Accessibility and Inclusion in CS Education with Maya Israel

In this interview with Maya Israel, we discuss Maya’s shift from special education into CS education, the importance of universal design for learning (UDL) in CS classes, understanding the spectrum of accessibility for students with a diverse set of needs, the current status of accessibility and inclusion within the field of CS education, problematize deficit framings of students with disabilities, and so much more.

Welcome back to another episode of the
csk8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
each week of this podcast is either a
solo episode where i unpack some
scholarship in relation to computer
science education or an episode with a
guest or multiple guests in this week's
episode i'm having a conversation with
maya israel and we discussed my shift
from special education into computer
science education the importance of
universal design for learning udl in cs
classes we also discuss understanding
the spectrum of accessibility for
students with a diverse set of needs the
current status of accessibility and
inclusion within the field of cs
education we problematize deficit
framings of students with disabilities
and so much more the show notes include
links to other podcasts that are related
to this as well as many other resources
so i recommend checking those out by
clicking the link in the app that you're
listening to this on or by going to
jaredoleary.com on my website you'll
find a ton of resources related to
computer science education including a
link to bootup pd.org which is the
non-profit that i work for as well as a
bunch of drumming and gaming content
because i like to drum and i like the
game but with all that being said we
will now begin with an introduction by
maya i'm maya israel i'm an associate
professor of educational technology and
computer science education at the
university of florida i'm also part of
an institute called the institute for
advanced learning technologies and i
have a lab called the creative
technologies research lab can you tell
me the story of how you got into
computer science education i actually
started as a special education teacher
so if you had asked me back in the way
back i would never say that i was in
computer science education i ended up
getting my doctorate in special
education and i was a faculty of special
education really interested in
technology to support kids with
disabilities and so that's really been
my passion and my research and one of
our projects that we were working on we
were developing educational technologies
and video games for kids to help them
understand science standards
and we wanted to use a participatory
design approach and so we went into a
bunch of classrooms and this was like
way back when ipads were new
yeah i know i'm aging myself but in any
case we had copies of like the interface
of one of the old ipads and we wanted
kids to
draw the design of how they would want
to interact with an app around
learning science standards and we were
analyzing those to help inform our
process long story short i started
looking at these app designs these just
you know paper prototypes and they were
amazing and i had this aha moment which
is really about why am i designing tech
for kids if they're so amazing
at knowing what they want and designing
for themselves and it really shifted the
way i was thinking about computer
science
and computer science education and so up
until then i was working with app
developers and like let's design this
amazing thing for kids and test it with
kids and then i shifted towards
what do kids really need to know and be
able to do
in order to design technologies for
themselves that was around 2011 and it
just completely shifted my career
because not only did i have to then
learn about computer science in general
i had to learn about how to teach
computer science and
because of the population of kids that
i'm working with how do you teach
computer science to kids who often
struggle with learning and so that took
me down a completely different
trajectory that i never would have
imagined back in the way back yeah that
definitely resonates with me like i took
a single class in high school and then
nothing until
my last semester of my doctorate when
taking coursework and then i was just
like it was this class where you would
code music apps and i was like when is
this music when is this coding and when
are they inseparable and
i
was looking for a job in the area and
saw this like random k-8 technology
position and i went in and was like hey
instead of teaching like microsoft
office how about you teach like art
space coding etc and that like one-off
little exchange and that little
suggestion on my behalf led to a
completely different trajectory in my
career and that i've been
in here for eight years now something
like that so it's funny how like things
can be a catalyst for change like that
in careers yeah i think so and i also
feel like all those previous experiences
they add up yeah to what it is that you
do right so the work that i did around
special education
instructional strategies and app
development and gaming and all of that
is coming into this work just not in the
way i would imagine it's like you have a
puzzle
and you don't know what the puzzle is
going to look like
the pieces start to shift right as you
start to figure out make sense of the
world with all this new information
that's coming at you right i'm curious
if you could elaborate on like how did
you learn about cs and like how would
you recommend others learn about cs if
they are new to the content so i learned
about cs
with and from faculty at the university
of illinois so i connected with folks
like george reese and then with k-12
practitioners like todd lash who at the
time was an elementary school teacher
doing coding in his school
and it really was about talking to them
going into their classroom seeing what
they were doing and for me that was
the way in i don't necessarily think as
a teacher that's the way in because i
was already a faculty member at the time
i think right now there's so many
different entry points into computer
science education so you think about how
do you dip your toe and like learn in a
way and at a pace that makes sense for
you whether it's with the hour of code
or whether your school has some kind of
program or folks that are already doing
the work i would suggest connecting with
people that's really the way to do it so
i made connections but it wasn't as a
teacher as a teacher i would find the
people in my school in my district who
are doing the work and frankly there's
so many resources through csta and
online through twitter chats that there
are ways to do it i think it's
intimidating when you're just starting
out especially if you don't have the
infrastructure so i always say that
start slow try it out have time for
yourself to tinker so that you can gain
the comfort and that's really what i had
to do because i mean i didn't know
computer science i had this imposter
syndrome that many people have in the
room with folks that knew a lot more
than i did and it took sitting and
playing and asking for help and having
that resilience
and then also saying okay whatever i'm
struggling with are the things that my
students are going to struggle with so
this experience is really valid and
really valuable because it's showing me
where the pain points are yeah i still
get the imposter syndrome to today
because it's like well i don't have any
degrees in this like am i qualified it's
like wait i've done so many things yes
i'm qualified like yes there's still
things to learn but
doesn't discredit it
exactly i'm curious with disabilities
and disability studies it's a very broad
umbrella term that can mean many things
like some people when they hear that
they might think oh you're working with
people who are like blind like maybe
doing like some of the stuff with andrea
steffek what he's doing or maybe it's oh
i work with children who have autism or
maybe it's more like a critical
discourse like type of work where it's
unpacking ableism and problematizing etc
like in what way did you specialize
within disabilities research when i
started off
the only options were when i was getting
my degrees was to get a degree in like
learning disabilities or behavior
disorders or you know at the time what
they called mr which we would never use
anymore we use intellectual disabilities
and it's really the wrong approach right
so
rather than focusing on instructional
strategies focused on a group of kids
what i realized that i was doing even
though we weren't really talking about
it at the time is thinking about what
are the functional needs of kids
regardless of the labels because i'm
really not a fan of those labels but
there are some students who struggle
with reading there are some students who
struggle with executive function there
are some students who have low vision
but those aren't categories right so the
strategies that i focus on are like
addressing those particular functional
needs regardless
of disability if that makes sense but
the main focus
was on the strategies because i was a
classroom teacher so i was always
focused on what is it that i can do to
support this child feel successful and
included it intersects a lot with a
disability's
advocacy piece so really thinking about
not problematizing disability really
looking at the whole child
understanding that a child comes into a
classroom with a lot of strengths and
some challenges and so that's the other
piece so it's kind of balancing the
understanding of the pedagogical
approaches but also advocating for
inclusion and to not have teachers see
children as a problem but to see their
you know full humanity right yeah i
appreciate that there's
in some disabilities research it's
sometimes referred to as like tiny
timing where you like view somebody from
a deficit framework and assuming oh
because you have this disability
therefore you are lesser than and you
will never achieve etc but then there's
also the inverse sometimes called
supercrip where it's like oh look at you
you accomplished this thing and despite
all odds etc so like it's interesting
looking at the discourse how it
privatizes both ends of those different
perspectives it's also interesting
hearing you say that that makes a lot of
sense like i read one of your articles
on universal design for learning that
was talking about like how you could use
that in the cs space i'm curious could
you quickly explain what is universal
design for learning and then like why
might that be useful for cs educators to
know more about so universal design for
learning is an approach to thinking
proactively about how to include all
learners in a classroom environment so
rather than say here's my lesson plan
and i'm going to do this other thing i'm
going to have all these accommodations
and modifications
and adaptations to this lesson plan for
that one kid which tends to otherwise
those children the idea of udl is at the
very beginning as i'm starting to plan i
think about what i want my students to
know and then i think okay what are
going to be some of the barriers for
some of my students what are going to be
some of the preferences that my students
are going to want to have and can i
build an instructional
lesson or unit that is flexible enough
to include everybody so in order to do
that from a udl perspective there are
these three principles around you know
how to instill flexibility so for
example one of the principles is
multiple means of engagement so knowing
that your kids are coming into a
classroom with different motivations
right and then okay so how am i going to
engage them and multiple means of
representation means that students will
want to access information in different
ways depending on the content so making
sure that there are ways for them to
hear the information and see the
information and engage with the
information and then multiple means of
action and expression which is can we
think about assessing student learning
in a way that leverages their strengths
and doesn't just highlight their areas
of challenge and so using those three
principles udl allows us to think more
broadly and in terms of computer science
education i think it fits really well
because we talk a lot about providing
kids choice and voice and having them
express themselves and so i think that
it naturally fits in on the other hand
it doesn't just happen naturally a lot
of the features of udl teachers do
really well but then there are some gaps
for example in thinking about okay if
i'm going to
keep a student engaged i also have to
help them maintain persistence and for
some kids that's really hard so how do i
help them with that and so there are
strategies for that so i think it's a
really useful holistic system to think
about all kids in a cs classroom and it
doesn't mean that you don't need to
individualize for certain children under
certain situations it means that you
have to do less of it if you're already
doing that so for example if everybody
has access to text to speech then you
don't have to have that as an
accommodation for one or two kids like
why wouldn't that be open to everybody
or if everybody has access
to
different metacognitive strategies that
you're teaching kids about debugging
then you don't have to explicitly call
out a certain child who might really
need that whereas others might also need
it but not needed as much or not benefit
from it as much yeah i like that so what
does
an accessible and inclusive cs learning
experience look like for you so the
first thing
would go back to what we talked about
with universal design for learning was
it designed for all the kids in the
classroom from a pedagogical perspective
the second would be are the tools
accessible and this is a major major
issue because
accessibility is not a clear-cut thing
some tools that are accessible for some
kids are inaccessible for others and the
other way around too so there's not this
like checklist that works for every kid
but the tools have to be accessible to
the students in the classroom earlier
you mentioned steffik and some of his
work around accessibility and he has the
quorum programming language and that's a
fantastic tool for students who are low
vision i mean he's done some work around
students with learning disabilities with
that too and for those students many of
the programming languages are
inaccessible especially block-based
programming environments which you can't
use any kind of text to speech at all in
right but for other students the fact
that the
scratch blocks for example have
the color coding that they have and they
have the organization that they have are
exactly what they need in order to
access coding because it helps them
really think about the organization of
code and they're also not stuck in the
syntax of some students with print-based
disabilities where the syntax would just
really be a challenge for them so you
have to think about who your students
are and then think about accessibility
for those students in particular so kind
of this idea of what makes an inclusive
accessible learning environment is that
combination of like universal design
accessibility and then the third piece
of it
is that whatever individualized
needs the student has beyond assistive
technology accessibility those are in
place and so for students many of the
students we work with have
accommodations have iep goals and so the
idea of thinking about those needs is
also a piece of it and then kind of
surrounding all of it is the fact that
the students feel like they belong in
the computer science classroom so that
sense of belongingness is more than
inclusion inclusion to me means you're
in the classroom
you're accessing the material in the way
that you're able to but belongingness
means that you feel like you're part of
the classroom community and that the
people in that classroom community see
you as part of that community as well so
when i used to teach like pre-service
and in-service educators one of the
things that we would frequently talk
about is like the multi-perspective list
nature of how you can't address any
group of students the same way there are
many approaches that you need to use for
each individual many pedagogies projects
ways of differentiating based on tools
etc but that can be difficult to
teach sometimes to
other educators i'm curious if you have
any strategies or suggestions for how to
help educators work with a variety of
students and consider
while this tool might be very accessible
for one student it is completely
inaccessible for another and vice versa
for other tools yeah that's a good
question advice for other teachers i
think what i would say
is to start with
some mindsets
before we get into the pedagogies to me
the idea that you have to really believe
and commit
to
including all kids for many teachers we
have this internal dialogue about you
know this kid is successful this kid's
doing great this kid's gonna go
someplace and this kid is not and we may
not say it out loud and so but it
informs the way that we interact with
kids and so this mindset of
all kids belong here and have a right to
be here and kind of questioning our
assumptions
about that when we're looking across the
classroom and say you know i don't know
that this kid really belongs in my
classroom and unpacking that i think is
the first step those mindsets are a
place to start the second piece of that
which is also a mindset is assuming
competence before we can do anything we
need to like know that our kids are able
and capable and a lot of the mistakes
that i see teachers make is that they
want their students with disabilities to
be successful so
they over support they over scaffold
they over teach and it doesn't give
students the flexibility and the
permission to fail and to create and to
engage in computing in ways that other
kids do because we're trying so hard to
protect them and so this idea of
assuming competence allows
a teacher to say all right let's just
see where this kid is and let's use the
kid inform me in terms of what he or she
needs before i you know do anything and
then kind of the next step is to think
about udl and assistive technology and
to think about who are the people around
that can help so as a computer science
teacher or a general education teacher
who's teaching computing there are other
people in the school building that can
be really helpful so bringing in the
special education teachers bringing in
the assistive technology coaches is a
step to not have to know everything
because there typically are if you look
resources for teachers to go to and then
you know you take your time you talk to
the students you talk to the students
families and you work it out together so
the idea is you don't have to have all
the answers you just have to have the
curiosity and the commitment to help and
to support a child excellent answer i
hope people go back and listen to those
different ideas that were given like
especially the first part you're talking
about with unpacking the mindsets and
the biases that we might have i think it
was both dweck and duckworth who
mentioned their studies that would have
pre-assigned labels on the students as
like this kid is going to excel or this
kid is going to be a future leader and
then like vice versa and they would just
randomly assign those labels to people
and the teacher would like find that
confirmation bias of oh yes that person
is going to fail in life or oh yes that
person is going to succeed regardless of
if that was just an arbitrary random
assignment or whatnot so it's really
interesting how those preconceived
notions have a huge impact on like how
we help kids and what teachers think
about them and we all have it right so
the idea is is to acknowledge that you
know we come into a classroom with our
own backgrounds and our own biases and
our own previous experiences that inform
the way we interact with kids and so we
have to question those assumptions
constantly and i have to do the same
thing you know in terms of i walk into a
classroom and because i do a lot of
research studies in these areas i know a
lot about the kids that i'm about to
interact with and many times that's not
always a good thing and so making sure
that i'm able to check myself and really
see this child and let the child inform
what happens is important yeah and
especially with assuming competence in
anything related to technology there's
often this like assumption from a lot of
educators where it's like oh well kids
are always on tick tock and playing
video games et cetera like so therefore
they understand computer science it's
like well there's a difference between
using a device and you know being able
to program a device like those are two
different sets of skills and
understandings exactly but there's also
like what you mentioned with the over
supporting though especially when any
kind of disability label is applied
there's this like fear of well i want to
make sure i help them and so there is
that tendency to over support as opposed
to under supporting like it's that weird
hard balance to provide once that label
is slapped onto it so there's a term in
special education called least to most
prompting and i find it useful even
though i'm not using it in exactly the
correct context but the idea of least to
most prompting is that you start with
the least amount of intervention that a
child needs in order to be successful
it's almost like a dial that you turn up
as a child needs the support and then
you can turn the dial down a child like
gains more competence and becomes more
expert in their own learning and so i
like that analogy of the dial and i like
the idea of least to most because it
does assume competency we don't want to
over support if we don't need it right
if we go to the doctor and we've got a
headache you know we don't automatically
go to the most intensive intervention we
see if there's something we can do you
know sometimes deep breathing will do it
for us right because i've got anxiety
and the anxiety is going to give me a
headache i don't automatically need to
go to like a very
you know major kind of drug intervention
unless it's needed so you're saying i
shouldn't have gotten a lobotomy for my
headache
it depends on the week i guess
there's some weeks
[Laughter]
so if we think broadly and
kind of generalize here where do you
think that cs educators
as a field are doing really well and
then where is their room to grow when it
comes to
accessibility and inclusivity i feel
like we are
much further ahead now than we were five
years ago in our conversation around the
inclusion of kids with disabilities
when we were starting this work back in
students with disabilities was just not
part of the computer science education
cs for all conversation and so i feel
like we are in a much better place as a
community around the discourse related
to
inclusion of kids with disabilities i
feel like
we also have a lot of resources that
were developed outside of computer
science education that teachers are
using in applying in computer science
education and universal design for
learning is an example of that it wasn't
developed for cs education but teachers
are using it in the context of cs
education so we have a lot of literature
and research studies and practice based
approaches that we can use in computer
science and that's a good thing where i
think we have a long way to go is in
like how do we
take these strategies and really show
teachers how to apply them in the
context of cs education so those
teachers right now who know those
strategies really well they can adapt
them to computer science fairly
painlessly but if you're new to those
inclusive practices there's not a lot
out there to help you
apply those in computer science
education so i think we've got a long
way to go there so we're doing some of
that work but we need a
more people who are doing this work to
do it together to be able to build this
knowledge base and the resources for
teachers so what does a udl basis lesson
plan look like for example or how do we
think about scaffolding or teaching
debugging in a more explicit way
those are things that we still have a
ways to go but we're getting there i
feel like we are now compared to five
six seven years ago is fantastic so i
think that folks should feel really
encouraged about it the other place i
think we're doing really well is in
almost every conversation i have with
school districts and teachers they are
committed to inclusion they really want
to do the right thing for students and
so
they're coming to professional
development and they're coming to
learning with many of the mindsets we've
already talked about because they're in
they just want to be able to have the
knowledge and skills to help them meet
the needs of all kids so that to me is a
major accomplishment and a good thing
for us to remember so you mentioned that
overall we're better on discourse but
but do you feel like there's action
funding and policy that supports that
discourse because often with like i
think of dei work in particular the
conversation might be more than it was
previously but the action and the
funding and the policies that support
what's actually being talked about
might be where it was previously and i'm
not sure if that's the same with
disability research and whatnot the
funding is definitely
starting to emerge
and not only that but both the national
science foundation and the department of
education ies have put out calls and
have sent the messaging that they want
research
related to students with disabilities in
computer science education so there are
been a couple of dear colleague letters
where they say you know please please
consider
submitting proposals here are some
funding priorities related to disability
and it's not that there is like one pot
of money that's a disability pot it's
actually the idea is within all of these
funding competitions at the nsf drk 12 i
test
cs for all there are priorities specific
to students with disabilities and there
are folks there who are program officers
who are committed to
shepherding in good proposals that will
lead to strong research us and that's
been going on for several years i'm
feeling pretty positive about at least
at the nsf and the ies that there is a
commitment to funding these kinds of
studies we definitely need some
additional advocacy if we think about
like philanthropic gift or corporate
donations or any foundation funds where
it would be really nice to advocate for
those kinds of funds as well so a lot of
the programs that are being developed
and are using some of these funds there
isn't as much of a focus on
accessibility and inclusion so it would
be wonderful if some of those rfas or
some of those priorities it's a yes
we'll fund you here's all this money
because you're going to create these
amazing resources to be used in schools
but you have to consider accessibility
and inclusion that to me would be a
major step forward too because a lot of
the curricula and tools that are
available in classrooms in cs education
aren't being developed just with nsf
funds or other funding sources that that
is not a priority for and even within
nsf you can
apply
and build something where accessibility
is not a priority so even though the
funds are available to look at students
with disabilities it's certainly not a
requirement when it comes to developing
tools and resources for classrooms it's
good that they're
matching action with word at least from
a national level i am curious if there
are
whether it be like a cse researcher or
just a cs educator in a k-12 context
there might be
the imposter syndrome that comes with it
with like okay but i don't have degrees
in special education
i'm an advocate i want to help i want to
do research i want to make sure when i
say cs4 i really do mean cs4 but where
would you recommend people go to learn
more whether it's like books or
organizations or articles or whatever so
the first thing i would say is partner
with people around you so
that is important if you're going to do
this kind of work it's helpful to not
just look it up and read about it but
actually connect with people some of the
most impactful that work that happens in
our field is because people talk to each
other and they work together and they
bring in their shared understanding that
would be the first place i would go to
cast ass.org i'll send you
some things that you can add in the show
notes or whatever but cast will have a
lot of resources around universal design
for learning our lab website will have a
lot of resources around udl and computer
science education
there have been some articles and some
book chapters that have been written in
this area so there is a place to find it
thankfully because it's such a new field
there's not a ton so you probably won't
feel overwhelmed by looking at the
material but what i'd say is i mean more
than anything it's about those
partnerships i think i worry
when i see researchers do this kind of
work where they don't have somebody who
understands disability on their teams
just like when i see cs ed work and i
see computer scientists that don't have
education background in general i get a
little bit worried as well because it's
important for us to put a team together
that really has that expertise otherwise
you end up making bias and other things
into your work without even knowing it
what are some of the biases or
misconceptions that people often have
when working with students with
disabilities so one of my pet peeves
that i hear a lot is if only they
weren't so low they could x
and so this idea i know it like i hear
it a lot and it's shocking because
people will talk to me knowing the fact
that i do this work and they're trying
to explain to me why a child isn't doing
well in their class and so the
misconception is the child isn't
performing well in the classroom because
of something that's internal and
inherent to themselves
rather than something that is designed
into instruction usually when a child
isn't succeeding in the classroom the
first thing i do i think okay what's not
working here what's not working in the
environment in the way i'm teaching in
the materials
and so i don't think well this kit it's
just too low to get it but that often is
where folks will go
when a child is not succeeding in the
classroom we have to really shift the
way we think about how to evaluate
success and whether
a child performing well is because of
something inherent within them or
whether they are within the right
conditions to be able to show that they
understand what they know i just had a
lot of flashbacks to when i used to
teach
music and drumline and whatnot i would
have parents come up to me and be like
well the previous music teacher said my
child would never be good at music
because they didn't have an innate
ability and i was like i'm gonna prove
them wrong with that statement that is
not true i was terrible when i started
and it took a lot of effort and i got
better but like to just label somebody
as basically incapable of doing
something right off the bat is just
highly inappropriate so yeah sorry
having flashbacks yeah and to attribute
that to something that's internal to the
child rather than the conditions right
because there are a lot of things that
we can do i was working in one classroom
and there was this young boy there who
by the way loved playing computer games
so i knew he was like he played these
math games all the time but he was also
non-verbal and so he couldn't
communicate what he wanted to do and
we were doing some coding and he was
completely disengaged from the coding
activity and there was a para educator
sitting with them really well-meaning
person who was trying to help him out
and essentially took over the computer
and was telling him what she was doing
and
he just was like completely uninterested
in listening to this adult play on the
computer and one of the only things we
did is we asked her to keep our hands
off the computer and to just talk to him
you know about what to do and just the
simple intervention of like hands off
the computer he starts to you know get
more engaged in the activity so the idea
is you know here's a child who couldn't
communicate what he wanted to do an
adult who was very well meaning who was
like well let me help you and what the
adult did made the situation worse
because like why would any kid want to
watch a grown up on scratch
i just can't imagine
you know
the idea of this child isn't disengaged
because of the disability the child was
disengaged because he just wasn't
interested in what the adult was doing
and the activity as it was designed and
so we had to change the way we were
doing things and then you know it wasn't
the only thing we could do but it was
certainly a piece of it yeah and the way
that you just frame that can be applied
to anyone with or without disabilities
like i've seen so many instances where
kids were not engaged at all and then
you simply reframe the context apply it
in a way that's of interest to them and
suddenly they can't stop doing whatever
that is right and that's the whole idea
of udl right you're doing something
because you want to increase the range
of kids that you're getting and in the
meantime it's not just good for students
with disabilities it's really a good
framework for all the students because
we want to engage all the kids and we
can't assume that they're going to be
engaged by one way of learning that is
the way that we like to learn right what
do you wish more people understood about
your own research many people look at my
research and rightfully think that i
focus on students with disabilities
but the idea is that it's really focused
on designing instruction for all kids so
the idea of inclusive instruction and
that udl isn't just about students with
disabilities but it's a certainly a step
towards inclusion of kids with
disabilities in computer science
education so i think that's one thing i
wish people knew the other thing i would
say is that even though i use
udl because it seems to be catchy and
people know about udl that there are a
lot of other instructional strategies
that i'm working on and that come from
other areas so for example we do a lot
of work on something called high
leverage practices and so these are like
strategies that we know are impactful
for kids with disabilities and so and
high leverage practices is something
that is a well-known area in special
education but isn't as well known in
computer science education so that
there's more to inclusion than just
universal design for learning yeah i
appreciate the nuance in that answer i
did a podcast episode where i unpacked a
chapter by thomas rogelski and he refers
to a concept of methodology which is an
idea basically where you put on these
blinders you buy into a method at the
all cost of not looking at anything else
and so there is a tendency for some
people to look at something like udl and
go okay this is it i don't need to look
at anything else and it's like well it
depends on the context and there's
always more to learn and different
approaches and like udl 10 years from
now is going to look different because
we're going to learn more etc so it's
helpful to keep looking for expanding
upon what you can currently do yeah
exactly what has surprised you about
your own research what surprised me is
that people are so open to it that was
maybe it was overly cynical coming into
this community and my own assumptions
about computer science education feeling
like an outsider when i first came in
just feeling like i'm just a special ed
person like they're using that word just
again like you know in this space i felt
like a real outsider and thinking about
inclusion of kids with disabilities what
surprised me is that folks that i speak
with get it and they're like we're in
this is great absolutely cs4 all means
all and what can we do that to me has
been really surprising in terms of just
the acceptance of this work in the
computer science education field it
shouldn't have surprised me but it did
and within schools there's been a lot of
acceptance because there's such a
critical need and so teachers get it but
i was really pleasantly surprised that
the research community has been so in to
this work as well have you experienced
any pushback on anything that you've
recommended yeah so the pushback is all
about implementation right so yes we get
it inclusion it's important but it's
going to take time it's going to take
resources and oh this tool is not
accessible and designers don't want to
do the work to make it accessible and i
won't put anybody under the bus
there but that's where the pushback
comes is like kind of in the
implementation because it's easy to say
yes we're committed to inclusion but
what does it actually take to make that
happen
does the professional development that's
offered to all kids actually prepare
them to meet the needs of all students
are the tools and curricula being
evaluated based on accessibility is
there
time for teachers to work together and
to collaborate around inclusion like in
co-teaching and co-planning and so those
are kind of systemic challenges that are
difficult so i understand that
and so i completely understand the
pushback but it's there we're working on
it now if you were handed a magic wand
that'd allow you to change something
about cs education what change would you
make and why
a couple of well there are many things i
would do
the first is i would bring cs into
pre-service in a much more active way so
thinking about what it takes for a
computer science teacher to be
successful in the classroom we're often
doing a lot of professional development
because computer science teachers are
new to computer science but what if they
actually came to computer science with
some background so even if you don't
have a lot of computer science at least
having that exposure and what if
those pre-service programs teach cs from
a udl and accessibility perspective so
we're putting out computer science
teachers or teachers who understand
computing who already have these
mindsets in place and understand
universal design for learning to me that
would go a long way so that then the
professional development and the
mentoring and induction that happens in
schools doesn't have to start at 101
right and then at the same time it would
be really wonderful if all the fabulous
pd that's happening around the country
really considered inclusion and
accessibility from the get-go rather
than as an add-on or like one session
but if you think about pd
you really want to talk about inclusion
it's got to be baked in just like udl is
proactively baked into every lesson
right having that baked into the pd so
that it's not an add-on would go a
really long way yeah i am curious to see
how organizations like the non-profit i
work at is going to change 10 years from
now when like we have teachers coming
into the workforce who actually have
prior experience programming whether it
be in their k-12 tenure or in university
level like it's going to
completely change the way that
organizations like us approach things
because right now the general assumption
for most districts is there's very
limited prior experience if any yeah
exactly and that's changing so
cs4all has cs for ed right now the
andalizers group and that's they're
advocating for
funding for pre-service teacher
preparation and university of florida
we've been really lucky to get one of
these programs funded from the griffin
foundation so we're bringing computer
science into pre-service teacher
preparation and really thinking about
udl from the very beginning and so for
me it's a start but we need all these
universities to jump on board too so i'm
really hoping that part of the work that
we're going to get to do with the
griffin initiative is to be able to
develop some resources that we can share
with other pre-service programs as well
in this area because there is such a
need but yeah it will be interesting
five years from now having this
conversation and seeing how pd is
shifting if we can do a really good job
at the pre-service level with this
yeah how do you practice or iterate on
your own abilities whether it's like in
education or as a researcher or in
computer science well there's not nearly
enough time to do kind of the
self-reflection and the self-learning
that i need to do but generally
a lot of the advice that i've given
teachers is the advice that i try to
take which is connect with people learn
from the people around me and read as
much as i possibly can and so
conversations that i have with folks in
other areas are informing the way that i
conduct my research studies and so for
example you know coming into this work i
didn't have a lot of background in data
analytics it just wasn't part of my
training in university it wasn't part of
my initial research studies but doing
the csed research and being able to have
access to things like log files allows
me to really dig deep into kind of the
behaviors and the problem solving that
students engage in and so it requires me
to work with people who have that
expertise
and to extend my own understanding of
you know different sequence mining
approaches that i'm not familiar with
and so i'm reading a lot of papers
in areas that are new to me that are
super exciting but also i'm like oh man
i've got to learn this whole new area
and that's okay because i don't have to
know it all i don't have to know it
immediately i have people i can go to i
can read and i can ask questions and so
it really is that same advice that we
were just talking about like you don't
have to have all the answers you just
have to find collaborators who will work
with you and teach you and you can
hopefully teach them something too yeah
i like that whenever we'd have like a
new cohort of doc students come into the
program we would often have like a just
of informal lunch conversations and a
question would always arise of like what
advice would you recommend and from my
perspective the advice that i always
gave was read outside of the field it's
great that you can cite like the seminal
papers within music education but it is
so beneficial to read outside of the
field like to get these different
perspectives and bring it in like that
is beneficial for you as an individual
but it's also beneficial for the field
so being a professor
is difficult in terms of like the
workload that you have to do as a
scholar as an educator etc but then also
being a professor who's exploring
multiple domains and areas of study it
can be very draining and just education
in general is a hard field to work in so
i'm curious how do you take care of
yourself and try and prevent the burnout
that can come working in a field like
this i'll start by saying i feel like
this is privileged work to be able to
work in academia and ask the questions
that i think are really important and
engage with folks who also find those
questions important to me it just feels
like a privilege to get to do this kind
of work at the same time like you said
it's a whole lot of privileged work so
it's a lot of work and so i feel like
you have to
protect your time
and you have to say no sometimes which
is difficult to do especially in
education when you're committed to
systems change and students with
disabilities and so i don't know that i
have a great answer for it except for
that i try to balance
and i don't always do a very good job of
it but you know there are a few things
i'm learning from my colleagues like i
try really hard to not have meetings on
wednesdays even though we're speaking on
a wednesday
you know i was able to spend this
morning just doing work and not having a
ton of meetings and so i was able to
actually like sit in the work and
sometimes what ends up happening is that
we're so busy that we don't actually get
to do the work or just running from
meeting to meeting and so carving out
those times
and protecting those times is really
important at the same time also
recognizing that there is life outside
of work is also really important and so
what i try to do is you know make sure
that my entire identity isn't tied to
being a researcher faculty member so
i read a lot of fiction things that have
nothing to do with computer science
you know i try to get outside you know
all of those things that we know we have
to do to kind of maintain that balance
it depends on the day and the week how
well i do with it yeah i also have like
a deep work practice in that i try and
schedule about two hours at the start of
the day before i have meetings before i
check email where i'm just engaged and
work on something whatever it is that's
like a big upcoming project and that has
been very helpful the idea of like
having an identity outside of work is
something that i've had to work through
with a therapist like try and reconcile
that and like now
i'm like sharing my
music and video game identities much
more publicly and i've never done that
before and that is like part of
a process for me for like reconciling
all these identities and just being more
open and be like hey i don't just do
computer science i also do these other
things and they're part of what
makes me who i am yeah there's like an
entire
space on instagram that is filled with
people who are bookish people and so
it's like an amazing thing to connect
with people on something that has
nothing to do with computer science and
it's like completely nerdy bookish
conversations where you're like i just
read this amazing book who else has read
it and they're like this is great and
what a gorgeous book cover and so i
think it's really healthy to do that and
it's also good to model that for
our students too who are coming in and
they're you know part of the grind and
they're trying to get through their
qualifying exams and to publish all the
papers and to get their cvs ready so
that they can be competitive and so it's
really important to recognize that
that's not the only part of your life
when you look back on your life nobody
says i don't think i wish i'd worked
more
right so the work's important the work
is privileged but it's not the only
thing that makes up your life yeah my
first therapist had experience working
in hospice and that was one of the
things that she had said to me and it
did not really connect with me
when i heard it at the time this was
during undergrad and when i was like
really getting started with career etc
and i was so driven but now i'm like oh
i get what she was saying many years ago
yeah and those people are amazing folks
who do that work talk about difficult
but necessary and absolutely critical
work for people and their families so
yeah i could see they definitely need to
disengage from that because it's the
emotional toll of that is something yeah
and i don't know if you've been to it
but i have a colleague who recommends
goodreads it's a website that is oh yeah
okay so you're on it i'm all in for
goodreads oh yeah i'm on you can find me
what recommendations do you have for
improving equity and inclusion in cs
education so one of the things i would
do is look for the csta standards for cs
teachers and their advocacy
and equity standards
i think that's a really good place for
us to go to and thinking about how to
improve our own professional learning
when it comes to access and inclusion
those standards were written to support
teachers along the trajectory from like
being a brand new teacher all the way
through you know teachers who've been
doing this for a while but the idea of
using those standards and reflecting on
those standards in your own practice
like are we minimizing threats to
inclusion for example
are we you know looking at accessible
materials so i think that that's a
really good place to go to if you're
trying to improve your practice and then
you can pull out the resources that are
available and then you know be more
strategic in terms of how you're
addressing that within your own practice
yeah and i'll make sure to include a
link to those in the show notes what do
you wish there's more research on that
can inform your own practices i wish
there were more longitudinal studies so
the way that research is currently
funded
doesn't really allow for that so if we
do
work with kids at the elementary level
and we see their learning and engagement
increase what does that look like for
that student as they move from
elementary to middle to high school to
post high school career decisions to me
is critical because knowing where those
points are those pain points
is important but we really don't know
and so i can tell you a snapshot in time
what's working and not working for a
child or a teacher in a classroom but i
really cannot tell you anything about
the long-term outcomes of that to me
that's critical and we have these in
disciplines that have been around longer
in terms of mathematics education there
are some of these more longitudinal
studies but even in those fields those
are difficult to do to me that's an area
that
i really wish we had it would inform my
practice a whole lot the other thing i
wish i had is very fine-grained data
around the participation of students
with disabilities in different programs
so it's very difficult to get that
because of obviously we have to protect
the confidentiality of students and it's
really important to do that but knowing
for example who's in computer science
not just by gender which we have
or socioeconomics or race ethnicity but
also by disability status would be
really helpful and we're getting some of
that in school districts where we have
some data agreements but having wide
scale data and not just disability but
let's just say learning disability
versus autism versus behavior disorder
and then intersectional data if you
happen to be a girl
with a behavior disorder who is from a
rural environment right those are
intersections that make a difference
because disability doesn't live in
isolation and humans aren't like one
thing we're like these complex
intersectional beings i really wish we
had that data because if i knew what
that data was i would be able to look at
systems change in a more proactive way
we're doing some of that like i said
right now as part of the udl for cs
project but it's really tedious slow
work because this data is not readily
available yeah that would be nice we're
in some of the upcoming grants i'm doing
we're trying to get more dialed in more
fine-tuned with that data but it's like
even nces data doesn't like
differentiate outside of the binary of
male and female for gender so like we're
not even there yet let alone getting
into different types of disabilities and
whatnot so much to improve there yeah we
have a long way to go right it would
make a huge difference though having
that kind of data because i mean it was
so helpful with the ap data so thinking
about barb erickson's work for example
it's great to be able to have that
metric that she has for apcs courses and
to be able to look at that over time and
then to see change in that as we do more
to include more girls to include more
people from different backgrounds right
we just aren't there yet with disability
and we may not be because of the
protections that are in place yeah well
and then with the longitudinal side of
things like you're mentioning funding
doesn't support it but also the tenure
process doesn't necessarily support
longitudinal it supports quantity of
publication and so people tend to go
with short studies or surveys rather
than something longitudinal absolutely
so i'm like i said very privileged to
already have tenure so i have the time
luckily but those early studies you know
those first kind of hustle years you
definitely can't take the time to do
long-term studies because you have to
get as many out and i mean obviously
they have to be quality studies but you
can't actually it's very chancy to do
longitudinal work when you have to
produce a lot of research studies right
what's something that you're working on
that you could use help with from a
listener if there are listeners out
there who are doing work with students
with disabilities in computer science
education i'd love to hear about that
because one of the things i want to be
able to do is highlight stories so
thinking about you know what are
strategies and you know knowing the
barriers that we've talked about what
are some ways that teachers or schools
or school districts are overcoming some
of those barriers that others
can learn from to me that would be
amazing because collecting those stories
and highlighting that work to me would
be really impactful i think that would
be fantastic i'd love to highlight and
elevate those stories what questions do
you have for myself for for the field i
think questions for the field are like
what do folks need in order to
help them include students with
disabilities
so there are some things that
i know but i like we talked about
earlier the things we know are the
things that we see in front of us right
and so being able to say you know for
folks who are really committed to this
what are the pain points and what are
the barriers that they're facing would
be really helpful it also would be
important or helpful to know in
situations that are working well this
kind of goes back to the last thing what
is it that they're doing that's working
really well because we want to learn
from that as well to me that's as
important as understanding what the
barriers are because there's good work
happening and we want to learn from that
as well and then what would it take for
them to be able to include kids with
disabilities so is it that they need
more pd
is it that they need advocacy at the
state level or you know whatever it is
that folks feel like they need that
they're not getting those are things
that would be helpful for me to know so
right now i have this cs4all research
practice partnership with several large
school districts where we're trying to
understand what those barriers are and
trying to understand what some of those
pathways are as well and so any of those
types of that kind of knowledge would be
really helpful to gather as part of this
work cool so where might people go to
connect with you and the organizations
that you work with yep so you can find
me at the creative technology research
lab at the university of florida i'm
also on twitter at m israel09 but
generally if you look me up at the
university of florida you'll be able to
find my work there and with that that
concludes this week's episode of the
cska podcast i really hope you enjoyed
listening to this interview and i hope
you consider sharing with somebody else
who might also enjoy listening to this
interview friendly reminder you can find
the show notes at jared o'leary.com as
well as a bunch of other resources
related to cs education drumming and
gaming if you'd like to be a guest on
the show or would recommend a guest you
can press the contact me button on my
website i'm always looking to find more
guests stay tuned next week for another
episode and until then i hope you're all
staying safe and are having a wonderful
week

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