NSF Award
2434835
National priorities to broaden participation in computer science require exposure to rich computing activities in elementary school. This will enable students to successfully navigate a computer infused world or envision themselves as future computer scientists. Currently, the scarcity of experienced computing teachers at the elementary level and a lack of coherent computing curricula that supports incremental knowledge building can hinder this growth. This situation restricts the opportunities for teachers to connect, collaborate, and support each other in fostering a robust computing education within the school district and beyond. This project aims to establish and study a new Research Practice Partnership between the University of Colorado Boulder, Colorado School of Mines, and the Aurora Public Schools to address these issues in one of Colorado’s most racially and linguistically diverse districts. This new Research Practice Partnership (RPP) project is focused on fostering the success of computing educators at the elementary level. These educators will collaborate with researchers and district administrators to adapt proven middle school physical computing lessons using the Micro:bit, making them accessible and engaging for elementary students. The Micro:bit enables students to create tangible computing projects that bring code to life in the physical world. In partnership with homeroom teachers, the team will develop follow-on lessons that align with students' interests, highlighting the relevance of computing throughout their educational journey. The research goals of this project are 1) to understand how participation in this cohort influences elementary STEM teacher capacity to teach computing concepts and their sense of belonging as computing educators both within the district and community at large and 2) to explore how the creation of this new Research Practice Partnership supports the integration of computing into elementary classrooms. Ultimately, this program aims to nurture a community of computing educators who are confident, capable, and passionate about supporting elementary students to discover the world of computing and become leaders in computing education within the district.<br/><br/>Our research addresses two critical needs in computing education: the shortage of elementary computing teachers and the lack of a coherent, incremental student experience in elementary computing. The main research questions driving the study are 1) How do the co-design processes and routines develop elementary STEM teachers’ capacity to teach computing concepts and practices and their sense of belonging as computing educators? and 2) How do the proposed RPP partnership-building mechanisms help support the integration of computing into upper elementary classrooms? A design-based implementation research approach will be employed, interleaving co-design workshops, classroom implementations, and systematic data collection and analysis to investigate the research questions. Data will include pre-post identity and belonging surveys, video and artifacts from co-design workshops, reflective memos, exit tickets, and classroom observations. Over two years, the project will serve four elementary STEM teachers, four upper elementary homeroom teachers, and over 1000 upper elementary students. The project will produce two exemplar units that demonstrate how the storyline instructional model can effectively support elementary computing. A storyline is a sequence of lessons organized around student-generated questions from an anchoring phenomenon, promoting coherent, incremental knowledge building. This approach is designed to ensure that students understand how their current activities relate to previous and future lessons. Preliminary evidence will highlight the promise and feasibility of these units in engaging diverse elementary students in computing and fostering STEM interests. Additionally, the project aims to increase teachers' capacity to support students in computationally rich STEM investigations, creating a budding cohort of teacher leaders. Moreover, the project will provide a valuable case study on RPP formation using a recently developed framework, offering insights and best practices for the broader computing educational research community and helping ensure that the research-practice partnership between CU Boulder, Colorado School of Mines, and Aurora Public Schools matures and is ready for scale-up in future work. Resulting curricula, supports, and research findings will be shared with the district, and nationally with researchers and teachers via two high-traffic websites—OpenSciEd and Micro:bit Educational Foundation—and relevant conferences.<br/><br/>This project is funded through the Computer Science for All: Research and Research Practice Partnership (RPP) program.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
