Exploring CSEdResearch with Monica McGill
In this interview with Monica McGill, we discuss the nuances of identities in relation to conversations around equity, the importance of having many pathways in CS, designing games for purposes beyond pure entertainment, codeveloping CS courses with students, how researchers and K-12 practitioners can use CSEdResearch.org, our thoughts on bridging the gap between research and practice, opportunities for the field to continue to grow, the influence of outside forces on K-12 education, and so much more.
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Welcome back to another episode of the
CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast is either an
episode with a guest or multiple guests
or a solo episode where i unpack some
scholarship in relation to computer
science education in this week's
particular episode i'm interviewing
monica mcgill we discussed the nuances
of identities in relation to
conversations around equity the
importance of having multiple pathways
in cs designing games for purposes
beyond pure entertainment co-developing
cs courses with students our researchers
and k12 practitioners can use
csedresearch.org which i do highly
recommend checking out our thoughts on
bridging the gap between research and
practice opportunities for the field to
continue to grow the influence of
outside forces on k-12 education and so
much more as always the show notes
include links to more resources related
to this particular episode you can find
that at jaredaleri.com or by simply
clicking the link in the app that you're
listening to this on in addition to the
resources and all the podcast episodes
on my website there's hundreds if not
thousands of free resources related
computer science education on my website
including a link to boot up pd.org which
is the non-profit that i work for where
i create 100 free elementary coding
curriculum so make sure you check that
out if you haven't but with all that
being said we will now begin with an
introduction by monica i'm the founder
and ceo of the nonprofit organization
cssresearch.org and i'm also a parent of
three adult children two little furries
and the spouse of a really good guy so
if you read a story about your journey
in cs education what would the titles of
the chapters be so chapter one would be
choosing my major computer science or
music chapter two providing code
correctness at the national computer
security center chapter three becoming a
contractor with computer sciences
corporation
chapter four stepping out of the
professional space to raise kids chapter
five hey how about teaching full-time
while getting a doctorate as a single
parent chapter six how about teaching
full-time in a teaching college and
doing lots of research because i'm
curious and i want to make the world a
better place and chapter 7 no let's just
do research do it well and help make the
world a better place that way i love the
titles of those chapters what are some
of the interesting things that you've
learned along the way in those chapters
well there is no doubt that i'm still
learning a lot every single day which i
think is a good thing one of the things
i've learned is that many of my core
values were actually shaped as a kid so
the ideas around fairness and equity
were part of my parents beliefs and then
those beliefs may not always manifest in
what they did but for me it was
their impact i think in their
perspectives that really shaped those
thoughts that i have now
one is that i watched my mom struggle to
go into the professional working world
during a time where women still weren't
doing that as much and another is that
despite the fact that you know i have
two brothers my parents were very
insistent that no matter what i was
going to get the same opportunities that
they did and this is a time where
you know in the news the ongoing battle
one that i remember is that girls were
you know fighting for the right to
actually be able to play sports in high
schools
and k-8 as well and the arguments
against that were just at that age i
thought that they were so stupid but i
think that that had impacts on me too
that why
can't girls play sports in school
because that's why are we even asking
this type of question yeah and what's
the equivalent type of questions that
we're asking today yes there are so many
and the same types of arguments and the
people who now you know would have their
girls in sports in k-12 they're making
arguments about other ways that we need
to work to keep people in their place
yeah it's really interesting the overall
discourse and how it shifts we do make
progress over time but it's a struggle
to get there and it takes sometimes
decades before the thing that we're
fighting for just becomes commonplace
yeah exactly i'm not sure that we always
have to have these types of struggles
but i also understand that other people
were raised differently than i was so
you know they have their own experiences
that they're coming from i don't always
understand their perspective but
i also feel like want change to happen
quicker in many ways right if we were to
zoom in on that topic and specifically
think about it in relation to computer
science what do you think as a field we
are struggling with to discuss or
explore or understand in what context so
i guess like what are some of the
debates in the field that we're having
that we don't really have an
understanding of whether it's in
relation to equity or something else so
like if we were to go the equity route
we think of like the k-port centers
report that they had on the
national survey of cs teachers there's
like 40 of cs educators don't think we
should discuss equity in the cs
classroom so like that might be
a potential topic to zoom in on does
that provide some context to what i was
thinking yeah it does i think that the
word
equity
scares some people when really all we're
talking about is making sure that all
kids no matter their background those
kids that are in your classroom should
be taught computer science in a way that
is most effective for them and i think
you know with a politically charged
environment that we're in right now too
that term equity just using that we just
have to be careful with that i just had
pushback on something that we produced
for somebody a few weeks ago and i was
surprised that they thought we focused
too much on equity my question is
why
are you not focusing on equity because
the students that you're trying to serve
are very very diverse and if you're not
considering that in all aspects of your
curriculum development how you deliver
it how it's received by the students and
really considering how it's received by
the students then that's a real problem
yeah there's also this tendency
whether it be in curricula or discourse
for people to kind of essentialize and
group and
say oh well you are of a particular
identity therefore you're going to like
this particular aspect of cs education
and so we create these like many flavors
of it but it's like hey but there's the
intersection of those and then there's
also just because i am this identity
doesn't mean i'm like somebody else who
has that identity as well there's much
more nuances than just that yeah and
that's really interesting when you
brought that up because i think about
this often too which is more recently
this idea of gender and what it means
and you know i've been driven to look at
gender because of the lack of women in
tech
and how it's impacted me in both
industry and also in academia and i
think that i'm very very glad that the
k-12 students are more accepting and are
being raised more environment where
things aren't always just masculine or
feminine you know traditionally
masculine or feminine who belongs in
those groups and i do wonder you know
just thinking at more recently that
maybe that's not the question we should
be asking because what are we missing
when
quote unquote traditionally female or
feminine values or ideas or likes and
dislikes
are incorporated into a curriculum or
incorporated into tech because we know
that traditionally you know a man may
have some of those tendencies and vice
versa so maybe the question isn't really
about gender itself but really the
personalities and the characteristics
and the likes and dislikes of that
individual person and leaving those
labels yeah maybe right now in 2021
they're still more grouped by gender but
that's going to look like and if we
don't really focus on the underlying
personalities and characteristics and
likes and dislikes of people of students
then how are we going to know 10 years
from now is going to be so much harder
to disaggregate just based on gender
right yeah and then myself being
non-binary like within the capital t
trans umbrella like there's so many
different variants of it whether you're
gender fluid gender queer or trans
masculine trans feminine etc like when
you throw that into the mix then that
just really like
disrupts everything else that has been
talked about for many years in cs one of
the problems with it is like even in the
collection of data in the k12 space in
particular is it's presented as this
binary so then what happens about that
one or two percent of people who
identify outside of that and then what
about like females who tend to do more
masculine things and males who tend to
do more feminine things but they
identify as male or female etc like
there's so many more nuances to it i
wish we had a better system for actually
getting into individual interests rather
than just going with groups and saying
oh well you are this identity therefore
you're gonna feel this way or like this
thing yeah definitely i agree i hope
this is a turning point i hope i love
the idea that people can express who
they are
not necessarily based on cultural
expectations but based on who they are
and i just think that as researchers we
really need to start thinking about what
does that mean for research if we're
just classifying people a certain way
yeah if we were to
look at the k-12 space and you were to
design like an ideal version of cs
education specifically for people who
wanted to eventually major in computer
science what do you think that that
would look like that pathway i think
that that you know is a good
segway from what we were just talking
about as well i don't think that for me
alone to design that i couldn't do that
i think that especially as a white woman
who was raised and grew up in more a in
a different culture right i would need
lots of voices at the table with me to
actually design that in a way that would
be effective for all sorts of different
kids and i think the other thing with
that is we have to be careful about
shaping k through 12
for just students to go in and be cs
majors one because cs is going into
every field it really won't matter it'll
be like math and writing right even at
the college level but also there's a
whole other side of that which is to
look beyond occupations for k-12
learners and what do they really need to
know about technology it's not just
about programming and algorithms and how
they work but the good things and what
it can do and we also have to talk about
the realistic aspect of that and what
the harms are going to be to people as
well yeah i really appreciate that
answer my follow-up question was gonna
be okay so how would that compare and
contrast for like students who knew for
a fact they weren't gonna go in to see
us for a major and like didn't want to
do that it's like one of the things i
talk about frequently on here is i
proposed my wife by modding the video
game minecraft so i learned java and
eclipse ide and i changed the game added
in all sorts of stuff that i knew that
she would love and then i proposed to
her through the mod that i made like
that was not at all related to a career
yes i could have gone into a career in
that but i just wanted to propose to my
wife and like that's an example of like
a fun thing that you can do just in your
leisure and you don't have to
necessarily head that direction for a
career so i think it's important for cs
educators to really consider this
because we are the exception in that we
went into this field because we
obviously it resonated with us in some
way and we can't necessarily expect that
it's going to resonate with everybody in
the same way absolutely yeah i
definitely agree with that and i think
the point that you're making too about
something else drove you or helped you
right realize that it was something that
you're interested in that same concept
can be used with children as well yeah
so the last district that i was in was a
k-8 district and the kids had like grade
languages to choose from so they could
have done swift and worked on either
xcode or swift playgrounds they could
have done ruby and sonic pi to code
music they could have done javascript
with khan academy to create like art and
animation or they could have done
scratch to create like games and stories
and whatnot and one of the reasons why i
almost every semester i kept like adding
in new languages was because there were
groups of students who were like hey i'm
really interested in whatever it was but
the current set of languages and
platforms don't really allow me to do
that i want to explore this more so i
would expand the platforms to allow them
to do that because there are some kids
who are like i love making music but
scratch is very limited on the kinds of
music that you can make so it's like
great let's do sonic pie that gives you
some more opportunities and whatnot so i
was trying to match the platform in the
language to what the kids actually
wanted to explore in the class i think
it's a fantastic idea i think that you
really have to consider what your
students actually want and also then
coupling with that the objectives that
you want them to learn for that part of
the day or curriculum so one of the
things that i thought was really cool
about your background is like you have
experience with like game design
computer science etc like those
sometimes are two different things like
you might get into like an after school
club where like all i'm doing is
designing games and you're like setting
up parameters but not necessarily
actually engaging in the cs side of
things like you might be building a
world you might be like animating the
characters but you're not really diving
into
the programming behind it etc i'm
curious what you wish more like cs
educators kind of understood about
teaching cs through game design so first
of all i would say that it's really fun
and engaging it's engaging for the kids
this thing more engaging for the
teachers
it's definitely student centered not
teacher centered well i guess it could
be teacher centered as well depending on
how you set up the parameters around
what they're actually creating so it can
take so many different forms and
there's so many different aspects of
learning that are incorporated into
games especially if it's a
collaboratively designed and developed
game what about game design outside of
games purely for entertainment so when i
was looking at your background you had
some really cool games that weren't
necessarily games for the sake of
playing a video game yeah that's a good
question from teaching for so many years
like seven or eight years in the game
design area i definitely came to
understood that all games are play and
all games teach us something so even if
it's quote unquote and entertaining
versus quote-unquote a serious game
which i really don't like that term but
it's teaching us something so you know
there's studies just on regular games
where it's been shown to reduce anxiety
of players or
it provides an escape from reality for a
little bit they're having you know
difficulties in their life or something
and it can shape our behavior just those
games that we don't think that
traditionally teach something but they
actually are so i think if you look at
that perspective that all games teach us
something those things that are taught
can be
explicitly laid out or
just in the background so if you
explicitly start to lay things out you
need to incorporate those things somehow
in the game mechanics but that shouldn't
take away from the play it shouldn't
take away from the fun factor because
ultimately games light up something in
our brain we keep going back to them
because they light up something in our
brain this is why animals play as well
right you can see
an animal we were just talking about
dogs right so our dogs will pick up a
ball and they'll play or they'll flip
something around or they'll chase each
other around the table or whatever the
case is and they're playing because it
lights up something in their brain so
the same aspects are true for game
design and development that you're still
trying to get that piece of brain to
light up and then you're just putting in
oh by the way this character has
diabetes and he or she or
they start to eat more of the junk food
bad things happens to little coco the
monkey in our case so
you know it's teaching in a subtle way
but very very fun way that's the
behaviors that we want the player to
adapt are actually coming out through
the play yeah i really appreciate that
my wife is also a gamer and she's a
therapist and one of the things that she
has looked into is some like scholarship
on
games that are intentionally designed to
improve mental and physical health and
whatnot and it's fascinating research
the things that people are exploring
there's a lot out there you know that's
kind of why i shy away from the term
serious games because it's just really
games that teach something else other
than just you know teaching us a it's
teaching us b c and d for example if we
were to use like video games as like a
model or as a metaphor how has it kind
of informed your own approach to either
curriculum or like experience design
like lesson or like a class
and i asked this because like some
people have gone like the gamification
route others have gotten like more of a
metaphor for like exploring a world or
exploring a domain etc so i have an
interesting story to tell about this
because i
actually took one of my theory classes
in our game design curriculum and made
it a game there was no syllabus it was a
game handbook there were many different
things that
the players the students could choose so
all that was written in the aspect of
play and as an experiment i ran this i
think two semesters before i actually
left that department but there was
pushback from students
and
one of the things that you know
something students really excelled
because it was very open even though you
had to do certain things right you had
to go a certain path and to get to place
x right do your exploratory work you
would have to do these certain things so
many of these things didn't have
deadlines they were when you wanted to
do them and some of them did so it was a
combination but basically you had to
rack up i think 27 000 points out of
thirty three thousand to
get an a if you will and i was really
surprised that
some students just were so uncomfortable
with that and uh what i observed and
also talked to them about that the k
k-12 experience in the u.s has set them
up for certain
paradigm for learning and when they get
into
college then to break that paradigm is a
little bit
mind-blowing for them
and it was really a shame right because
even though they were all into games and
they loved playing games and they loved
making games here this was learning
opportunity was presented in a game and
they're like no we don't we don't want
this so it was very very eye opening for
me to put this in perspective of how we
actually train students to behave in
classrooms and in education and then
shifting that is just not really
feasible to do at the undergraduate
level yeah that's a really important
point it sounds a lot like an interview
that i did with john stapleton so he
loves playing tabletop role-playing
games and so like dungeons and dragons
the idea of being a guild master a
dungeon master and having it so that you
are co-developing the world with
students as they explore and you are
kind of like creating some rules and
parameters to work through but they
ultimately choose their own path and
whatnot you might have some different
landmarks that people can see and they
might go to it or they might explore
different uncharted territory etc and
the kind of support that you have to
provide even in the k-12 space with
students like this it's really
interesting like what i was saying with
my class being able to pick different
languages if there were 30 kids in the
class there would be 30 different
projects because it could go in any
direction they wanted to and for some
students that was very uncomfortable
even the younger kids like in the
primary grades because they weren't used
to that they were taught for years
here's the thing i needed get an a and i
would sometimes have like the middle
school kids in particular be like hey
what do i have to do to get an a in this
class and i'm like well one i hope you
never ask that question again because
like
the thing you got to do is just like
explore what you're interested in and
i'll help you along the way etc but it
was
born to them at that level and it's
honestly with my experience not until
doctoral studies when i was finally
asked what do you want to study and what
i didn't understand is why it took like
decades to get to the point where i
finally was asked okay how do you want
to develop your own expertise and i
think that's something that should be
done from pre-k all the way up rather
than waiting until the very end yeah
yeah exactly and that's why when i
answered that question too i used
undergraduate because
right post-undergraduate
you may be
in a position where you're doing your
master's or phd where you can actually
choose that path of learning yeah so
i understand the reason for the patterns
that are being developed in k212 but i
also understand that maybe it's time to
revisit those a little bit too if you
were to wave a magic wand what's one
kind of change that you might make in
that area i haven't thought about this
as much because i've been focusing on
different things you know when i went
through this process and had this
experience with the students it really
taught me something about these patterns
that they've been locked into for so
many years i think that there's always a
balance between
making sure that you teach them what
needs to be taught and also providing
them a way to do that that is
interesting for them i'm not quite sure
you know what may work well in one
setting may not work in another setting
so i think it's all individual to that
particular classroom so yeah that's
something that i yeah i haven't really
spent too much time on it's definitely
an interesting problem though to think
about
yeah i like to think of like broad
hypotheticals but also actionable things
there's a tendency to
focus on too much of the vision without
action behind the vision especially in
relation to equity we talk a lot but we
don't necessarily get much done in that
area in my opinion yeah yeah definitely
so
thinking about your
journey and where you are now with
focusing on research i'm curious if
somebody had never heard of
csedresearch.org how would you describe
it to them like what is
cssresearch.org so csnresearch.org is a
us and our mission is to improve k-12
education for all children by enabling
and disseminating exemplary
evidence-driven research that supports
all learners so that's part of our
mission statement and what that really
means is that we look at ways in which
we can produce high quality equity
focused education research for k-12 cs
education that will enable teachers
to actually put into practice ways in
which are most effective for their
particular students to learn but we're
also focused on
enabling the researchers to do the same
so all the more novice fields we have
new researchers coming into the fields
there are 55 million children in the us
alone who will eventually likely have cs
education starting in kindergarten but
there's so much we don't know and
there's just so much research that needs
to be done that
as a novice field we're starting to grow
but the need is going to be great for
education research in the future so one
thing i want to add is that
cssearch.org actually originated from
an nsf grant it's a long way to this
where we are today but i had an nsf
grant with my partner research partner
adrian decker and we received that grant
in 2016
and what it was supposed to be was more
focused on informal education but as
people
may know that in 2016 that's when the
obama administration came out and said
basically cs for everybody and that was
a path that they were going to start to
work towards so that changed a little
bit the trajectory of our research we
started looking at
k through formal curriculum as well and
as part of that we
took what we were investigating and put
it on the website so
the survey instruments to actually
measure whether or not classroom
practices were effective and then the
actual research articles that had been
written on k12cs education so we've
decided to share that with everybody in
the form of our website and we named the
website csnresearch.org so then when i
decided to leave academia and focus
solely on research i just went ahead and
kept that name for the organization as
well yeah i
looked at a lot of the resources over
the summer and there were like
frameworks or heuristics to kind of
think through hey if you're going to be
studying cs education like if you're
going to start an rpp or something
here's some things to think through or
some questions to consider i think if
anyone hasn't checked it out and they're
interested in cs education research they
definitely should visit it what about
four k-12 educators the educators we're
working on a few things one of the
things that we're working on right now
actually is and when i say we we have
three full-time staff members right now
and one part-time person so we're small
but we're definitely growing and we are
working on a project that looks at
problems of practice that teachers
experience or work with michelle friend
at university of nebraska omaha and
we're looking at putting those problems
of practice on our website so we have
this compendium of over 400 responses
from across the world mostly in the us
though we're going to share those with
everybody and then teachers can come and
upvote or downvote the problems of
practice that they're experiencing so
we're trying to fill that gap between
practice and research by sharing with
researchers what practitioners want
mostly want answered and then likewise
we're looking at ways in which we can
bring the research more closely to
teachers and we've had other projects
where this was with the computer science
teachers association where we worked
with just a very small set of teachers
and we brought researchers in and they
discussed research and they developed
teacher practice briefs for other
teachers based on certain topics that
were equity focused and that was really
a cool experience as well so we're
hoping to scale that up in the future
but that's kind of that space where
we're trying to
make sure that the research is useful to
practitioners as much as possible and
the practitioners have a voice in their
research as well yeah i really
appreciate that one of the
reasons why i tend to alternate between
like an interview with a guest or
multiple guests and then like a solo
episode where i unpack scholarship is
because there is that disconnect where
like academics talk to academics k-12
practitioners talk to k-12 practitioners
and they don't really share well here's
what i'm struggling with or here's what
we understand based on research etc so i
like to
kind of bridge that gap with those
episodes but then there's also the
question that i'd like to ask guests
that i'll just go ahead and ask you
right now is like what do you wish there
was more research on that could inform
your own practices i need more time
really
i'm not going to get that but i wish i
had more time to actually read more
about what other people are writing and
what are the research that they're
conducting as well as ways in which to
conduct the research like the whole open
research movement pre-registration of
studies all that is
very very interesting to me but i often
don't have the time to actually take a
deep dive into it like i would like to
so i'm not sure beyond that yeah it'd be
interesting if more
researchers actually like shared
podcasts of themselves talking about a
publication yeah so i'll just bank off
of that too so that is true and i think
that there are many ways that we think
traditionally sharing research in
publication venues like conferences and
journals helps get the word out to other
researchers it sure would be nice if all
of them required a like key takeaway
section yeah that could be boxed out
that people could go directly to who
need that information so not just
teachers but practitioners in general
and k-12 so whether it's you know
superintendents at the state level or
curriculum designers at the district
level that they could quickly
thumb through it
and get those key takeaways i know we
have lots of limitations around stuff
but that would be use really useful i
think more meta analysis is useful as
well so that instead of having 40 papers
that someone has to read that may not
read it for example curriculum designer
at the k-12 level they could actually go
to one paper that summarizes you know 40
or 50 papers and
that i think would be
very meaningful
and it is meaningful i've seen them out
there so as we grow as a field as our
quality of research improves i'm hoping
that there are going to be more high
quality meta studies as well that help
us pinpoint what those best practices or
at least most promising practices are
for teachers yeah i like that my mention
of the podcast is like i had a
publication come out in a handbook
earlier this year and i wrote it three
years ago so like it took that long
between like first copy submission to
actual print copy in hand like it
shouldn't take that long but then even
just like you what you're saying it's
hard to stay up to date on everything
but it's easier to listen to podcasts
while you're like driving to and from a
location like if people were to actually
just share here's a little summary of
this particular article that i wrote and
if it's an audio form that makes it a
whole lot easier to digest yeah we have
to bring the research to where the
people are not force the people to come
where the research is so i think
podcasts are good social media is good
even tick tock i think that exploring
that lots of teachers are out on tick
tock right so how do we get them that
information that they need in in tiny
tiny chunks that they'll learn from and
hopefully adapt as class and practices
yeah especially considering that a lot
of research is behind a paywall like
that could help democratize things and
make it easier to access yes absolutely
generally speaking how do you practice
or iterate on your own abilities like
whether it's in research or in education
or cs um well i'm not teaching anymore
so i've been focusing mainly on research
and then also growing the organization
which requires a different set of skill
sets so
some of my time has been learning more
about nonprofit organizations and how
they run and
the other part is often conducting the
research so i try to build into the
research my time to actually look at
other people's research and other best
practices that are going on for research
so that i can make sure that my research
and our team's research is
where it needs to be yeah i really like
that that's something that i have kind
of forced myself to do with the podcast
by like doing those unpacking
scholarship episodes where i look at
other scholarship it's forcing me to
think through and read other people's
material so that can inform the research
that i am doing so that definitely
resonates with me i think that this also
brings up the idea of doing interesting
qualitative studies because you can
actually talk to people and really learn
what's going on with them right
not just a number but actually behind
the numbers and see what they're
interested in learning what they need to
know for their jobs and teaching their
kids what kind of kids that they have
all those situations that we don't
really know as well because we're not in
the k-12 classroom and some of us have
never been in the k-12 classroom so you
know as researchers how do we really
start to understand
what is happening on the ground i think
that's a really important thing to
really focus on how do you prevent the
burnout that can come with
being a researcher in
education space because there's always
more to explore especially when you're
investigating equity related stuff and
that can get pretty heavy pretty quick
depending on what you're looking into so
like how do you prevent that burnout
that can come with it well for me
personally because i had just left
academia so for me doing the research
and the teaching in my mind being more
focused on the research i feel like and
some academics may understand this but
i left academia right because i was
working all the time interestingly
enough i was in a meeting this weekend a
virtual meeting and there were
physicians in the meeting and one
physician was like i was explaining how
someone on elsewhere works and he said
that this person works like an academic
because they're working all weekend
we're getting emails on the weekend
we're getting emails in the evening and
there's just no stopping and you know
they wanted to care for this person to
make sure this person was taking time
off and recouping and restoring
themselves so
for me leaving academia has been
good for me personally and it's allowing
me the opportunity to do research and
i'm trying very hard to have times that
i work in times that i don't work and if
i do work odd hours i'm you know
scheduling messages so they go out at
normal work time so somebody else
doesn't have to feel like they have to
respond at eight o'clock at night or on
the weekend there's a lot to do
and i try to focus on this
aspect that we're just one tiny spoke in
a wheel a very very very huge wheel and
you know if i can help other people on
that same wheel do the work that they're
trying to do and make that high quality
then you know hopefully it's about
sharing the opportunity to
make things better for this next
generation that's coming up yeah i
appreciate that answer having gone to
school with and been the kind of person
who never stops working like i have
learned the value of setting aside a
time to rest and
that i had to learn the hard way so for
anyone else who is also that kind of
individual i do recommend taking a break
like even if it's like at 5 p.m i set an
alarm and that's when i just shut my
brain down from working on this thing
and focus on family or whatever it makes
life a lot better yeah exactly so we've
also taken up hiking during the pandemic
one of the ways that we've been trying
to my husband and i have been trying to
get exercise while also not being able
to go to the gym anymore is
not going to gym i guess it is open now
but just to go out and enjoy nature and
go hiking take the dogs all that good
stuff yeah being in phoenix we actually
have quite a bit of hiking opportunities
around it's it's pretty nice so if
anyone has mountains nearby or hills i
highly recommend hiking as well
yeah definitely what about
recommendations for
like
overall improving equity and inclusion
in cs i think you know we touched on it
earlier but i think we need to really
define and redefine who is included and
who isn't thus based on
maybe
gender race and ethnicity but actually
taking into account the many different
factors that influence whether or not a
student wants to pursue computer science
further along the line and whatever it
is you know in high school or in college
or other alternatives to college as well
i think that would be probably one of
the things that i would
like to promote at that redefinition and
then you know looking at the research to
really understand
how that impacts those students those
particular students as individuals not
necessarily
all those other labels that we need to
put on we also have to recognize that
our tech industry is there is a dearth
of still women
and
people of various races and ethnicities
disabilities all of the things that have
left them to be excluded from that field
so you know it's kind of a fine line but
there's also you know opportunity to
grow think about things a little bit
differently because in a white male
oriented industry for 10 or 15 percent
of people to come in they're going to
adapt that culture that's already there
they're not going to be able to make the
change so
you know if we even look at the white
males that are excluded from the tech
industry and what characteristics they
have or personalities or likes and
dislikes they may be a welcome addition
into the tech industry in helping shape
that culture as well a different way to
think of things but i keep thinking
about where we are and where we need to
go and how little is changing right now
still and it's just a very very slow
change as we discussed earlier as well
that
maybe it is an opportunity for us to
think about things a little bit
differently yeah i like the way you
frame that especially if i think of like
video game culture in particular which
is like a more narrow subset of like the
broader cs culture like it's very much
like a bro mentality and you from what i
understand of people who go into the
industry is like you have to assimilate
into that dominant culture you're not as
somebody who might be underrepresented
within that space if you go in they're
not all of a sudden gonna bend to
what would be best for you and other
people like you and who are outside of
that dominant culture so that's
interesting to think through yeah
exactly what's one thing that you're
working on that you could use help with
from a listener the one thing we're
trying to do is to build this resource
center on our website that is actually
meaningful to other education
researchers so if anyone has thoughts or
ideas about how we can improve that if
other researchers have certain needs
that would help improve their own
research then we are definitely all ears
and you can either email us directly or
use our contact us form on the website
we actually do get that i do get that
and we'd be happy to include that in our
future plans for the site as well what
questions do you have for myself for for
the field i'm curious where you think
we'll be going in the next five to ten
years as a research field one of the
things that i
am very hopeful for is that we start
focusing in on the micro rather than
just the macro whether that be like this
very local school here are their
perspectives of cs implementation
whether it be creating a curriculum that
matches specifically for them or
looking into more case studies of
students going into it there are some
people who are exploring it but not
enough in my opinion i'm also thinking
like you were mentioning we're going to
start broadening beyond just like race
gender ethnicity like socioeconomic
status i think the next big area that we
will hopefully focus on is disability
and what does that mean whether it's
like physical impairment or cognitive or
neurological etc like there are many
different avenues to explore with that
and i've talked about this in some other
episodes that i'll include some links to
in the show notes but i'm hoping
that as a field we don't just talk about
cs across the nation and like the
broader
umbrella of what cs ed looks like but we
start talking about what variant or
flavor are you going to use in your
classroom in the community that you work
in and how is that going to be different
from elsewhere there's this tendency to
take this like homogeneous approach
rather than a multi-perspective
multi-perspectivalist approach with cs
education where it's like oh well i a
teacher in rural utah i'm going to teach
the exact same thing as somebody in
miami florida like uh maybe but maybe
you shouldn't it depends on the
community and what they're interested in
etc so i'm hoping
five years from now as a research field
we are focusing more on those the micro
i guess instead of just the macro yeah i
would definitely concur with all of that
if i were to flip that question onto you
would you have a similar or different
answer and it's definitely in line with
what i'm thinking as well i know that
one single study can answer all the
questions but again you know with that
spoke are we covering everything that we
need to be covering disability is a huge
area for growth i think in our data set
of 900 and some papers maybe
three to four percent actually
even just ask or include as part of
their demographics of their students
whether or not any students have
disabilities so we're doing all these
nice research studies but without even
capturing that information which okay
you know there's some issues around that
as well but without even trying to
capture that information then how do we
know what's really working in classrooms
where you know 10 15 of the students
might have an iep plan which in the us
is an individualized plan often for
students who
have a disability or other behavioral
issues yeah i'm definitely right in the
same frame that you are and the nice
thing is there are people who are
studying it like richard ladner andrea
steffek there's my israel todd lash like
and they are supervising
more graduate students who are then
going to start supervising so it's going
to have that ripple effect of more
people investigating it so i'm hopeful
five years from now would be much more
commonplace when describing participants
you actually discuss like disabilities
among your participants and and whatnot
yeah and the other area that's often
overlooked too is emergent language
learners so those students who you know
are picking up a second third language
and that language is english how is this
impacting them because there's some
great tools out there for
actually reaching students and
there's not enough but there are some
that are out there that a lot of
teachers i know are struggling with as
you know immigrants come into their more
rural communities
traditionally they may not have it any
and before and all of a sudden they're
having a number of them yep and how do
we make sure those students are also
able to learn computer science yeah so i
did an interview with sarah vogel it's
not out at the time of this recording
but we discussed that more like
bilingualism in relation to cs education
and some of the deficit language that's
framed around it and like some of the
even policies like here in arizona there
was there might still be a policy that
it was illegal to speak any language
other than english unless you were
teaching a foreign language class so i
had classes with like 35 kindergarteners
where none of them spoke english as
their primary language and it was
illegal for myself or their kindergarten
teacher to speak spanish to them so it's
just like we're trying to help these
kids and you're putting these policies
in place
likely well-intentioned but they are
really problematic for a variety of
reasons are there any questions or
topics that you'd like to discuss that i
haven't brought up i think one that we
haven't really talked about too much is
the
concept of all students needing to learn
not just for fulfilling jobs in industry
which is important or for the government
for example for cyber security in the
area of cyber security which is
definitely important we definitely need
people in those fields to protect all of
us is the concept of the flip side of
technology right so going back to neil
postman who i really enjoy reading his
work where you know whenever
technology's brought into a society
people are going to benefit from it and
other people are going to be harmed from
it
of course there may not be any impact on
people but
technology itself really isn't neutral
and you know i think introducing play is
great for students especially in the
early grades but somehow in the later
grades we really need to shift to a
point where we're actually talking about
the harms of technology and what that
means to society and you know that
individual student but also the
communities that they live in and
society in general so i think that over
the last few years we're seeing more and
more of the harms come out and
industries kind to try to downplay that
because they're
in an uber capitalistic society right
now and so what do they want they don't
want those problems we just want to make
money and i don't want to address that i
think those issues are going to be
really really critical over the next 10
years especially as we look at in a
politically charged environment who's
starting to gain control of the media
outlets who has understanding algorithms
and how to tweak those to make them
benefit their own ideas it is very
worrying and you know i know i'm not the
only one there are a lot of people who
are concerned about that however much is
going to impact us as adults is going to
impact the kids even more yeah i really
appreciate that response i think we are
starting to talk about that more in the
k-12 space like the bias that happens in
ai or in programming or whatever but i
hope we also start to think more broadly
in terms of okay well what is the
potential impact of this on the
environment what is the potential impact
of if i were to create this thing a
device how it's manufactured what are
the working conditions of the people who
manufacture this what about the working
conditions of the people who mine the
precious metals that are then used to
create the parts that are then assembled
etc like looking more broadly at than
just how algorithms are biased but also
thinking of okay the physical devices
etc like we'll see if that's more of
part of the discussion ten years from
now or not i sure hope so i'm very
concerned i mean i think this is an area
where if change doesn't happen
faster than change in other regards then
and not having the change is going to
benefit a lot of people right
not having that change and there's going
to be a struggle to make sure that
change happens it's definitely very
worrying yeah and this is where it's
like it's if you want to leave out
politics in education that's going to
have really bad impact down the road if
we don't talk about these things because
we need to start solving these problems
now and especially addressing this with
the future leaders because no offense to
anyone in congress and whatnot but our
current leaders aren't really discussing
it enough so we need to do something
more long-term yeah well we don't have a
lot v group for fairness and ai well
maybe there is but it's not as
predominant as the industry lobbying
groups and at least here in the us i
don't know elsewhere but
you know when it gets to the point where
whether or not we're going to be a
democracy and whether any longer right
then i think that there's a huge
time to really step back and think about
how we got here and what technology
contributed to that but also and i
include myself in this failures
educators particularly at the
post-secondary level who have not talked
about these implications of
what we're teaching our students in the
classroom yeah many snaps to that answer
so where might people go to connect with
you and the organizations that you work
with so a couple places one is you can
go to our website like i mentioned
earlier you can go to the contact form
and reach out to us that's probably the
easiest you can also reach me directly
at monica csidresearch.org
with your thoughts or if you have ideas
that you want to share with us or
potential projects that you would like
us to offer advice on or help out on and
we're also hopefully going to be start
going to more in-person events so you
can always catch us at uh we'll be we're
trying to get to sexy all three of our
full-time staff will hopefully be at 60
so you can reach out to us there as well
and with that that concludes this week's
episode of the cska podcast again the
show notes at jaredoleary.com include
links to various resources mentioned
throughout this particular episode and
over a hundred more podcast episodes
that are relevant to computer science
educators and scholars speaking of if
you're a scholar and you're interested
in potentially working on a grant
together please contact me using the
button on my website happy to engage in
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this particular episode please consider
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it'll help more people find it thanks so
much for listening stay tuned next week
for another episode and until then i
hope you're all staying safe and are
having a wonderful week
Guest Bio
Monica McGill, Ed.D. is the Founder, President, and CEO of the CSEdResearch.org, a 501(c)(3) non-profit focused on improving K-12 CS education for all children by enabling and disseminating exemplary, evidence-driven research. Monica is passionate about K-12 computing education research, which has led her to lead the organization to receive multiple grants from various federal and local organizations, including the National Science Foundation, Google, and the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM). She blends her experience as a computer scientist in government and industry and as a tenured professor of computer science and game design with her experience conducting equity-focused education research. She serves as an Associate Editor for ACM Transactions on Computing Education, was the Inaugural Chair of the ACM-W North America Committee (2019-2021) and is a current Board Member for the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) and the Sjögren’s Foundation.
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Problematizing Deficits with Sara Vogel
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In this episode I unpack the impact of an apprenticeship of observation and what computer science educators can do about it.
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Read a paper I coauthored that problematizes the influence of corporations on education
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