EBP: CS for All: Engaging Struggling Learners in Computer Science Instruction

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Students with disabilities constitute approximately 15% of the entire student population, and the majority of those students receive their instruction in general education classes alongside their peers. Despite the growing momentum to introduce computer science (CS) into K-12 instruction, however, little research has been done on meeting the needs of these learners. The goals of this project are to (1) investigate the challenges that students with learning disabilities face during CS instruction, and (2) develop interventions to address those challenges based on research-based practices from other content areas. Areas of focus include Universal Design for Learning (UDL), balancing explicit instruction within open-ended CS activities, and encouraging student collaboration. To accomplish these goals, the project employs a mixed-methods research design within three rounds of data collection. First, it examines specific barriers and then progresses to two iterative studies of computing instruction that include strategies that support struggling learners. Data sources include teacher interviews, classroom observations, student artifact-based interviews, and analysis of video screen capture of students? computing activities for measures of persistence, collaborative problem solving, adaptive help seeking, and computational thinking (CT).