How K-12 CS Teachers Conceptualize CS Ethics: Future Opportunities and Barriers to Ethics Integration in K-12 CS

In this episode I unpack Hu and Yadav’s (2023) publication titled “How K-12 CS teachers conceptualize CS ethics: Future opportunities and barriers to ethics integration in K-12 CS,” which explores K-12 CS educators’ perspectives on ethics before and after an introduction to the big ideas around ethics in computing.

Over the past few weeks we've explored
ethics in computer science education
from a variety of different perspectives
for example the perspectives of students
the perspectives of higher education
faculty members as well as looking at
ethics from like curricular standpoints
in terms of how you might integrate but
what about perspectives of K-12
Educators what are their perceived
opportunities and barriers or
understandings of the word ethics we're
going to explore that in today's paper
which is titled quote how k-12cs
teachers conceptualize CS ethics colon
future opportunities and barriers to
ethics integration in k-12cs end quote
this paper is written by Anne Drew who
and Aman yadav here's the abstract for
this paper quote as issues of ethics
criticality and social impact become
more important in computer science so
does the need to teach them in CS
classes despite the recent growth of
academic writing around ethics and Cs
and a push for teaching ethics and
post-secondary CS classes the K-12 space
has largely been ignored to explore
integrated ethics into K-12 CS classes
we interviewed a diverse group of
current U.S K-12 CS teachers and
conducted a thematic analysis to
understand how they conceptualize ethics
in CS and see potential opportunities
and barriers to ethics integration in
their classroom context we found that
teachers initially Associated ethics
with digital citizenship and gender race
imbalances but were largely unfamiliar
with issues of algorithmic bias
Injustice and techno solutionism after
being introduced to these ideas and
presented with examples the teachers
started to broaden the perspective of Cs
ethics however there are still barriers
to teachers integrating ethics into
their classroom example curriculum time
constraints we discussed potential
future Pathways for K-12 CS ethics
including your integrating ethics into
digital citizenship end quote if I were
to summarize this study into a single
sentence I'd say that this study
explores k-12cs educators's perspectives
on ethics before and after an
introduction to the Big Ideas around
ethics in Computing and as always you
can find a link to this paper in the
show notes at jaredolary.com or by
clicking the link in the app that you're
listening to this on so the authors
begin with the introduction with a very
important thing to consider this is from
page 910 quote to address the question
of how to prepare teachers to teach
ethical Concepts in computer science we
must first understand how teachers
conceptualize CS ethics and how they see
the role of Ethics in their classroom
and quote that is a very important point
to consider I really appreciate that
from a researcher standpoint because
there is a tendency sometimes for
researchers to kind of come into the
K-12 space and assume that they
understand something and then they
engage in behaviors that can come across
as colonizing teachers as ways of
thinking doing being Etc so rather than
making assumptions I really appreciate
it that the authors of this particular
study went in asking questions first to
understand what teachers thought before
they did any kind of intervention so
kudos to the authors for that now on
page 910 and 911 here are the research
questions for this particular study
quote rq1a how did K-12 CS teachers
conceptualize CS ethics before being
shown examples of Big Ideas is in CS
ethics rq1b how did these
conceptualizations change if at all
after being shown examples of Big Ideas
in CS ethics rq2a what opportunities and
barriers do K-12 CS teachers see to
integrating ethics into their CS classes
rq2b what values influence how K-12
teachers think about integrating ethics
into the Cs classes end so section 2 is
on the background and so in this they
kind of talk about what their ethical
framing is in terms of what our macro
ethics and microethics so the macro
level might be how like algorithms might
create injustices for example through
apps that are created by large
corporations and then at the micro level
it's more of like how individual
designers developers Etc can have a
negative impact on other people and the
authors emphasize in this section that
is important for students to understand
what ethics is because they need to be
able to make informed decisions in their
lives about Computing and Computing
devices or products and be more critical
of them so they do have a subsection
that is 2.2 which is on the Big Ideas in
CS ethics so they talk about ideas like
algorithmic bias and they provide some
examples for each one of these big Ideas
so an example under algorithmic bias is
using postal codes to approve or deny
loan applications as these postal codes
are often substitutes for race or
socioeconomic status and demographics
and so the authors unpack some of the
problems with that type of algorithmic
bias another one that they talk about is
algorithmic Injustice this is when an
algorithm might reinforce or create a
new form of Injustice For example facial
recognition which results in wrongful
arrests Etc if you want to learn more
about that make sure you check out that
subsection and then an idea known as
techno solutionism here's a quote from
page 912 that talks about that quote
this is the myth that new technologies
can be used to solve all of society's
problems Advocates of techno solutionism
believe that algorithms are objective
and unbiased therefore they are the best
way to solve problems end quote so an
example they provide on techno
solutionism is using like an algorithm
to kind of sort through resumes or
application patients for jobs and how
that led to some biases against women if
you want to learn more about that make
sure you check out that subsection now
in the methods section the authors
mentioned that there were six teachers
that were in the American Midwest and
they engaged in three interviews and the
first interview is basically like a
pre-test where they were kind of trying
to understand what the teachers thought
about what ethics was in the second
interview they had a review of what are
some of the ethical Big Ideas in
Computing and then in the third
interview they talked about okay well
how has your understandings of Ethics
changed and how might you actually
integrate ethics into your classes and
then they used a thematic analysis to
kind of look at what the responses were
after like transcribing the interviews
all right so let's talk about the
findings this is section four starting
on page 912. so for the first research
question which was on the
preconceptualizations of Cs ethics some
of the teachers who responded thought
that ethics was related to malicious
uses of technology so for example
hacking or social engineering others
described ethics in relation to privacy
like being able to keep your personal
information information off the internet
some teachers thought of it it had to do
with underrepresentation for example CS
being largely dominated by white and
Asian males others thought of Ethics as
appropriate usage of Technology like a
code of conduct that they might use in
their classroom or something like that
some teachers thought of Ethics as
incentives in the tech industry so like
how capitalism influences Tech and then
only one of the teachers actually
demonstrated prior knowledge of the big
ideas that were presented in the second
interview that I talked about earlier
now in the subsection they weave in a
bunch of different quotes from the
different participants so I highly
recommend looking at that alright so in
the next subsection for rq1b they talk
about the post-conceptualizations of Cs
ethics so after they did the
intervention where they kind of talked
about well here are some of the bigger
ideas that are being discussed within
the field of computer science the
authors then engaged in a third
interview where they asked the teachers
okay well now what are your
understandings of computer science
ethics and so after this point the
teachers talked about things like
algorithms lack humanity and they have
limitations to their design and how they
might be used the teachers also were
able to kind of discuss some of the
biases that might exist in terms of the
human biases that might be programmed
into it as well as the computational
biases from like using different types
of data sets for example with the facial
recognition if you're only using data
sets for white individuals or like white
males algorithms that are kind of
feeding off of that data are likely not
going to work as well for females or for
people with darker complexions but again
the teachers now understood that humans
also have biases as well in terms of the
algorithms that they write teachers also
brought up how algorithms have biased
them or like family members or friends
etc for example being denied loans
because of your ZIP code teachers were
also able to identify how algorithms
were kind of like reinforcing some
discrimination or injustices like with
not hiring women for different positions
because the algorithm was removing women
from the application pool and then
teachers also talked about how it
appeared as though there's almost like a
lack of accountability for a lot of
these biases in unintended or maybe on
unfortunately intentional consequences
from some of these algorithmic biases
Etc okay so now that teachers had a
better understanding of what are some of
the big ideas and ethics what does this
actually look like in terms of potential
opportunities and barriers for
incorporating ethics into a K-12
computer science classroom that's
discussed in section 4.3 rq2a in this
section teachers talked about how they
could take an interdisciplinary approach
to Computer Science Education which I
have had several episodes that talk
about how you might integrate computer
science in helpful or problematic ways
in a recent episode 180 we talk about
integrating ethics into computer science
and education in multi-enter and
transdisciplinary approaches so if you
haven't listened to that episode I
highly recommend you do so that is very
relevant to this topic and there are
several more episodes that kind of
unpack integration in general if that
topic interests you so I'll link to
those in the show notes at
jaredoleery.com teachers also mentioned
in this interview that they felt like
they had more examples that they could
actually discuss and present to students
and explore in different ways and they
also Express an interest in having a
curriculum that focused on or embedded
ethics throughout the curriculum so that
way they could explore some of the
issues of like algorithmic biases
injustices Etc so if you are a
curriculum developer like I used to be
that might be an opportunity for you to
explore kind of fill that Niche and then
they also just kind of felt like they
had an expanded sense of vocabulary
related to Computer Science Education
which for whatever reason is like a big
topic among elementary teachers in
particular being able to speak in
academic languages but for myself it's
something that I've like never really
focused on or cared about both as a
student and as an educator and I say
that as somebody who has actually read
quite a bit of literature on situated
languages and learning in terms of
vernacular languages academic languages
and the social capital that comes with
those different types of languages so
I'll include some episodes in the show
notes that talk about that like episode
with Kimberly Scott as well as episode
Brian Brown so if you want to hear more
perspectives on that idea take a look at
those episodes now in terms of barriers
the teachers only really mentioned too
so one is time constraints which like
every educator kind of seems to reflect
that in the different research that I've
explored either as a researcher or as
somebody who's just reading other
people's research but again like I
discussed last week there's always going
to be a null curricula so this is kind
of always going to happen but teachers
today are really kind of pulled in so
many different directions that it
becomes difficult to really incorporate
anything new into a classroom that
they're constantly being asked to just
add and add an ad without subtracting
anything like especially if you think of
like the K8 or elementary teachers in
particular they might have a 90 minute
reading block like a 90-minute math
block and then they've got to do like so
many other different classes that they
teach all these different subject areas
and then they're being asked to
integrate computer science and then
ethics like how much more are we going
to keep adding until we finally get to a
point where we go okay we need to
subtract stuff or are we going to
increase the number of hours we have in
a school day we can eliminate recess
even though research suggests that it's
extremely beneficial for students is
learning and you know just happiness but
another barrier that the teachers
mentioned was that CS was just not
prioritized by the school so it might
have been an elective or just not
considered to be something important by
administrators now for the next
subsection 4.4 which is on rq2b which is
on the values that the Educators shared
some of the teachers mentioned that they
wanted to be able to support their
Community others mentioned that they
wanted to be able to compete
economically in terms of competition
with other Outsiders like other
countries as well as like against
automation some felt that there should
be more accountability in terms of who
is held responsible for some of these
algorithmic biases and consequences some
teachers expressed that they were afraid
of algorithmic harm and like an
uncertainty about the future of
technology and its impact on society and
then others mentioned that they felt
that Cs and CS ethics was important to
understand and to be able to participate
in our democracy now in the discussion
section the authors mentioned that this
topic of Ethics is often merged together
or correlated with discussions on
digital citizens and ship here's a quote
from page 915 quote instead of being a
barrier to ethics integration the
tendency for teachers to associate
digital citizenship with ethics could be
used as an opportunity to increase the
presence of Cs ethics end quote and that
leads into some of my lingering
questions and thoughts so the first one
is what does this mean for PD and
curriculum providers is this an
opportunity for professional development
providers and curriculum developers to
embed or integrate digital citizenship
ethics and computer science all into one
curriculum or unit or lesson plan Etc
what might that look like in some of the
prior ethics episodes kind of unpack
that so again check out episode 180
which is on integrating ethics in
computer science education multi-enter
and transdisciplinary approaches if
you're interested in learning more about
that also check out episode 181 which is
titled is more better when embedding
ethics in CS courses which basically
asks questions like when do we reach our
saturation point with ethics in computer
science classes when is it enough or too
much now another question that I have is
how does your desire to integrate ethics
compare with your desire to focus on
Equity where do the two like overlap and
diverge so if we think of them as like
two different circles a little Venn
diagram where do does equity and ethics
overlap and what is missing outside of
that overlap are they one and the same
for you when do you focus on Equity
without focusing on ethics and when do
you focus on ethics without focusing on
Equity there isn't really a right or
wrong way to think of this but it's
something important to consider if you
are passionate about both how much time
do you spend on either of them then
another question that I have is like how
has your understanding of Ethics changed
over time not just like as a result of
these podcasts or anything but in terms
of like understanding just how much of
an impact computer science can have on
different people individuals groups Etc
like learning about the different
algorithmic biases that we've talked
about and that guests I've talked about
or that I mentioned in today's paper
that we're unpacking you'll often hear
in the interviews that I've conducted on
here that I will often ask about how an
understanding of education has kind of
changed over time for a guest I just
think it's interesting to kind of think
through that sit with it but another
question that I have is more of a
personal question for you and what your
preferences are for this particular
podcast I've tried different approaches
over the years in terms of like having
little mini series on like mod culture
and modding or a little mini series on
Palo Freddie's book pedagogy of the
oppressed or a mini series on
integration or even some on what it
means to integrate music into computer
science class because again my
background's in music education I've
tried different approaches for each of
these the different miniseries in terms
of like how many papers or Publications
I discuss as well as should I do them
all back to back or should I make it so
that they are more spread out or include
some like interviews in between them
what is your particular preference would
you prefer something new every week or
do you like to have several episodes in
a row that kind of unpack a particular
idea you can leave a comment on social
media platforms whether it's like
Twitter or on my website or on the
YouTube video that you might be watching
or listening to this on but feel free to
let me know there's also a contact me
button on my website I am curious what
your preferences are as pretty I'm going
to be starting a professional
development mini series I kind of
basically provides free professional
development for listeners so you don't
have to pay tens of thousands of dollars
to get started with Computer Science
Education so stay tuned for that but
thank you so much for listening to this
episode if you enjoyed this little mini
series on ethics please consider sharing
it with somebody else or leaving a
review on whatever app you're listening
to this on this helps more people find
this podcast stay tuned next week for
another episode until then I hope you're
all staying safe and are having a
wonderful week

Article

Hu., A. D. & Yadav, A. (2023). How K-12 CS Teachers Conceptualize CS Ethics: Future Opportunities and Barriers to Ethics Integration in K-12 CS. Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education - SIGCSE ’23, 910-916.

Abstract

“As issues of ethics, criticality, and social impact become more important in computer science, so does the need to teach them in CS classes. Despite the recent growth of academic writing around ethics in CS and a push for teaching ethics in post-secondary CS classes, the K-12 space has largely been ignored. To explore integrating ethics into K-12 CS classes, we interviewed a diverse group of current US K-12 CS teachers and conducted a thematic analysis to understand how they conceptualize ethics in CS and see potential opportunities and barriers to ethics integration in their classroom context. We found that teachers initially associated ethics with digital citizenship and gender/race imbalances, but were largely unfamiliar with issues of algorithmic bias, injustice, and technosolutionism. After being introduced to these ideas and presented with examples, the teachers started to broaden their perspective of CS ethics. However, there are still barriers to teachers integrating ethics into their classroom (e.g. curriculum, time constraints). We discuss potential future pathways for K-12 CS ethics including through integrating ethics into digital citizenship.”

Author Keywords

CS education, ethics, CS ethics

My One Sentence Summary

This study explores K-12 CS educators’ perspectives on ethics before and after an introduction to the big ideas around ethics in computing.

Some Of My Lingering Questions/Thoughts

What does this mean for PD and curriculum providers?
How does your desire to integrate ethics compare with your desire to focus on equity?
- Where do the two overlap and diverge?
How has your understanding of ethics changed over time?
Do you prefer mini series or something new every week?

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

Other podcast episodes that were mentioned or are relevant to this episode
- Incorporating Ethics in Computing Courses: Barriers, Support, and Perspectives from Educators
  - In this episode I unpack Smith et al.’s (2023) publication titled “Incorporating ethics in computing courses: Barriers, support, and perspectives from educators,” which investigates the perceived barriers and support for implementing ethics into higher education CS courses.
- Intersections of Cultural Capital with Kimberly Scott
  - In this interview with Kimberly Scott, we discuss some of the problems with discourse around grit, students as techno-social change agents, teaching with culturally responsive approaches in communities that are hostile toward culturally responsive pedagogies, unpacking discourse and Discourse, considering both present and future identities when teaching, potential disconnects between theory and practice with intersectional work, comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comforted, and so much more.
- Is More Better When Embedding Ethics in CS Courses?
  - In this episode I unpack Horton, Liu, McIlraith, and Wang’s (2023) publication titled “Is more better when embedding ethics in CS courses?,” which investigates the impact of one and two embedded ethics modules within undergraduate computer science courses.\
- Situated Language and Learning with Bryan Brown
  - In this interview Bryan Brown, we discuss the importance of language in education. In particular, we discuss the role of language in teaching and learning, discursive identity, situated language and learning, the importance of representation in education, the role of language on stress, how smartphones and virtual communication platforms (e.g., Zoom) could change learning, and many other topics relevant to CS education and learning.
- More episodes related to ethics
- More episodes related to integration
- All other episodes
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter