Planning Grant: Integrating Computational Thinking Into Middle School Curriculum

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Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (VT) is partnering with the Henrico County Public School District (HCPS) on a planning grant to develop a CE21 project that will build Computational Thinking (CT) activities into current instructional practices across core middle school curriculum. The project will locate nascent CT activities in the existing curriculum, reinforce and develop the overlap between the curricular area and the target CT area, and subsequently reinforce the CT content in a short, reinforcing instructional unit. This planning grant will be used to prepare for the research by creating, piloting, testing and assembling instructional interventions and materials, approaches to learning progressions in CT, management arrangements and practices across and within VT and HCPS, and advisors across the areas that will need development and oversight in full proposal. The overarching research questions for the full proposal are (1) whether the approach of integrating CT is viable across diverse educational environments, teachers and students, (2) whether the approach has significant negative entailments ("show stoppers"), and (3) whether the approach will prove to be scalable across different school systems. The CS department at VT has a long history of innovative engagement with K-12 as well as university pedagogy in computational thinking, mathematics, and science instruction. HCPS is a mixed SES, multi-racial district of 50,000 students, with a ten-year history of integrating laptop use into instruction in grades 6-12. The HCPS administration has identified CT as a needed area for growth and has the backing of the District School Board. They have a vision of 3-4 CT activities in every class in every grade across core curricular areas. HCPS?s vision plus VT's CT expertise and the PI's prior experience with the development and scaling up of educational research position this project to produce transformative knowledge and practices.