Defining and Designing Computer Science Education in a K12 Public School District

Defining and Designing Computer Science Education in a K12 Public School District
Jared O'Leary
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In this episode I unpack Proctor, Bigman, and Blikstein’s (2019) publication titled “Defining and designing computer science education in a K12 public school district,” which serves as a case study of a district’s processes and tensions developing a plan for implementing computer science across K-12.

  • Welcome back to another episode of the

    csk8 podcast my name is Jared O'Leary

    each week of this podcast is either an

    interview with a guest or multiple

    guests or a solo episode where I unpack

    some scholarship in relation to Computer

    Science Education in today's episode I'm

    unpacking a paper titled defining and

    designing Computer Science Education in

    the K-12 Public School District this

    paper is written by Chris Proctor

    Maxwell bigman and Paulo blickstein

    apologies if I mispronounced any names

    here's the abstract for this paper quote

    computer science is poised to become a

    core discipline in K-12 education

    however there are unresolved tensions

    between the definitions and purposes of

    computer science and public education

    this study's goal is to explore how

    logistical and conceptual challenges

    emerge while designing a comprehensive

    K-12 computer science program in a

    public school district while the policy

    infrastructure for K-12 Computer Science

    Education is rapidly developing few

    districts have yet implemented computer

    science as a core discipline in their

    K-12 programs and very little research

    has explored the challenges involved in

    putting ideas into practice this study

    reports on a committee designing a

    comprehensive K-12 computer science

    education program at a small Public

    School District in California through a

    grounded Theory qualitative

    interpretation of Committee Member

    interviews and board meeting transcripts

    we surfaced three themes which were the

    primary points of attention how Computer

    Science Education is defined how ought

    to be taught and what process ought to

    be used to answer these questions

    grounding these tensions in the academic

    discourse of K-12 Computer Science

    Education this study offers

    recommendations to other districts

    designing comprehensive Computer Science

    Education and suggest future directions

    of Computer Science Education research

    that will be most useful to stakeholders

    of these processes end quote prior to

    summarize this paper into a single

    sentence I'd say that this study serves

    as a case study of a District's

    processes intentions developing a plan

    for implementing computer science across

    K-12 so if you are brand new to Computer

    Science Education or your district is

    brand new and you really want to expand

    across the entire District this case

    study might serve as kind of a tale with

    some things to consider before going in

    into it as there are some interesting

    lessons that can be drawn from this and

    considerations that can be made if you

    are going to work with a district on

    developing implementation across K-12

    but note that this is just one example

    and there are many ways of doing this

    and I say that as somebody who works for

    a non-profit that has worked with many

    districts Across the Nation everybody

    does it in a different way but it's

    important to hear other perspectives and

    go oh that's an interesting idea I want

    to do it that way or oh I really don't

    want to do it that way Etc now in the

    introduction of this paper the authors

    mentioned that there is a thriving

    economy around Ed Tech and out-of-school

    learning opportunities that are relevant

    to Computer Science Education and the

    reason for this is because of the social

    value placed on understanding Computing

    whether it be as specific as coding or

    as broad as computational thinking or

    computer science as a domain many

    companies are saying they want more

    people with background in computer

    science whatever that may mean or look

    like and many states or districts are

    adopting computer science education

    standards that are then being required

    of teachers and school districts however

    at the moment not every district and

    every student is receiving Computer

    Science Education instruction by the way

    code.org actually released a state of Cs

    report recently I'll include a link to

    that in the show notes so if you want to

    see how is your state doing check it out

    really simple easy to understand and

    it's got some interesting data and you

    can be like oh well how does my state

    compare to the state next door or the

    state I previously taught in now in the

    introduction the authors also know that

    there's not enough discussion on how

    other people end up doing implementation

    in K-12 districts probably the most

    frequently discussed approach for this

    that I've seen is using script which is

    an acronym for a program developed by CS

    sprawl to help districts come up with

    their own implementation plan that is

    unique to their interests and needs Etc

    I'll include some links to some podcasts

    of some people who actually worked on

    Scripps or worked at CS for all in

    various capacities so if you want to

    learn more about that make sure you

    check out those podcasts in the show

    notes which you can find at

    jaredeliry.com or by simply clicking the

    link in the app that you're listening to

    the song and while you're there you'll

    notice that this podcast is powered by

    boot up professional development which

    is the non-profit that I work for what's

    interesting about this case study is

    this District ended up spending three

    years designing their K-12 CS program in

    this particular study this paper

    discusses the questions quote what is

    the district's vision for computer

    science two how should the district's

    K-12 CS program be implemented in taught

    three what process should be used to

    answer these questions and who should

    participate end quote from Pages 3 14

    and 3 15. all right so the next section

    of the paper is a background section I'm

    going to skip over that and just jump

    right into the methods here's a quote

    from page 315 that kind of describes the

    district court the study was conducted

    at a small wealthy Suburban School

    District in California in which a

    committee composed of students parents

    teachers and school leaders has spent

    the last three years designing a K-12 CS

    program end quote now the high schools

    already have multiple computer science

    courses likely because this is a very

    affluent district with high social

    capital and the authors note that many

    of the committee members actually engage

    in various leadership capacities in K-12

    CS education but again it's interesting

    to note that it's parents teachers

    students leaders Etc who are all kind of

    collaborating or sometimes not

    collaborating arguing with each other

    about how to implement across K-12 and

    for this study they looked at interviews

    and transcripts from various

    presentations and public discussions

    like at the school board of education

    meetings all right so the next section

    gets at the results the first subsection

    is titled what is computer science now

    the authors note that the committee

    unanimously agreed that computer science

    is important but they all had different

    rationales for why they felt it was

    important so some would say Equity is

    important or interests or economic

    opportunities or believing CS is an

    important literacy or skill that relates

    to everyday life and digital citizenship

    Etc now I've done multiple episodes that

    actually talk about the Visions

    framework from CS for all which is

    related to the script work workshops

    that I previously mentioned so make sure

    you check out the show notes at

    jaredeliry.com or those podcast episodes

    which basically talks about how the

    vision framework helps people figure out

    their vision for CS what are their

    rationales their drive for why they

    think it's important or it should be

    implemented and that can help people to

    engage in conversation to go oh I think

    computer science should be this but you

    think it should be this other thing that

    is interesting let's talk about these

    similarities and differences in our

    values around the rationales for CS

    education one of the really interesting

    findings on this particular paper is

    that the committee had fundamental

    disagreements on well what exactly is

    computer science and because of this

    disagreement on just like a single

    definition of it it really impacted the

    effectiveness of their conversations and

    then there's also fundamental

    disagreement on what the focus should be

    of the conversations so some wanted to

    focus on inclusion efforts so getting

    more students to participate While

    others wanted to focus on on diving

    deeper into rigor so here's an

    interesting quote from a teacher and

    this is on page 316 to 317. quote a

    teacher taking this perspective argued

    that de-emphasizing programming for

    example through unplugged activities is

    a disservice to students quote if you're

    teaching origami in computer science

    class and some guy out in a wealthy city

    is teaching kids how to actually write

    programs I've got very little doubt

    which kid is likely to be in better

    shape coming out of those two classes in

    terms of being able to function well at

    the next level I think it's creating a

    Chasm between the Haves and the

    have-nots end quote and I know that

    right there is going to be some fighting

    words for some people some people might

    say well unplugged are really great ways

    to lower the barrier of Entry get people

    interested in both taking a CS class and

    even teaching a CS class and then other

    people look at it go okay but that's not

    actually programming you're just kind of

    skimming on the surface of understanding

    without actually applying it with

    increasing complexity over an extended

    period of time now it's not to say that

    if you do unplugged you can't do

    programming you can certainly do both

    but it's interesting reading these

    arguments because I've been hearing

    these Arguments for years now some

    people want to talk about inclusion

    other people want to talk about rigor so

    it's really interesting the way the

    authors frame this it's kind of like two

    polls on a Continuum where people kind

    of gravitating around in their

    conversations on implementation here's

    an interesting quote from page 317.

    quote this epistemological tension is

    paralleled in the academic debate over

    computational thinking even though the

    term was used only 12 times in our

    Corpus over the last decade proponents

    of computational thinking have argued

    for a practice focused vision of

    computer science often including

    collaboration creativity and the

    construction of identities and

    communities where computational

    practices can emerge computational

    thinking has been useful to those

    arguing for teaching computer science at

    the elementary level for

    interdisciplinary computer science and

    as a lens on inclusion and inequity

    others likely in agreement with the

    teacher quoted in the previous paragraph

    feel that computer science and the

    useful definition of computational

    thinking

    ought to be more narrow defined focusing

    on the application of core computational

    ideas through programming too heavy

    Reliance on computer science practices

    risk obscuring the powerful ideas that

    make the field transformative empowering

    and worth teaching end quote and if

    you're interested in some more nuanced

    discussion on the tensions around

    computational thinking and what one of

    the authors actually proposes with

    kaphai as computational literacies I

    highly recommend checking out the

    podcast that I did almost a year ago now

    actually titled A revaluation of

    computational thinking in K-12 education

    moving toward computational literacies

    really interesting paper that I unpack

    in that particular Episode by Cafe

    improctor now another interesting thing

    that the authors note in this particular

    study is that on this committee there

    were a lot of tensions around people who

    had identities as computer scientists

    and those who did not and how those

    various levels of expertise kind of

    butted heads at times but speaking of

    some tensions the next subsection is

    around the question how should computer

    science to be taught so at the

    elementary and middle school level they

    agreed that computational thinking

    should be interwoven throughout the

    classes in an interdisciplinary way and

    science should be a graduation

    requirement with only 15 percent who are

    against it and the other remaining

    percent of people tried to find another

    way or just abstain from voting on that

    one which is why that does not add up to

    there is support for the graduation

    requirement quote there's substantial

    disagreement about what sort of course

    should be required mirroring the two

    different understandings of computer

    science there was a group emphasizing

    rigor and another group focusing on

    exposure the farmer group was interested

    in the AP Computer Science principles

    course citing the number of people who

    have worked hard on that including

    people from the University level while

    the latter group was interested in

    emphasizing the broad applications of

    computer science in an inclusive manner

    the committee ultimately did not reach

    an agreement on the nature of the

    required course as they focused their

    efforts on first securing the graduation

    requirement end quote from page 317.

    that's real really interesting a while

    back I did a little mini series on

    integration and one of the key things

    that I was talking about throughout

    those episodes was it was important to

    really sit down and talk about well what

    do you mean by integration same thing

    here with the overall definition of

    computer science well what do you mean

    by what it's going to look like so while

    the majority of people agreed yeah it

    should be a graduation requirement once

    you actually dive into it because well

    what does that look like is it going to

    be a single course could it be multiple

    courses offered like one focusing on

    rigor or another focusing on exposure

    Etc these are all really important

    things to consider when it comes to what

    does this actually look like so for

    example when the authors mentioned that

    they were engaging in an

    interdisciplinary way of engaging in

    computational thinking whoa what does

    interdisciplinary mean to you does it

    mean I use the term decomposition in my

    class therefore we have now done

    computational thinking check I've marked

    that off my list for the month and we

    can move on or does it mean engaging in

    scratch projects to demonstrate

    understanding those are two very

    different approaches for for engaging in

    computational thinking in an

    interdisciplinary way in an elementary

    class so it's nice that the authors

    talked about these tension points rather

    than just the agreement far too often

    there's this tendency to paint things as

    rosy and like yeah everything was great

    when it came to this study you should

    fund me some more this is not saying the

    authors did that not at all in fact they

    did the opposite they said here are some

    things that people agreed upon here are

    some things that they did not agree upon

    and I really value that they share those

    aspects of these conversations because

    it's important to realize this is going

    to be a difficult and apparently long

    and drawn out process since it took

    three years for some District now

    jumping back into the findings again

    rather than just my commentary but one

    of the other interesting conversations

    that they had to have was okay well are

    we going to replace a graduation

    requirement are we going to add on a new

    graduation requirement which would then

    take away an elective from students and

    oh boy I would love to have been sitting

    in the audience at that conversation

    with a bucket full of popcorn we would

    have listened to that that is a really

    good good question to consider that

    could have profound impact on students

    like for people like myself who were in

    ensembles like band that made it so I

    might have zero or maybe one or maybe

    two electives by senior year that I

    could take oddly enough I actually just

    recently talked to my wife about this

    and she said that she only had one other

    elective that she could select from in

    high school but she was also in band so

    if we take that away does that mean

    students who are committed to something

    that they've potentially been doing

    since like I don't know fourth grade

    let's say they want to continue it all

    the way through high school but then

    they don't have electives to choose from

    because they have so many graduation

    requirements what about what happens

    five years from now when we have another

    new graduation requirement for another

    really interesting and super important

    domain so the students who are a part of

    this Who quote spoke against the

    requirement cited the overwhelming

    demands of the existing requirements and

    The Limited choice in their schedules

    one student summed up a survey of his

    peers quote they're less against the

    idea of teaching computer science than

    they are with the idea of more required

    tournaments instead suggesting that the

    district might loosen up curriculum and

    rethink the idea of what students must

    know because right now we're all working

    under a system that's collapsing under

    its own weight end quote from page 317.

    so then the question became quote Should

    students be able to choose their courses

    or should districts determine what

    courses students need to take on the one

    hand one board member argued for a

    requirement from an equity perspective

    quote if we believe that computer

    science is a critical skill for being

    citizen in the modern world then we

    really can't accept a situation in which

    our female students and the

    underrepresented minority students are

    not participating in that at the same

    levels as other students that really

    should be unacceptable to us and I think

    a graduation requirement is a way of

    addressing that end quote from page 317

    but then on the other hand try to go to

    some of the arguments I've made in other

    podcast episodes is that a form of

    epistemological colonization or

    ontological colonization or axiological

    colonization so epistemological like

    ways of learning or knowing on

    ecological ways of being and axiological

    like ways of valuing if we add on more

    requirements and say students have to do

    this thing because I value this thing

    and think it's important for them is

    that then colonizing their ways of

    knowing their ways of being and things

    that they value I can see both sides of

    an answer to that yes or no but I

    definitely lean more towards yes so for

    example in high school I had an academic

    counselor who was really set on me

    getting into Harvard because of how I

    placed on some test scores I was placed

    into a group of students who this

    special academic counselor really wanted

    us to all get into some Ivy League

    school whenever I'd go meet with him

    he'd be like oh well you should drop

    banned or better yet leave this school

    entirely and go to this other program

    that was for students who tested high on

    these honors tests that and you'd get a

    laptop you'd get all sorts of like

    one-on-one attention and get to take

    more rigorous courses and this would

    look great to get into Harvard and my

    response was every time was I'm not

    interested in going to Harvard and I

    want to be in band this academic

    guidance counselor although

    well-intentioned did not care what my

    interests were and just wanted to serve

    his own needs and what he thought was

    best for me turns out I've done just

    fine even though all my degrees are in

    music education I pursued my passions

    and that led me to Computer Science

    Education and it has allowed me to bring

    to this field a perspective and set of

    experiences that are unique for many CS

    Educators so I'm able to look at things

    in a different way had I followed the

    academic guidance counselor's advice I

    wouldn't have those perspectives and

    quite frankly I probably wouldn't be as

    happy because I ended up exploring my

    own paths my own interests in life and

    how I could help other people so that

    long-winded tangent to say the more

    courses we add the less likely students

    are going to be able to pursue their own

    interests and the more it's going to

    come across as colonizing students is

    ways of knowing being and what they

    value in my opinion and if you disagree

    that's okay happy to chat with you on

    the podcast contact me button on my

    website okay so that was a discussion on

    subsection 2 in the results and some of

    my own thoughts embedded throughout that

    but now let's look at subsection three

    of the results this question focused on

    what processes should be used to answer

    these questions so the authors kind of

    hinted like a bordujian power

    perspective and talking about social

    cultural capital in terms of sometimes

    the experts who had background in

    computer science education weren't

    actually viewed as experts in a domain

    but for example when it comes to

    pedagogy and teaching the teachers would

    have more social capital or more

    cultural capital in that particular

    question or context and if you want to

    hear a paper that actually talked about

    Bordeaux in relation to Computer Science

    Education I'll include a link to that in

    the show notes as well as the discussion

    with Kimberly Scott we kind of talk

    about the different forms of capital

    that influence us we also talk about

    that and some other interviews like with

    the interview with Joyce McCall which

    used the Shire as a metaphor for

    systemic racism highly recommend

    listening to that episode here's an

    interesting quote from page 318. quote

    in some cases the construction of

    expertise was explicitly about power and

    whose voice counts one male t teacher

    explicitly excluded the expertise of the

    women quoted in the previous paragraphs

    quote it's tough because you know I felt

    like other male teacher and I were the

    two subject matter experts in the room

    other than a couple of parents who were

    in the business and I think both other

    male teacher and I at different times

    during the past couple of years have you

    know threw our arms up end quote this

    teacher has strong views on what

    constitutes computer science and on how

    it should be taught and frequently saw

    himself in the minority on the committee

    these interactions portray computer

    science knowledge as situated in

    particular identities context of use and

    power relationships this is not a

    dominant perspective in computer science

    end quote honestly you could probably

    write an entire paper just on that

    little embedded quote within there from

    that teacher I read this quote to share

    that whenever engaging in conversations

    around education everything is gray not

    black and white it's gray there are many

    perspectives to consider and sometimes

    when a group leans in One Direction

    those who disagree with that will feel

    left out or if the group has a leader

    who ultimately listens to everybody's

    perspectives and has to make some kind

    of a decision with input whatever

    decision they make somebody most likely

    is going to disagree with that and

    that's to be expected so it's important

    to consider these different

    relationships and contexts and power

    dynamics at play and how things are

    perceived because even if we make

    statements like I think students should

    be able to choose what they want to

    learn while I strongly agree with that I

    can also see situations where I think

    it's important for subject matter

    experts to determine what students

    should learn in X Y or Z most of the

    time I disagree with that second

    statement and instead prefer the first

    one letting students choose but

    sometimes I agree with the other

    perspective it depends on content now

    because of that one of the findings from

    this that they talk about on page 318 is

    that it is important to consider the

    size of the committee when engaging in

    these conversations because it can have

    a profound impact on the efficiency of

    that conversation having been in many

    professional conversations before it's

    sometimes easier to work in smaller

    groups rather than to have everybody

    work on something all together other so

    for example I helped Wyoming develop

    their computer science standards there's

    like 50 of us or so who all met long

    before covid and chatted about the

    different standards we started in a

    group of 50 but then broke down into

    much smaller groups where we could get

    into the details around specific

    standards in different grade bands so I

    worked in the 3-5 grade band then we

    come back together as a full group and

    discuss things and then break it down

    into a smaller group again and so it

    kind of alternated between those that

    was an effective way to have everybody

    to listen to and understand perspectives

    while also being able to kind of work

    through things in smaller groups if we

    had stayed in a group of 50 the entire

    time the standards would still not be

    written today but because of the

    approach that was used we were able to

    get things done so if you are going to

    work on some kind of a committee that

    determines how you implement in the

    classroom maybe consider a smaller group

    or kind of alternating between large

    group feedback small group goes and

    works on something brings it back to the

    large group to get some more feedback

    and continue that cycle now the authors

    in the discussion ask some really the

    important questions that I highly

    recommend taking a look at but here's a

    little paragraph that I'm going to read

    from page 319 that kind of summarizes

    things quote for stakeholders of schools

    designing comprehensive computer science

    programs this study offers several

    lessons it is important to realize that

    there are substantial unresolved

    disagreements about what constitutes

    computer science and that any

    implementation will need to take a

    stance on what matters most people's

    understandings of computer science will

    be situated in their own experience and

    the process of developing a broadly

    shared operative definition of computer

    science should include time to discuss

    these different backgrounds in order to

    include participants without existing

    computer science experience it may be

    necessary to invest in Community

    Education efforts despite these efforts

    some people will be skeptical that

    computer science ought to be a priority

    if they are not also included in the

    process they may solidify into an

    oppositional fraction the question of

    whether to require a separate computer

    science course may be a Crux Point

    essential for Equitable participation

    but also in competition with other

    priority for The Limited number of

    courses that can be required the same

    factors which have historically excluded

    students from participating in computer

    science are likely to affect potential

    participants in the process of Designing

    a computer science program end quote so

    I highly recommend reading this paper it

    is a single case study of a single

    District but it is something that I

    highly recommend taking a look at

    because there's some interesting

    findings at the end of these episodes

    I'd like to share some lingering

    thoughts and questions I kind of

    embedded a lot of those throughout this

    particular episode but I guess a

    question that I might have for you and

    hopefully you can engage in this

    conversation with other colleagues in

    the field is what implementation

    approaches have worked for you or other

    districts that you're aware of and how

    might we share those successful

    approaches with other districts who have

    not yet started implementing CS I hope

    you enjoyed this episode really

    interesting findings and discussions in

    this particular paper you also felt it

    was interesting please consider sharing

    with somebody else or leaving a review

    on a podcast app that you're listening

    to this on and again check out there's a

    bunch of podcast episodes that I

    referenced in this one they're all

    included in the show notes there's over

    a many more interesting papers that were

    unpacked and really awesome interviews

    with some pretty cool people and when I

    say awesome interviews I mean they were

    awesome not like giving myself a

    compliment or anything because that's

    yeah not something I do but anyways

    check out the shout outs to

    jaredolier.com it's also hundreds if not

    thousands of free computer science

    education resources including a link to

    boot.pd.org which is where I create free

    coding curriculum work on Research do

    some other cool projects and service

    efforts but anyways stay tuned next week

    for another episode till then hope

    you're all staying safe and are having a

    wonderful week

Article

Proctor, C., Bigman, M., & Blikstein, P. (2019). Defining and designing computer science education in a K12 public school district. SIGCSE 2019 - Proceedings of the 50th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education, 1, 314–320.

Abstract

“Computer science is poised to become a core discipline in K12 education, however there are unresolved tensions between the definitions and purposes of computer science and public education. This study’s goal is to explore how logistical and conceptual challenges emerge while designing a comprehensive K12 computer science program in a public school district. While the policy infrastructure for K12 computer science education is rapidly developing, few districts have yet implemented computer science as a core discipline in their K12 programs and very little research has explored the challenges involved in putting ideas into practice. This study reports on a committee designing a comprehensive K12 computer science education program at a small public school district in California. Through a grounded-theory qualitative interpretation of committee-member interviews and board meeting transcripts, we surfaced three themes which were the primary points of tension: how computer science is defined, how it ought to be taught, and what process ought to be used to answer these questions. Grounding these tensions in the academic discourse on K12 computer science education, this study offers recommendations to other districts designing comprehensive computer science education and suggests future directions of computer science education research that will be most useful to stakeholders of these processes.”

Author Keywords

K-12 education, computational thinking

My One Sentence Summary

This study serves as a case study of a district’s processes and tensions developing a plan for implementing computer science across K-12.

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

  • What implementation approaches have worked for you or other districts that you’re aware of?

    • How might we share those approaches with other districts that have not yet implemented CS?

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

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