional identity. This study proposes the CS teacher identity scale, a quantitative instrument for measuring CS teachers' sense of professional identity. The survey was piloted through a national teacher survey and tested for its reliability, dimensionality, and validity. The analysis reveals a four-factor solution for the CS teacher identity scale.

Recent work has demonstrated the power of providing relevant, meaningful contexts for computer science to broaden participation. In this poster, we present the design and evaluation of a one-week App Inventor summer camp for middle school students with an explicit focus on addressing local community needs. We recruited community partners to present their organization's work to students, and then we supported students in developing apps that would support these organizations' missions. Students successfully developed apps that were designed to address community issues. Students developed apps on topics ranging from local farmers' markets, healthy food and nutrition apps, invasive species, local trees, to providing users with information about recycling. At the end of the workshop, we conducted an in-depth interview study to examine its impact on students' attitudes and perceptions toward computer science, and supplemented this with results from project evaluation. Our results indicate that students had positive experience in learning, creating and sharing real apps for solving community problems. Focusing on local community needs can also help to motivate students' interest not only in creating apps as well as in learning more about computer science. After the camp, students became more confident in creating apps as well as in using apps to solve community problems, and the camps were successful in welcoming a diverse set of students into computing.

We describe a three-stage model of computing instruction beginning with a simple, highly scaffolded programming environment (Kodu) and progressing to more challenging frameworks (Alice and Lego NXT-G). In moving between frameworks, students explore the similarities and differences in how concepts such as variables, conditionals, and looping are realized. This can potentially lead to a deeper understanding of programming, bringing students closer to true computational thinking. Some novel strategies for teaching with Kodu are outlined. Finally, we briefly report on our methodology and select preliminary results from a pilot study using this curriculum with students ages 10-17, including several with disabilities.

The Disciplinary Commons (DC) is a model of teacher professional development that encourages members of the group to reflect upon their teaching practices, develop a community, and, more broadly, to become more scholarly about their teaching. The DC involves a series of monthly meetings where university faculty members examine their course in detail while producing a course portfolio. Evaluation of the early DC's suggests that they successfully created a sense of community and sharing among the participants. We have adapted the original model to a new audience, high school computing teachers. The adapted model maintains the key aspects of the original model while adding two new, important goals for this new audience: improving recruitment and creating community. The high school teacher audience particularly needed strategies for recruiting students and was in greater need of community. We present evaluation evidence suggesting that we achieved the design goals in a replicable model, including a substantial increase (over 300%) in recruiting students.

Quality computer science (CS) teachers are critical for secondary computing education. In addition to increasing the number of high school (HS) CS teachers, there is a great need for supporting those teachers to grow and stay as committed, effective teachers. Recent literature on teacher education suggests that teachers' sense of commitment and (other aspects of) teaching profession is tightly linked with their teacher identity. However, the current educational system in the U.S. does not provide typical contexts for teachers to build a sense of identity as CS teachers. This study is intended to gain an initial understanding of CS teachers' perceptions about their own professional identity and potential factors that might contribute to these perceptions. Our findings indicate that current HS teachers teaching CS courses do not necessarily identify themselves as CS teachers. They have different perceptions related to CS teaching. Four kinds of factors can contribute to these perceptions: teachers' educational background and certification, CS curriculum and department hierarchy, availability of CS teacher community, and teachers' perceptions about the field of CS.

This is a summary of my thesis work, which examines the sense of identity HS CS teachers hold and explores ways of supporting their identity development through a professional development program focusing on community building and teacher reflection.

In this paper, we describe our experience in supporting high school CS teachers by building a local community through the Disciplinary Commons for Computing Educators (DCCE) project. The DCCE project is an effort to explore ways of supporting these CS teachers through the creation of a local community and by promoting teacher reflection. DCCE achieved this goal through an academic-year-long program where a cohort of CS teachers engaged in collaborative portfolio creation and peer observation of classroom teaching. We describe the design of the DCCE activities and present preliminary results from initial evaluations. Our short-term evaluations indicate that this project was successful in creating a supportive community, promoting teacher reflection, and advancing change in teaching practices among a group of computing educators.

This paper presents the findings of an exploratory, qualitative study revealing computing instructors' experience in adopting curriculum innovations. We interviewed eight instructors a year after they attended workshops on several innovative introductory Computer Science (intro CS) courses at undergraduate level. The interview was designed to elicit the extent to which instructors had adopted or adapted what they learned from the workshops, and what drove or prevented their efforts to make curriculum change. The results of this study reveal that the adoption and adaptation of computing curriculum innovations in new situations may involve systemic change affecting instructors, departments and institutions as a whole. The findings of this study suggest a list of questions that a computing instructor might ask before committing to a new innovation. We also consider implications of this study for disseminating computing education innovations.

Computing education suffers from low enrollment and a lack of diversity. Both of these problems require changes across the entire computing education pipeline. The "Georgia Computes!" alliance, funded by the National Science Foundation's Broadening Participation in Computing program, seeks to improve the computing education pipeline in Georgia. "Georgia Computes!" is having a measurable effect at each stage of the pipeline, but has not yet shown an impact across the whole pipeline.

Computer Science (CS) education researchers hope their research has real impact on teaching practices. Developers of innovative curricula and tools for CS education want teachers to adopt their new approaches. What convinces a CS teacher to change and adopt something new--or not? This paper explores factors that influence CS teachers' adoption and change. We studied our workshop participants to determine factors influencing their decision on whether to adopt a new CS curriculum. The results from our study indicate that multiple factors, some surprising, influence CS teachers' adoption. Our findings suggest that teacher excitement in a new approach drives adoption, while more organizational or social issues inhibit adoption.

We have developed a CS1 curriculum that uses a robotics context to teach introductory programming [1]. Core to our approach is that each student has their own personal robot. Our robot and software have been specifically developed to support the needs of a CS1 curriculum. We frame traditional problems (robot control) in terms that are personal, relevant, and fun. Initial trial classes have shown that our approach is successful and adaptable.

The deformation must be controlled during machining, especially for the thin-walled workpiece. Fixture layout and clamping force are the major two aspects that influence the degree and distribution of machining deformation. In this paper, a dual optimization model of fixture layout and dynamic clamping force has been established for machining the thin-walled workpiece. First, an optimal fixture layout is generated by considering the deformation degree and distribution. Thereafter, dynamic clamping force are optimized based on the optimal fixture layout. The finite element method is used to analyze the workpiece deformation. A genetic algorithm is developed to solve the optimization model. Finally, an example is used to illustrate that a satisfactory result has been obtained, which is far superior to the experiential one. This optimization method can reduce the machining deformation effectively and improve the distribution condition.